On Monday we celebrate 17 years of Almond Surfboards.
Seventeen years is long enough that people start asking questions about the journey—the highs and lows, the lessons learned, what I would do differently.
Those are fair questions. But honestly that’s not what I’ve been thinking about lately.
What I’ve been thinking about is the simple reason Almond exists. Why keep paddling in the same direction for this long?
Because surfing is one of the few activities that forces you to operate fully present in the moment. Whether you're bobbing in the lineup waiting for waves, or up and riding, you're reading and reacting to the world around you.
It’s a grounding activity that pulls your attention away from everything else for a little while.
There is no tangible output from surfing—we do it for the pure enjoyment of doing it. And I think that’s okay.
So much of the work we do is about helping surfers go surfing more often. If surfers are good at anything, it's inventing reasons not to go surfing. The waves are too small. The lineup is crowded. Work is busy. Life gets full.
So for the last 17 years we’ve tried to remove a few of those barriers. Build boards that are fun to ride in everyday conditions. Share what we’ve learned along the way.
Encourage people to paddle out more often.
We’ve also been fairly stubborn about the kind of brand we want to be.
A few simple principles have guided us: help surfers go surfing more often, give value away whenever we can, build products we’ll still be proud of decades from now, and avoid borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today.
None of those ideas are particularly flashy. But they’ve served us well.
From the beginning we’ve insisted on building a brand around surfboards themselves. Hard goods first. Everything else sits on top of that foundation.
Seventeen years later that still feels like the right approach.
To everyone who has paddled out on an Almond board, stopped by the shop, read something we’ve written, or simply followed along over the years—thank you.
Slow and steady we go into year 18.
Forever grateful,
Dave
