The future of the custom surfboard is now

“Custom” has an attractive ring to it, tailor made, just for you. In this digital-rules-reality era you can design almost any of your material desires on the net: cars, shoes, wallets, T-shirts, wives (sort-of), stickers, wetsuits, bobble heads… the list goes on. The custom surfboard’s one of the most sought after aspects of our sport. We all live in different vessels; short, tall, rail thin, fat-as-fuck and everything between. The OG order form for foam fit to your rig, typically’s filled out and emailed, detailing length, width and thickness.

Haydenshapes’ Hayden Cox, who’s been at the forefront of surfboard innovation has taken the custom order form into the space-age… or at least the 21st century with his new HSSTUDiO. It’s the first large scale, fully interactive, 360 degree, pinch and zoom online board builder. Hayden paid a visit to our Venice Beach office, where snapchat and tech’s taken over with no remorse, much to the local’s disdain.

Craig Anderson’s no slob. Photo: Jack Taylor

“It’s set to design your custom surfboard,” Mr Cox tells Stab, “personalised by you, created by us. The studio’s the most innovative true to life representation utilising a 360 degree form of customising a surfboard. Traditionally people are customising boards in 2d–front, back and side profile views. The studio allows you to really look into the shape and see the most minute details while customising your board.”

“So for someone who has never had the opportunity to come into one of our shops, or get a look at the boards in real life, this enables the customer to get a full view of the board, like you would in the shaping bay,” he continues. “We design it so you have a blank canvas, it’s all about the shape, then you go through the process of materials, dimensions, fins, logos and artwork. It’s all live rendered as you select and go. You can pinch and zoom, flip the board and look at all the concave and contours. It allows you to get in really close and see all the details of the shape.”

The studio pulls from 15,000 specifications based off the Haydenshapes model range. You input your weight and height and the system and the output is the proper dims, accordingly. You can then tweak to the specifics that suit your skill set. 

The future of the custom surfboard is here, direct from the machine on your lap all while you become one with the couch. 

Fiddle with pixels and foam right here.