Story

Here is my attempt to capture the story of how the idea of the baordcompany came to live.

During the first lockdown people had to start thinking about creative ways to keep being able to exercise their sports and hobbies. As in my family we all love some boardsport (or in my case, love sucking at all boarsports), i have build some skateramps, mainly for the kids.

However i was still feeling lost as my biggest passion (or as my wife says, obsession for being mediocre) is river or rapidsurfing. A passion i share with many friends abroad as unfortunatly in Belgium we have no clue what it is, so i need to explain and show everytime that is comparable with traditional ocean surfing, but on standing waves, either natural onces that occure in rivers or articial manmade ones (or a combo).

In my circle of friends and especially in the Layday Surfclub (chapters all over Germany and proudly brought to use by the help of LaydayLayday, just saying) we were all eagerly awaiting the end of the first lockdown so we could start travelling again to our usual spots such as the Eisback or the wave in Langenfeld, but also to hit Europe’s biggest riverwave, TheRiverwave, in Austria, which had just opened.

As such their were no real safety issues in light of the COVID crisis that were stopping us, as the sport as such is not a hasard. It is an individual sport, in open air, where we spend most of the time on the water (or in it in my case) and even when waiting in the line up, we keep distance as we are all holding our boards.

So as soon as the travel restrictions were lifted, we got organised (while Michael made sure we acted organised and not running around like headless chichens), carpooling was organised (yes, we always think green, even the colorblind amongst us), Airbnb’s were booked…. And that is how a bunch of like minded crazy (the good kind of crazy, not the « dont make eyecontact » kind) surfers from Cologne, Munich, Vienna and Belgium met up at the riverwave near Salzburg.

In the evening after many hours of surfing (again, swimming in my case) the discussion turned to the inevidable question if there will be another lockdown after summer and what people would be doing then, as many amongst us do not have to luck to live near a place like the Riverwave or the Eisbach… and not everybody is as crazy as me to drive everytime those big distances or there might even again be travel restrictions if ever there would be another lockdown.

Sitting near the biggest manmade river in Europe, we starting to think that in any case if we are ever restricted to only being to surf « locally », everybody should have some where closeby a river, or even a creek where you could find a way to surf. For that however you do not an allround board, that would work pretty much everywhere. Not that they dont exist, they surely do, but everybody has had a financially difficult period during lockdown so it is not évident to spend a lot of money on -again- another board… so instead of spending a lot of money on a new board, why not to all just put in a bit of money and make our own ?

In the worse case it will keep us distracted and we can get creative… i think a this point, somebody (i am not blaming Karl, but just stating for the record that itw as Karl) who said « that’s the right attitude »…. Hence the name « surfers with attitude » was born…

Where does the idea of the « Busy Beaver » model comes from ??? that is and inside corporate trade secret but most riders get the joke 😊…

In most cases, ideas like that quickly disappear by themselves the next morning, but strangly enough it made everybody (except for Princess, but that is another story) wake up really early and excited. Nobody wanted to dismiss it as a joke and quickly everybody started to take responsibilty of one aspect, from logo design, board shape, website to online campaigning.. everybody immediatly decided where and how they could fit in the story and help out….

And that is in a nutshell how we went on a roadtrip, from a joke to an idea, that ended up with us having the pleasure of meeting up last week to try out our first « busy beaver » boards all together… of course not only boards as we offer a package with fiberglass fins, extra fin set (and key), tailpad and leash…