|
How did Ken and Russ Brown get started making bodyboards?
Ah yes, I remember it well- it seems like only yesterday-----
 I came from
Randolph
Air Base in Texas
to Hawaii in 1970 on the "Lurline" ship and then attended
10th grade at Kalani. About 1973 my brother Russ came back
to Tripler Hospital from the Vietnam war with a wound in his
right foot-right near the sesamoid bone near his big toe.
The story was that he was flying his OH-6 Loach helicopter
with his co-pilot to his right. A 51 caliber
 machine
gun bullet came up through the floor, nicked his foot and
then went through his co-pilot's shoulder. The co-pilot
slumped
over onto
the
controls, and Russ pushed him back into
his seat and flew back to base. He then discovered some
blood near his own foot and realized that he had been hit
but that he was lucky, because his whole foot would have
been blown off if the bullet hit a little more to the right.
Don't know what happened to the co-pilot.
Russ was lucky, but it
ended his career as a pilot. He came back to Tripler and
stayed there awhile. Then he came and stayed with us at our
house in Hawaii Kai. I made the mistake of waking him up one
time, he jumped up as if the Vietcong were storming the
wire---ready to kill! In Vietnam, Russ liked the little
Loach helicopter. It had a mini gun on the side, and he was
paid to fly off-- usually by himself- and look for
unsuspecting Cong to shoot up. I won't get into the stories,
but let's just say the US Government got what they paid for
and Russ was very efficient. Years later when we were
working at Turbo, we would ask him to tell us what happened
and he would sometimes tell his war stories to us. One thing
he kept mentioning was that when he was hovering over an
area, he was always looking for the color white--which would
be the eyeballs of the Vietcong looking up at him as they
hid in the jungle. He says there is no white in the jungle
canopy. He had
money saved up because he had reenlisted in Nam and didn't
spend much. He moved to Waikiki and started surfing--he had
learned earlier in Texas how to surf--and was called the
"surfer" in Nam. The years went by and a new product arrived
in the world--the Morey Boogie. The whole reason I make bodyboards and the Turbo Surf bodyboard was invented
was---Russ' right foot hurt when he surfed because it put
pressure and pain on his foot. He tried the Morey board at
the "Wall" and liked bodyboarding-but the board wasn't stiff
enough--he wanted to stand up sometimes on the board--but he
was too heavy-- it flexed too much--he wanted to make
something better.
About
this time Russ had turned his artistic gift into a business.
He was always artistic as a kid and was a good painter. He
painted his Taxi cab and Volkswagen bug with surf murals--it
looked real cool. The executives at Kahala Sportswear saw it
and asked if he could paint some designs on cut material
yokes for aloha shirts. They let him use the loft in their
shop and he hired me as the first employee. We started
airbrushing t-shirts and everything else and grew into the
largest airbrushers in Hawaii--Russair was
 the company's
name. This went on for several years and we were forced to
learn how to silkscreen to keep up with our clients. Russ
had also gotten into selling Shane and Scott waveskiis at
this time and had some
polyethylene foam laying
around. We also
had the
special plastic laying around for the board's bottom because
we used it to print signs on. The story is that one day Russ
was talking with a guy who had worked where they made tennis racquets, and the guy said to make
the racquet stiff, they used a lighter softer core and a
stiff outer surface to create a sandwich construction.
Eureka! thought Russ, now I know how to make a stiff bodyboard!!!
As we were working one day
at the now Russair print shop on Keeaumoku street, we
saw
Russ start to make something with the foam. He had whatever
tools were lying
 around, a knife, etc----we asked him what
he was doing. He said, "making a bodyboard." We all had
a good laugh and and kept working--but kept a side eye on
what he was doing. I of course couldn't resist getting
involved and making suggestions. He made the first board and
tried it and liked it. He made another and enlisted the
skills of his print shop manager Mike R. and the other crew
to make a flyer, logo, and make the
board look sellable and
professional looking. The name he came up with
one night for his new
creation was Turbo. He said the letters meant "The Ultimate
Russ Brown Obsession."
He made that one board with
a flyer and then shrinkwrapped it. He took it to his friends
at Local Motion on Kapiolani and put it on consignment. It
sold immediately and they asked for 2 more--then 4
more--then--you can guess the rest. I transferred from
printing t-shirts to shaping and making bodyboards--this was
1983.
Anyway
there are many stories to tell of the years at
 Russ' Turbo
that continued up until about 1998. I still make
bodyboards for some reason,
and Russ has now gone "walkabout" and ended up owning an art
gallery in Lake City
Colorado--the Russ Brown Gallery.
Check it out if you are
ever there- on one side of the gallery are peaceful forest
and animal paintings that he does. On the other side are
paintings of warplanes, helicopters, war scenes, cars--he is
pretty well known and does much of his business on
commissions from military people.
Meanwhile,
about 1998 Turbo Surf Designs Hawaii was sold to a younger
business associate of Russ and renamed Turbo Surf
Hawaii--and Russ went walkabout. New owner (let's call him
Dorm) had high hopes and big plans--seeing that he was a
business school graduate. These dreams were dashed overtime
as the rigors of running a low profit surf business sank in.
