Surfboard Shaper Boards New Wave

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Today we'll talk about repurposing, as it applies to the world of reselling, side hustling, and so on. When longboard surfboards went out of style in the 1970s, thousands of them were selling at just $10 a piece. This aspiring surfboard shaper knew it was a wave he had to catch a ride on. The story here reminds me a little of the headlight and taillight reselling hustle. Very popular story from a couple months ago, that was episode #825, "Digging for Profits." One man's trash is another man's hustle.

In that story, the guy found a way to acquire something for free, specifically headlights and taillights his auto body shop was throwing away, and then resell them for a lot of money, sometimes hundreds of dollars a piece. Now in today's story, which spans four decades, the surfer/repurposer now works as a middle school science teacher, but he continues to build between 30 and 50 surfboards a year at prices that go up to $900. Is there something you might be able to acquire and repurpose? Welcome to Side Hustle School, my name is Chris Guillebeau. Surfboard Shaper Boards New Wave is coming up right after this quick shoutout to our sponsor.

As a kid, Luke Alvarez loved surfing. It was his favorite summer pastime, but the passion never quite felt complete. You see, he had a dream of shaping his own boards. Shaping is essentially critting your own surfboard from stock plywood, applying your own design and adding subtle curves and groups. But it was a hobby that required money, because boards weren't cheap.

Those boards did, however, break and wear down. So when Luke and his friends would find worn-down boards that had been discarded, they'd snatch them up and take them back to his New Jersey home. He would sand down the rough edges and buy new fins and fiberglass, with money saved up from paper delivery routes. Over the years, Luke shaped dozens of boards using tools from his grandfather's garage, giving them away or adding them to a collection. And then came his big break.

In the early 1970s, surfing underwent a massive shift. 10-foot long boards went on a style, as shorter 6-foot boards crested a new wave in popularity. The shift brought thousands of new surfers into the sport and left thousands more with old long boards. They no longer won it. Luke realized it was his chance to get into the business without crazy startup costs, because in the early 1970s, fully functional long boards sold for $10 or less.

He didn't have to search for trash boards anymore. It seemed almost too good to be true. His base product was at clearance-level prices, and all he needed were fin boxes, fins, resin, and fiberglass. So he got to work. He shaped and sold his first few boards that year for $100 or $300 to people in his network.

And it became an annual side hustle. Every summer, he'd go find unwanted long boards, shave them down, reshape them to meet the more current designs, and then resell them for a nice profit. After selling 10 boards in one summer in 1977, Luke decided he wanted to turn his part-time hustle into a more serious venture. However, there was no such thing as a shaping school. Nobody taught the skill on the East Coast at all.

So when his day job in the consumer packaging industry took him to San Diego for a year, he eagerly found another part-time job working at a surfboard factory. And that's where he learned about better tools, different materials, and the latest industry trends, all while getting paid. According to him, seeking out this professional training-by-doing was the thing that made him capable of selling boards for more than $300 each because the quality of his work became much higher. A full decade later, he was shaping and selling at least 30 boards a year, priced between $200 and $500 a piece, all from word of mouth. There weren't any more $10 boards laying around, but Luke reached out to wholesale surfboard manufacturers in California and Mexico to get the best prices he could find.

So while the margins weren't as great as they had been, now somewhere around 25-30%, the higher prices he sold his finished product for made it worth it. In his mind, he had done it, he'd accomplished his dream of becoming a skilled shaper and was making real money on the side. So he just kept it up for years and years. It was extra money with no pressure. No desire to scale or build it into a huge business, just extra money from something he enjoyed.

At some point, though, he got the itch to do something new. He began spending his summers not only shaping boards but teaching kids how to surf and shape their own. He loved passing on his expertise to younger generations, which is also what drove him to become a 7th grade science teacher a few years earlier. This led to him getting some press from local media, like the Philadelphia Inquirer, about what it's like to be a teacher and a surfboard shaper. He was even invited to interview on the Weather Channel.

Demand grew for his boards, some now priced as high as $900, which is still less than the normal price of about $1,500 for a new board. Luke is still making between 30 and 50 boards each year. With a 28% net margin on average, it's a notable side income. But while the money is great, the more rewarding part for him, decades in the making, is seeing his students fall in love with the sport and craft of shaping boards, just like he first did 40 years ago. What are some ideas for repurposing or upcycling, let's say, another term that we've seen a couple different times?

Well, it can be a lot of things. It can be, like I mentioned at the top of the episode, that guy who is reselling headlights and taillights. He has built that into a very substantial business. I believe earning six figures or something close to it, if I'm not mistaken. We also had another episode, 931.

Brooklyn Publicist designs travel-themed jewelry line, which is all about upcycled or creatively made jewelry, who's also, as I said, doing very well. And then we've got other stories of people who are just doing something for fun, working with something they enjoy. But like every Side Hustle School story, they are getting paid for it. So in addition to this one, I was looking back through the archives number 287, a couple turns unwanted furniture into $1,000 per month. If you're interested in doing that, you might want to check it out.

And then 853, retiree earns extra income with upcycled journals. And she's earning about $10,000 a year. So it's the kind of thing that can just be on a side, like a side hustle. Or it's the kind of thing that can grow. It's the kind of thing that can become ultimately a full-time career if that is your goal.

So many different ways to do these things, and that is the beauty in it. Is there something that you could repurpose and resell or upcycle? Think about that and let me know sometime. Don't be a stranger. You can always say hi on www.sidehustleschool.com.

You can always say hi on social media, Instagram, 123 countries, Chris Guillebeau on Twitter or Facebook. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. The show notes for today are at www.sidehustleschool.com/980. Thank you so much for listening, my friends. I'll be back again tomorrow.

Much more is coming up. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau, reporting for Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.