Eric Arakawa "S-Cores" in Europe

Teia Maman                                                            
June 2006                                        
Quartier Costemale
40140 Soustons France
[phone]
[phone]
[e-mail]




Eric Arakawa: Hawaiian Shaper "S-Cores" in Europe

by Teia Maman



         Local boy and international shaper Eric Arakawa just returned to Hawaii after a month-long tour of Europe, shaping more than 100 boards as he traveled.
         As part of the Salomon S-Core design team, he visited a couple dozen of the best surfing beaches in France, Italy and Great Britain, showing off the high-density "blue boards," and gathering praise and feedback from local surfers.
         "I got a full smorgasbord of Europe's coastlines," Arakawa said.
         He also got a hero's welcome from local surfers, but Arakawa, 46, said he was surprised so many European surfers had heard of him. Sure, he won SURFER magazine's "Shaper of the Year" in 2003. And he's also known for helping invent that handy piece of plastic known as the 'Nose Guard.' And Derek Ho, Andy Irons, and many of the world's best surfers ride (or crave to ride) his boards and win world titles on them.... However, Arakawa remains modest.
         "I'm from the little island of Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific," he said. "It's just that the surf community is such a tight-knit industry, and it's all around the world."
         Laurent Caule, of S-Core Europe, agreed. "Surfing's a small world. And we all want to try 'an Arakawa' at least once in our lifetime. Everybody wants to talk with him. Eric is super enthusiastic, and a hard worker. We stayed whole days at the beach and in the shops, talking to surfers, getting feedback. I'd say 50 to 100 surfers, of all ages and abilities, turned up at each demo site."
         Arakawa said he places a lot of importance on feedback from locals.
         "No one bats 1000 – and sometimes negative feedback is even more valuable than positive. We keep learning. As soon as you think you know it all, you find out you know nothing!
         "You could reach a pinnacle in design, then surfing changes. People don't surf now like they did ten years ago, or even five. The maneuvers are always evolving. Compared to 25 years ago, when I first visited France, it's mind-blowing! Kids are surfing much faster, doing 360s, and flips in the air, landing them and then surfing all the way in."
          With four pro riders (Tom Innes, Boris Letexier, Didier Piter, J.C. Debray) and three S-Core crew, Arakawa hit 20 different demo sites. Traveling by camping car, the daily routine was grueling. The team would touch down in the early a.m. at the local surf shop, then set up a canopy on the beach with plenty of blue boards. Local surfers could choose from a complete quiver of about 30 S-Core boards, from 5’10" high-performance shortboards to the 7’ easy-paddler, and ride all day long.
         Still, the Hawaiian shaper and his wife, who accompanied him on this last trip, had time to catch up with lots of friends in Europe, met during 25 years of travel here.
         "As a surfer, it all comes down to: surfers want to find surf!" he said. "I've been back and forth to Europe so many times I've lost count. My son, now 15, stood up for the first time on a surfboard right at Estagnots. In 1981 I spent six months in southwest France. It was just magical! The waves were really good; a number of big swells hit, no crowds, the banks were working really good."
         With all that traveling, Arakawa said that what he missed most was Hawaiian food. "But really I don't have any complaints about French food! Traveling is good for you. We Americans tend to be ignorant of what's going on in the world. To understand the way other people think you need to get out of the bubble."
         Arakawa, with his 30-odd years of experience (or 20,000 boards' worth) is known for being a shaper "hungry for new technologies." Salomon being a technology-driven company, it was natural that Arakawa join the S-Core design team at its inception five years ago.
         But only now, he said, is the truly revolutionary idea behind this technology coming to the surface.
         "Here we've been at it for over 40 years, but the focus was always on the geometry, the exterior design. With the S-Core technology, we're going into a whole other dimension, maybe a whole new set of parameters. Rather than keep thinking of it along the same old lines as PU boards, we need to enhance the different inherent qualities of the S-Core materials."
         Arakawa explained the S-Core concept of "inside-out" design at a blue-foam-walled shaping shed near Hossegor.
         "Our focus is now on the interior structure; we look at altering the core in order to alter the weight to strength ratio – and what about performance? We can work with different rockers and thicknesses, and we can engineer the way the board flexes going through the water. It's unlimited, this technology!"
         When talking design, Arakawa's face lights up; he starts waving his hands and gesturing, at once serious and joyful, and the white foam dust caught in his sleeves billows up in the air.
         "There's a symbiotic relationship between surfers and boards, and it advances the sport both ways: design and the level of surfing. We create designs to enhance performance, so the surfers can do more, but then they demand more performance from our designs!"
         It's a spiral leading all surfers, not just the pros, up and up.
         Pascal Vergne, Director of Development at S-Core, went into more detail on the blue boards.
         "The S-Core is a pre-shaped polystyrene foam blank, 7ml thick, laminated inside with carbon, and with three stringers of composite materials. It's as easy to shape as a regular polyurethane blank, but 25% denser. That density makes it much more resistant to dents. At the same time, our boards are light -- four or five pounds for a 6'1" -- super flexible, and proven 20% stronger than regular PU [polyurethane] boards.
         "We've engineered the core to be faster, more flexible, reactive, and responsive. But we also offer shapers all kinds of choices in structure, material and stringers according to the type of board he wants to build: more or less flexibility, torsion, or dampening, and so on."
         For example, as more control is needed for a big wave board, a shaper can choose a custom blank with wider stringers to provide more dampening; for small beachbreak aerials, a noseless blank might be the ticket.
         In the S-Core production-blank factory run by Cobra in Thailand, the cores of the blue boards remain standard. "But in a few years," Arakawa said, "That may change, and we'll be able to provide a more specified line of boards to all customers."
         Prices for a finished S-Core board have gone down 20% in Europe, to about 750 euros for a custom shape and 650 for a production. In the U.S., a custom costs about $820 while a production will set you back about $700.
         "On the West Coast, shops are selling through their inventory," Arakawa said. "Their last shipment of 500 boards sold out almost immediately. But rumor is, there may be S-Core factories arriving in Hawaii…."
         To check out specs on Arakawa's S-Core production designs, visit http://www.salomonsports.com/mailing/template/scimod2/arakawa_in_town.zip.
         To check out his custom designs, visit Arakawa at HIC in Kapolei. Or just go watch the pros in action at Pipeline or Hossegor – you'll be sure to see some of them riding "an Arakawa!"

END