As of right now I should be sitting in an air plane going back to Germany for the annual kick off of the SUP Season at the boot show in DĂĽsseldorf. That off course handsomely fell through thanks to another wave of covid, instead I am now taking advantage of the extra time and working on my next magazine researching the past of SUP and the cultural shift in the sport. By doing this I dug deep in my archives and came across some pictures that are marking the moment the SUP Magazine idea sparked.
It was January of 2010 at the ISPO in Munich. My good friend and business partner and I got the incredible opportunity to present our label “JUCKER HAWAI’I” to a broader audience. We were in the process of making shirts and selling Hawaiian Labels (other than ours) online in Europe. We had some connections in the sporting world and were able to produce some of the first SUP Boards as well as Skateboard Longboards, Balancetrainers and even had a Prototype of a Skatesurfer.
We were in one of the sporting exhibition halls standing on our big epoxy boards and held a paddle in our hand. People were looking at us like: “What the …. ?” are these guys doing. We were pretty much the only ones at the ISPO with the giant surfboards. That was when I met Eric Terrien for the 2nd time actually. (We met a few months before at an SUP exhibition in ZĂĽrich) See video.
This video is hilarious. A classic almost. Youtube in 2009 imagine you stared a serious channel back then.
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Eric and his friend Abel were showcasing SUP with the brand Nidecker and in one of the hall ways without an actual booth. As far as SUP goes that was pretty much it, I do vaguely remember a Jimmy Lewis tent in the freestyle hall of the ISPO, but this was pretty much it.
So we spent the next 4 days at the show with our boards. Most interest we were able to gain with our Balanceboards and our Skateboards, the SUPs earned mostly skepticism. This story off course would not be complete without mentioning a blonde lady from the Netherlands coming to our booth particularly interested in the SUP. She introduced her self as Anne-Marie and she told me the story of this race in Holland where people raced through 11 cities on the canals in Holland. She was planning to make this a big thing but instead of ice skating like they do it traditionally she wanted to do it with a SUP. She already completed a trial run and 2010 was going to be the big year. She was looking for sponsors.
For my partner and I we started to understand that our “JUCKER HAWAI’I” SUP endeavor would be a very difficult one. Particularly considering going up against companies like Naish and Starboard who have well developed distribution channels. Instead the idea was to produce a SUP Magazine in which we can promote our longboards and balance boards. With this idea an much gained knowledge I left Germany and went back to Maui. It turned out that Anne-Marie also lived on Maui and we met up just a bit later to tell her story on my newly created website.
You can read the story here.
No its been 12 years and sometimes I think I should be writing a book. That might need another 12 years first.
