Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Tanner.
Kevin, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up on the water in Charlestown, RI as someone who always liked tinkering with things, figuring out how they worked and were built. I was introduced to surfing around age 12-13 by my childhood best friend and his dad, who had picked up surfing while attending college in Hawaii in the late 50’s. Thumbing through old surf magazines that were passed on to me from Ryan and through being the annoying little grom at the local surf shop asking the owner 900 questions about surfboards, I became fascinated with how they were made and the level of craftsmanship that went into each board. A major influence was also a poster that used to hang in the basement of Warm winds that was a roll of 35mm film worth of photos of owner Tom Hogan shaping and glassing a board in the early 80’s. A couple years later when I was 15-16 I crudely shaped my first surfboard with some basic hand tools. That Christmas, as a gift, my parents had Tom track down one of the Clark-modified electric planers for me that were available through Clark Foam, at the time they were a manufacturer of the foam blanks surfboards are made from but have since closed. Over the next several years I shaped and glassed myself a few boards here and there trying to refine my skills. Fast forward to around 2010-2011, after leaving the touring musician life behind, I shaped myself a new batch of boards and put the first Soundings Surf Co. logos on them trying to stem some of the games of 20 questions I would receive when I paddled out on boards with no logos on them and it totally backfired. Next thing I knew I had a stack of about 20 orders to make boards for local friends and the whole thing has continued to rapidly snowball ever since.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s been a bit of a bumpy road. I’ve never had any formal training in this field. I’m completely self-taught aside from the occasional YouTuber research or online forums that are available these days, but weren’t around at all when I first started out, so it’s been a lot of trial and error. I also never really intended on shaping surfboards being more than a casual hobby, nor did I expect it to be a viable means of income in New England really. It took quite a bit of hustling and long hours starting out, first in my backyard, and then setting up a space in a friend’s spare two car garage. Struggling to keep up with orders and constantly trying to improve the quality of the boards I was making to get where I’m at today.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Soundings Surf Co. – what should we know?
Soundings Surf Co is a business rooted in custom surfboard manufacturing specializing in pigmented fiberglass resin work to create one of a kind functional works or art tailored to the individual customer. I’m a one person operation, interacting with my customers to dial in exactly what they are looking for in a surfboard and 100% focused on quality over quantity.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
My dedication to the level of craftsmanship and mastery that the surf industry was founded on. These days the industry is shifting, like many others, to overseas mass production with little attention to quality control and that’s not what I’m interested in at all. Every step in the process is done by the same pair of hands, I hand shape, fiberglass, and sand every board that has the Soundings Surf Co. logo on it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.soundingssurfco.com
- Phone: 401-207-7115
- Email: soundingssurfco@gmail.com
- Instagram: @soundingssurfco
Image Credit:
Chelsea Mandes, Gus Potter, Cody Degroff, Mike Brown
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