Like many surfers when I first heard about Awayco's innovative subscription/board-hire model, which offers access to boards all over the world I thought, ‘Good Idea’.
If you haven’t heard or read about it, Awayco is a business collaboration involving Ace Buchan, Blake Thornton and former google employee, Gideon Silverman. In a nutshell for $US 60 a month Awayco can put a board in mint condition (or close to it) under your arm in major surf regions around the globe. The site currently lists Australia, California and Bali as locations where you can pre-book a board and pick up on arrival, but the view is obviously towards expanding the reach of the service.
I’ve been on plenty of trips (often those ones where a surf is a bonus rather than a focus) where picking up a board on site might be far preferable to lugging one through the airport and running the risk of damage with ham-fisted baggage handlers. I’m also a sucker for experimenting with different craft, so the thought of having access to a cache of boards to flirt with also seemed appealing. Would I pay $720 a year? That’s another question.
As it turned out I recently found myself on the Gold Coast with cyclone Linda looming and my travelling quiver looking decidedly inadequate. Blake Thornton had slung me an Awayco code and the site suggests you can try the concept for a month for free. I had every intention of exploiting the deal, but as it was I got stuck in the Cooly vortex and never made it to the Stacey board-shop in Currumbin where Awayco offer its services. However, during the course of the Quiksilver Pro, I did cross paths with some of the world’s best known shapers who collectively had a decidedly different take on the Awayco concept. You know who these guys are.
While initially open to the Awayco concept, they soon realised that the subscription surfboard model had the capacity to completely transform the whole fabric of the surfboard culture.
At first it looked good. A big order of boards for each of the major shapers that would be used to fill the racks of stores offering the Awayco loan/subscription system. A solid pay-day and they were on trend with a new idea that was endorsed by Mr Solid, Ace Buchan, and also backed by a bunch of well-known surf industry figures who had been hired to push the Awayco barrow.
However, it wasn’t long before the major board-makers realised they were nurturing a culture that disproportionately encouraged loaning boards rather than buying them. By supplying stock to Awayco they were essentially in danger of sabotaging their own buyers market. Certainly the utopian tone of the language on the Awayco site does suggest they are trying to totally re-wire one’s attitude towards boards.
“With Awayco, you navigate the earth unchained. You go by tuk-tuk, instead of by van. You explore cities and mountains when the surf goes flat. You tinker, discover and play — riding shortboards, longboards, performance shapes, twin fins and bonzers — because every day is different, and because now you can.”
From the Awayco site.
Hard evidence that Awayco would have a major impact on the consumer habits of surfers soon arrived in Bali. Historically many surfers have chosen to show up in Bali and buy their boards rather than travel with them. Suddenly, with Awayco readily available and free for the first month, Bali-based board shops noticed that their sales and profits dropped dramatically. A heavy email trail started flowing back to the shapers from shop operators in Bali suggesting Awayco had unleashed havoc on the market.
It was particularly problematic for shops that didn’t have the Awayco deal set up and were selling top-line boards at retail price up against shops loaning them for free. Local board hirers in Bali, for whom rentals were a bread and butter trade, also didn’t react well to a model that significantly undercut them.
With the ramifications of Awayco becoming more apparent one prominent shaper, blessed with Will Ferrel comic timing, suggested that perhaps ‘Awayco should Away Go’.
Another told Tracks that, “The truth is that Awayco (or similar biz) is a poorly thought out model that has potential to really hurt surfboard sales world wide and the shapers that have spent their entire lives building their businesses need to see that and keep control over their future…”
The shapers also did some basic arithmetic. If 1000 people signed on to Awayco with subscriptions valued at 720 a year that’s a business turning over US $720 000 – not bad. If 10 000 surfers sign up you have a business turning over more than seven million US dollars annually. According to a 2015 Transworld Business report there are approximately 2.7 million surfers in the world. If Awayco were to corner one percent of that market – 27 000 surfers – they would be turning over almost twenty million dollars. Serious digits.
Those hefty hypothetical numbers may sting a little if you are a shaper who is producing the product that is at the core of the business, watching the big dollars go to a collective who have never done a day's work in the shaping bay. It’s even worse if the subscription model is also causing your board sales to haemorrhage.
“It’s like Uber asking the taxi companies to build cars for them and then taking their business with those cars on top of that,” suggested one of the shapers.
That’s the catch for Awayco, if the big shapers don’t feel like they are getting a good deal they can boycott the whole thing. “I’m choosing not to participate right now,” suggested one of the shapers emphatically.
Meanwhile the allure of an Awayco board subscription becomes considerably less for consumers if certain brand names are not an option.
In the too and fro taking place right now between Awayco and the world’s top shapers Awayco will argue that the main thing they have to offer the shapers is stats and data. Every board experience/loan gets a rating, which Awayco will claim can in turn be used by shapers to improve their product and get closer to what the consumer wants. In response to this most top shapers are likely to suggest something like, ‘I’ve already got ten or more trusted guys of varying ability giving me feedback, you’re large scale data isn’t worth a dime. I’ve also got my sales figures to tell me what works and what doesn’t. And I’m not going to let you screw with my sales figures.’
Are these greedy shapers who should embrace the era of ‘disruptive’ subscription models? Don’t you deserve to be able to step off the plane unencumbered and have your gleaming DX-1 waiting for you on a reserved rack – perhaps after a cocktail and a massage?
“We’re not greedy we’re just trying to protect what we built, what we worked hard for and also to help support those who have helped us – our workers and the shops that sell our boards,” claimed one of the shapers.
At a glance it may seem that Awayco does deliver you into a surfboard utopia where you can try before you buy (if you buy) and travel the world without schlepping board-bags around. However, if you create a culture where there is no longer a good incentive for the best shapers to make boards then ultimately everyone loses. The shapers are in the game because they love to make boards and dedicate their focus and intellect to the process of constant refinement and improvement. Of course they also want to do well financially. The best shapers are unlikely to be party to something where the profits disproportionately flow to those with no shaping knowledge. It’s likely Awayco will have to cut a much different deal if it wants certain big players to sign on.
On a personal surfing level, (and I know I started this article by saying how intrigued I was by the concept) it’s also worth thinking about whether or not you want a subscription surfboard culture to dominate. The surfboard also has a place in our culture as an intensely personal object – something you can customise to your liking, get sprayed or tinted and draw on yourself. It’s always been an extension of your surfing identity rather than simply a commodity. For less than a 1000 bucks you can get a totally bespoke product from a shaper. Try doing that with a piece of furniture or anything else? In the race to embrace the future it’s worth pausing for a moment to consider what could be lost in the process.
