Why did we start this?

Why did we start this? The first time someone asked me this I realized I didn’t have a ready answer. Yes I love wakesurfing and being out on the water, and yes I think we can engineer better boards, but it’s not exactly unique to like something and think you can make it better. We’ve all had other hobbies and ideas to improve them, so why did we go all in on this one? The answer is probably not that surprising to anyone who’s grown up on the water. When you grow up in the water, some part of it gets in you. We lived in Colorado so we only got a couple months a year to get out there, but even those colder months were just the lull before we could get out again. We even had a couple days where we surfed in snow because if the lake was open, we got out there. I still don’t even check the weather on boat days cause in the end it doesn’t really matter. 

"The lake was our home..."

Whatever that bug is, we got it. And it’s not something that goes away. But it’s not just the sunshine or the water or the sport of it. The lake was our home as much as any place we ever lived. To this day our parents say that first boat was the best thing they ever bought. We had more family time on the boat than a lot of families get at the dinner table. Dakota and myself were lucky enough to grow up like that, and to some degree we were shaped by it. But Ben and Lewis, our cousins and co founders, bought their first boat when they were in college in a mountain town in Colorado. Durango wasn’t exactly known as a boating destination, but it had a lake and enough summer months to warm up the Rocky Mountain water just enough. At the very least, as long as the sun was shining you could always throw on a wetsuit. And even then, they’d go out every weekend. Before class. After class. Whatever it is about being out on the water, they got it just as bad as us even without having grown up with it. 

That's why SMITH exists

There’s a little trope that any dad who’s ever been on a boat has felt obligated to utter. “A bad day on the water’s better than a good day in the office” (sidenote, if you’re ever out on the water with us you’ll probably hear Dakota say that at least a couple times). Kids are rolling their eyes at memories of their dads saying that same thing right now, but it’s true. There are no bad days out on the water. The sunshine, the water, the sport, the friends, the family, the carefree feeling. Whatever that is that makes for no bad days on the water, that’s why we started this. We love to surf. We love to think about how to make things better. But we love to be out on the water. Yes, our mission is to build the best boards in the world, but the reason we want to do that is to give people more of that feeling. That love for being out on the water. That is a part of who Dakota, Ben, Lewis, myself and everyone else on the Smith Board Co team, and we want to help as many people as possible share that feeling. That’s why we started this. That’s why SMITH exists.