Posted on 12/08/2005 9:48:16 PM PST by Don@VB
Closure of Calif. surfboard foam company wipes out industry
GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press (this contains excerpts)
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. - For more than 40 years, everyone from casual weekend waveriders to top competitive surfers has shared one thing: Customized boards that began as nondescript foam blocks mass-produced by one Southern California company. Clark Foam, an icon in California surf culture, enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the blocks that have been shaped and hand-painted by everyone from backyard do-it-yourselfers to design shops that churn out thousands of handcrafted boards each year. That's why the company's sudden closure this week has the laid-back and thriving cottage industry fearing a wipeout. In a letter to customers Monday explaining his closure, company founder Gordon "Grubby" Clark said he has increasingly been in trouble with state and local government because of his nonstandard production machinery - most of which he designed himself - and his use of toxic and polluting chemicals such as toulene di isocynate, or TDI. He said he spent $500,000 in fire code fixes, another $400,000 defending himself against an employee's lawsuit and faced buying a multimillion "scrubber" to comply with emissions law. He also battled with the Environmental Protection Agency over pollution issues at his Laguna Niguel-based company. Boards which cost between $300 and $800 have soared by as much as $200 at some smaller shops. Manufacturers are scrambling to secure the last supplies of the polyurethane foam blanks, customers are hoarding custom-made boards and thousands of specialty board shapers, air brushers and workers who coat boards with fiberglass face unemployment almost overnight.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
france = california in 20 years.
No matter where its been tried, socialism always ends up destroying the economies of any country.
You're talking about surf boards, and I just got done shoveling 6 inches of snow...
No, wait, that's right, all of the Mexican laborers have moved to California, to do the work that Americans won't do. Right, forgot.
And why has manufacturing moved offshore?
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BINGO. Or at least out of CALEEEfornIA.
I hope he does.
Bummer Dude.
Someone will fill the void perhaps Mexico or China but it wont be overnight.In the meantime, I know fairly good sized operations that are being stopped dead in their tracks.
..So, you chose to live there...:-)
What's your point?
The market's too small and it would be better that they did move it down to Mexico. Simple pleasure are gone.
As a surfer and sometime board shaper the closing of clarks foam company is not just a blow to the surfboard industry but to the surf culture as a whole. As an old surfer growing up in the late 60s Clarks foam was an icon to all of us. not just for the foam but a great place to meet fellow shapers and steal their ideas. It will be missed.
Thanks to the "liberals."
"Liberal," my butt.
Our government has turned into a criminal enterprise. Closing this man's shop because of supposed crimes against the environment is fascism at its finest. The intellectual elite have declared war on production using the ideas of ecology. The New Left is cashing in...impoverishing all of us eventually if we don't fight it now. Marxism/Fascism.
Yes, I'd get a connected local partner down in Mexico and move my manufacturing there.
I wonder what they think now?
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