Computer
dude
turns skater dude
Steve McBride showed up at a computer
seminar in Sydney, Australia with the bumper of his rental
car hanging out of the trunk. The bumper had been attached
to the outside of the car until McBride, unused to the
down-under method of driving, came to a five-way intersection
and looked left—when he should
have looked right.
That was a bad start to a
business day. Worse, McBride wasn’t just attending the
seminar. He was teaching it.
After spending hours smiling
and urging customers to buy his company’s data storage services, McBride
was exhausted and headed for the beach, where he’d dropped
off his wife. In an effort to shake off stress, he  decided
to rent a board and catch some waves.
It was a moment of clarity.
After getting “some really good waves” and soaking in the memories
of his California youth, the transplanted Ogden resident sat on the beach with
Mrs. McBride and said, “I just don’t want to do
this any more.”
His wife wasn’t alarmed.
She’d seen McBride come out ofthe funnel still on his
feet after his job at Iomega disappeared along with hundreds
of others’.
 But instead
of asking, “What else can you do?” she asked, “What
doyou like?”
The answer sounded more like
a midlife crisis than
a suggestion for a new career:
“Surfing and skating.”
And so it was
that, after some brainstorming and
business-modeling,
the McBrides bet the farm on Kahuna Creations.
The result was
the first business to become part of the Ogden “hub” of
recreation- and extreme sports-equipment makers, which today
has a reputation on both American coasts and is doubling its
revenue every year.
Started in a garage, etc.
Like every great American company should,
Kahuna Creations started in the owner's garage. Steve McBride
began by designing a long wooden skateboard that took its dimensions
from the “underground” boards,
but its attitude from the sunny beaches. Elegantly planed maple,
mahogany and tananoa, polished and lacquered and iron-branded
with the Kahuna logo, resembled the original heavy, all-wood
Hawaiian surfboards.
“We wanted to come up with a skateboard
that would be fun for everybody,” McBride said. “We
aren’t
the first on the market, but ours is very unique. A lot of
the other stuff you see is darker, with demons and skulls
on them. Ours are bright, fun and ‘beachy.’”
The look caught on. The KC long-board
became a skateboard that an adult could enjoy. Because of
its size, McBride says, it’s a very stable platform.
It doesn’t
lend itself to acrobatics, but it’s
a good fun ride. He knows of one Kahuna Creations long-board
user, a Hawaiian competition surfer, who is 86.
“Little skateboards are for teenagers or pre-teens,” McBride
said. “But you grow up and you don’t want
to be riding a squirrelly toothpick. These are stable--and
fast.”
 B eside the polished-wood Kahuna “classic” board
made in Utah, McBride also has California-built designs he
calls “beach boards” and “performance boards.” Made
from pressed maple ply, they are colorfully painted and springy.
Foot traction comes from anchoring real beach sand into the
surface enamel.
McBride himself grew up in the 1970s
during the second generation of skateboarding, after the
sport had been removed from its surfing roots and become
an urban pastime. Those were the days of the “banana
boards,” the
short, slender polypropylene gadgets that barely had
room for a pair of adolescent-sized shoes, and came only
in solid, garish colors (like bright, banana yellow).
Today McBride is part of the fourth generation of skateboard
companies who are run by skateboarders. Today, skateboarding
is dividing into two cultures: a culture of rebellion and a
culture of fun.
McBride reminds customers that “Hawaiians
invented board riding thousands of years ago, resulting in
the creation of all board sports. Those Hawaiian surfers found
a purity and freedom that shaped and defined their culture.”
A board for all seasons
So naturally McBride, who grew up doing two
of the three great board sports, doesn't just make skateboards.
His son Corey, just back from a Mormon mission to Russia, is
one of a trio of designers who create snowboards that are then
produced in Austria. Looking slightly like overgrown, colorful
tongue-depressors, there are currently seven models in the
Kahuna snowboard lineup.
 Kahuna has an even greater variety of surfboards,
all designed with echoes of the original Hawaiian boards such
as wooden leading edges, split tails and extra-wide bodies.
The wide-bodied "hybrid" board is a unique Kahuna product,
a compromise between the short and long surfboards availalbe
elsewhere.
A surfboard maker . . . in Ogden?
Even Steve McBride didn't think of Ogden
as a natural place to make surfboards. Or skateboards. Maybe
snowboards. Heck, when he moved to Ogden to work at Iomega,
his wife said, "We're moving here? From California?"
When Iomega "fizzled," Ogden was
doing the same. It was a town of picturesque old buildings,
but too many of them were boarded up. When Kahuna Creations
began to take off in late 2003, McBride started looking
for a new home for his company.
"I was looking at California or Colorado,"
McBride said. "But then the Standard-Examiner did a story on
us, and I got a call from the mayor."
That's when he heard about Mayor Matthew Godfrey's
plan to make Ogden a "hub" for outdoor recreation
gear makers. That vision hadn't been publicized yet. McBride
had the honor of becoming the first element of that hub, which
has expanded to include 14 companies, 13 of which have
moved here from all over North America.
With help from the city's business development
office, McBride found a building in the Business Depot, Ogden
and secured a favorable loan. In the years since, he has seen
his revenues double annually.
"We were the first," he says proudly. "And
so far, we're the only home-grown recreation company."
After deciding to stay, McBride discovered
other advantages to the location. American surfboard makers
are virtually all centered in California, which is great for
supplying California surfers. But Florida and other Southeast
and Gulf Coast states have plenty of surfers, too. Being located
near the continental divide trims two days off the delivery
schedule to the east, significantly cutting freight costs and
making Kahuna Creations that much more competitive. And deliveries
to California still only take one day.
Having discovered the wonders of his own back
yard, Steve McBride enthusiastically counts off reasons for
loving and living in Ogden.
"The great thing about Ogden you have
the snow, the hills for riding boards and all the water with
the river and lakes. In California it took four hours to get
to the ski resorts, two hours to get tot he lakes. Here you
have access to everything within 20 minutes. And because
of the Olympics and everything going on with the hub and the
potential for the downtown gondola, it all keeps adding to
the mystique of living here in Ogden."
Visit the Kahuna Creations website at www.kahunacreations.com.
Ogden, Utah, is quickly becoming a hub for
outdoor recreation gear makers. |
