Import surfboard section

Guy walks into a Asian stockiest and asks the 15 year old for assistance walks out with a $399 piece of plastic. Then goes and buys quality hardware for the board like deck pad $60 a leg rope $60 and a set of fins $160, now that's not smart buying is it? Oh and buys a $ 140 bag to protect his investment or is he embarrassed driving around with the said board on the roof of his car It's like having a race car without a motor

'Rich disgruntled owner of really expensive boards whinging ' thread is what he really needs

As I always say Ride Em All

An $1800 Mct or $1800 Tolhurst Carbon ?

Macaha. Well said how so many Australians have lost their jobs & everything due to the cheap & most often nasty from other cheap countries labor & materials. I am also a victim of this from my local steelworks where I got contracted out. Not once but 3 times losing $20,000 off my yearly wage & then again another $10,000 a year till now. Oh & I nearly forgot about mine & wifes hardship after mass retrenchments took place just after buying our great Australian dream. 9 months without pay. Would have lost it if my wife wasn't working & family members pitching in for us to buy food.
Wages, conditions & entitlements have dropped heaps & I have always said to my fellow workers & management that we are heading to equal the 3rd world countries in our living & until then nothing will improve.
If I was government I would ban all imports from businesses that decide to go overseas. I bet some of them if not most of them would still be here. After all years ago I believe our cash was worth more. So if we didn't buy their products then they would lose out.
I could go on all day about this issue but I won't cause it sucks & is soo depressing. Surfing helps me to get out of all this depression that I have experienced.
So I am guilty like most if not all Australians for buying overseas products & is not easy not to. Unless government stopped most imports & made this country self sufficient. We did have the resources too.
Anyway. I bought a pop out SUP years ago to try it & see if I liked it. I wouldn't have if I had to pay heaps. But later I did pay heaps from who was an Australian but had to go over seas to manufacture to survive. So I am partially happy that my money is going to him & his family. But would rather see my money going to him, his family & the Australian workers if he was to operate here. His SUPs & all boards construction are second to none.
But I have recently bought a longboard I believe is a pop out, sort of.
Again at a cheaper price. But not the cheapest from an Australian that has been in the surf industry for years with his brothers. So happy some of my money is going to him. And he has a wealth of knowledge so I found out. And what I remember him saying is that if an Australian wanted to get a product manufactured overseas at a low cost then quality will go down. Overseas companies can manufacture anything. But the Australian seller would have to take the gamble of selling crap at a high price to keep their good name.
So why didn't I buy from a local shaper? Because I wanted a board that was robust foremost. Performance came second. I wanted my longboard to be more of a fun board anyway. But my local shapers haven't really made a name for themselves unfortunately. And I must admit I was too lazy to look into them.
Another thing that I was told is that a lot of money goes into a popout mold that produces exact copies of tried & proven boards before being mass produced. Maybe not so to those overseas companies who just produce boards as a surfboard & not as a board with a well known surfer or shaper's name.
Sorry for the long write up but tried to make it short. Love my new longboard so far. Soooo fast. And found out it's not as easy as I thought to be a longboarder. Haaaa!

I think im a average type of board buyer in this time. Get both . Local and overseas

im not going to seperate countries.
They are either local or made oversea.
Hell. You be naive to think the local sanding dud is doing all right.
All surfboard workers are mostly on crap money .
But ive been told the asian workers who are skilled up do pretty well compared to other in their communities.

Take sunova. Their workers had to upgrade to produce race sup boards. Most of their race board are canoe style. Very technical build
Dead lines to meet.
They cant afford to keep retraining new workers all the time


Now someone like murray burton who fought the good fight with base surfboards for years has gone solo again. He does local and get boards made overseas. Lots of specifications by him and surprisingly from the manufacturers themselves.
I think its a good balance for him. He has switched onto social media as advertising and it appear his customers over decades are still with him
I don't know the arragement the sideways has with those shapers.
Havent purchased a board off them. I tend to get the mals and such from sbw . Not one sup from them however
Perhaps someone knows the sideways setup

"I think im a average type of board buyer in this time. Get both . Local and overseas"

Me too...picked up 4 new/old boards in the last 2 weeks.

A SW local Shape step up Indo gun by Boyd Purdy,
An old Santosha circa 1989 by Mark Ogram (originally from NZ, now SW been in oz for decades),
A DHD Ducks Nuts for good sucky waves and
A Hypto Krypto rip board from a Qld company getting boards made overseas.

PS the board above is the best longboard I have ever ridden/owned...still loving

Not mentioning brands but current and past world Longboard champions are riding boards from Asia just saying

Where are Guy Takayama boards made. I just bought a 9ft Pahoa. Didn't expect it to be sooo fast. Had a hard time trying to stand up on it. Waves were easy shoulder high but water surface choppy so didn't help. But did get a few smaller ones. Love it.