Allan Gibbons

I started surfing as a kid on Oahu, and later in Santa Barbara. A kid on a bike in Santa Barbara in the 70s could scrounge a lot of surfboard-building knowledge within a couple of square miles, from Greenough's funky Wilderness shop, to Rennie Yater's super-clean factory, to Al Merrick's Channel Islands.

One day when I was 14 I peeled the glass off an old board and reshaped it. Then I glassed it—light blue and yellow. It was a disaster, and I was hooked.

When professional surfing exploded in 1984, I skipped art school and moved from production shaping at Channel Islands to custom shapes for the world’s best surfers. The job I thought might last a year turned into a decades-long journey that took me to Japan, France, Spain, Indonesia, and Australia, surfing and shaping. I now offer custom boards under my Allan Gibbons Design label.

My production line under the RADIO label is available exclusively through Mollusk Surf Shop.