“As soon as you begin to chase the ever-ambiguous ‘they,’ authenticity and originality are immediately threatened, because you’re essentially dumbing-down what you really want to be doing for the sake of the crowd.” – Dave Allee
At first we were drawn to Almond Surfboards for their minimalist style, excellent craft, and all around feel. After riding their boards and meeting founder Dave Allee, we found too many common interests and shared motives. We had to find out more.
Alex Swanson: Why did you choose to live the life that you do? What held you back?
Dave Allee: The reality is, running a small business requires doing things you don’t want to spend your time doing 90% of the time, so that you can spend the other 10% of your time doing things you really love to do, regardless of the subject-matter of the business. Almond originates from my desire to create. I am completely and thoroughly excited by possibilities. Scheming and dreaming about possibilities and new ideas gets me as fired up as about anything.
When I was in college from 2004 to 2008, I spent as much of my free time as possible surfing, and as much of my class time as possible doodling in my notebooks. It was only natural that the subject of much of my doodling and dreaming revolved around surfing. Almost inevitably, I decided I needed to shape a surfboard. I grew up doing lots of projects in the garage with my Dad (wood-working and otherwise). He has an engineer’s mind and is very interested in hands-on projects of all varieties, which has had a big influence on me. Rather than trying to shape something cool for my first board, I wanted to build something wild. The result was a 6’5” single fin made of solid balsa wood, that featured no less than five 1” redwood stringers. I spent a full 12 months on that board from concept to completion, and I talked with as many people as I could during that year to get tips and advice on my undertaking. That lead me to great conversations with amazing people, the most memorable of which was Terry Martin, who happened to be working on two balsa longboards at the time. He gave me tremendous encouragement and wisdom.
Fast-forward to the end of college, I had hacked out a handful of boards and some t-shirts with the “Almond” name on them, but I was convinced that I didn’t want to start a surf brand. It seemed cliché to be the Orange County kid whose life dream is to start a surf brand. Everyone I knew who chose that path had a particular aura of self-promotion that I didn’t want to be associated with. I wasn’t motivated by the recognition of being the guy with his own surf company. Don’t get me wrong, there are moments when I temporarily fell into that trap of a false sense of self-importance because of the recognition or attention that comes with the position, but at the core of it I was never motivated by the image.
Working for the attention and praise of others is simply not motivation enough to press onward. So much of Almond’s story since those early days, has been finding our path and holding on to the values that make us who we are. Almond has grown and evolved in ways that I couldn’t have predicted: both different and often times better than I would have dreamed when I was 19 and this was all hypothetical.
At the core of our brand DNA is producing products that we can be proud of. Through all of the highs, lows, lessons and rewards, we have allowed ourselves an opportunity to do what we set out to do: create things we’re proud of, and create things we’re deep-down excited about.
What are you most proud of? What do you want people to feel, experience, and walk away with when they visit the shop, follow the brand, or own a product made by Almond?
In setting out to create Almond, it seemed only natural to make stuff that we were genuinely enthusiastic about, which I think is a part of what is so refreshing about startups in general. As you get deeper into business and growing a brand, the temptation arises to give the people what they want. It starts out harmless at first, but it’s a toxic way to go about any endeavor. As soon as you begin to chase the ever-ambiguous “they,” authenticity and originality are immediately threatened, because you’re essentially dumbing-down what you really want to be doing for the sake of the crowd. You can see this play out in everything from pop-music to mainstream media. Brands can fall into this trap just as easily, shoveling slop to the masses. It has really been a goal of mine to resist that temptation, and as weird as an egocentric brand-strategy sounds, it has been driving goal of mine to sustain the authenticity that comes from only making goods that we’re excited about and genuinely believe in.
My hope is that people who come in to the shop, and experience what we’re doing, would get a sense of authenticity from Almond. We’re trying to build product and tell a story of idealistic pursuits. We know that our brand isn’t for everyone, that was never the intent. We throw around the word “timeless” regularly, because it touches on both our simple approach to style and design with an emphasis on details as well as our desire to create products that will last.
Author’s Note: Surfing by Cori Rose and Gregory Swanson on the Almond Surf Thump in 81 Wetsuits.
To see more from Alex Swanson, head on over to his website at TenPiggiesOver.com, and don’t forget to follow him on Instagram. Alex is also a contributor to Terasu. For more from Terasu, be sure to visit them at terasulife.com and check out their Vimeo — don’t forget to Like them on Facebook, as well as follow them on Instagram andTwitter.