We moved the shop to Kapahulu Avenue and everybody put a lot
of effort into the build out of the new shop. Things went
pretty smoothly for the next 7 years or so but I guess Dorm
actually needed to make money, so towards the end he got a
full time job as a Honolulu Lifeguard. This I believe was
the beginning of the end for Turbo Surf because he was never
around and the shop was left in the hands of mostly young
kids. Like my Dad used to say," One boy-one boy. Two
boy-half a boy. Three boy-no boy." Also the economy was real
bad.
Anyway,
during this time the lease was coming up on the Kapahulu
Avenue shopping center where we were. The whole place was
torn down and made into a big Safeway. The business was so
bad at that time that there was no production being done and
I went on unemployment. Dorm opened a cute little boutique
Turbo shop down near Rainbow Drive-in, and I left to open my
own bodyboard business. This went on for a year or so and
then the economy went real sour and then one day ---Turbo
was no longer there.
Years
before when Russ owned Turbo, somehow another company that
called itself Turbo Surf was started in Australia and in
it's advertisements said that it was somehow connected with
Russ' Turbo--and it used Russ' logo. This used to really irk
Russ but was left on the back burner. Dorm apparently
connected with this company and I heard some arrangement was
made to sell the remaining rights to the Turbo name to them.
They have since changed the name again and are doing quite
well apparently sponsoring Hawaii bodyboarding contests and
making a range of bodyboards.
|
Ok, I
couldn't resist it--I'll tell a story.
Russ at one time sold
his soul to the devil for a white Ferrari Testarossa. He got
some money from one of the big corporations when he licensed
the Turbo name--you know the corporation with the big M in
its name. Anyway, he also was paid monthly to be a
consultant for this company and they also hired the top
young blonde Hawaii bodyboarder around. Their plan was to
have Russ with his artistic and design talent help design a
signature board for this bodyboarder--everybody was going to
get rich!
As is the case when you
deal with the devil, compromises have to be made. In
this case, instead of handling your own destiny like
when he ran his own company, he had to deal with a
corporate bureaucracy that was ripe for disaster. He
spent hours and hours on phone calls to all layers of
this corporate bureaucracy, trying to make sure that
everything would come out perfect. Weeks past and Russ
was assured by everybody that the boards were going to
be made in Mexico like all the others, and that a box of
them would be shipped to Honolulu where Russ would show
them to the pro bodyboarder and we would also be the
first ones to sell them at our Turbo shop (which was at
that time the biggest bodyboard shop in the world with
at least 500 boards on the floor!!!)
Expectations were high.
After
all the hard work and frustration, the day arrived when
that first box arrived. We all gathered around and
watched as he pulled the first magical board from the box.--- Uh
oh!! Problem!!!-- Some corporate dumb ass had made a tragic
mistake. The boards were the right color, logo, and
everything, but they were made using the narrow shape,
size, and features of the lowest priced bodyboard that
this corporation produced--you know, the ones that are
sold in convenience stores--not top of the line pro
model boards that we were expecting.
You should
have seen the look on poor Russ' face. All the life had bled out
of him and he just shook his head and walked away. That was
the beginning of the end of his wanting anything further to
do with this company and he soon cancelled his consulting
gig with them.
I'm getting into it now---here's another one---probably late
1980's:
This was
in the 1980's. ---Russ was a very trusting guy. He met a
young guy (for this story-we'll call him Stacy) who had good
talent in designing and making things.
Russ hired
him to make bodyboards, and he soon rose to being Russ' shop
manager at the time and trusted helper. The day came when we
were going to go to the Long Beach trade show. Russ decided
to send Stacy to go sit in the booth and promote the Turbo
boards-- and he was going to bring his girlfriend to help
him. His girlfriend worked in our t-shirt printing
department folding shirts.
The trade
show produced poor results for us. Russ later got a call
from a visitor to our booth. He said he was a rep for a
major surf shop and that the guy and girl in the Turbo booth
(Stacy)--- told him to not buy Turbo boards now, because
they were going to start up
production
on
their own
line of boards soon that
were similar to Turbos--and that he should buy their new line
of boards instead of Turbo boards.
Russ
thanked the man on the phone for telling him this and then
called Stacy and his girlfriend into his office. He asked
Stacy if this story was true--Stacy gave some feeble
excuse--and
then
Russ fired
both of them.
---here's another one: Middle 1990's
Russ
invented a board that kind of had a shape and thickness of a
skimboard but was supposed to be ridden in the water like a
bodyboard. It was made out of a special flexible 1/2"
plastic that was available here in Hawaii, it floated,
and it was easy to make.
Let's call it the "Faststickboard" for this story.
Some
local guys liked it and we sold some of them. At our shop,
when someone came in who was interested in it, Russ liked to
lay one on top of the wooden table and really beat the hell
out of it with a hammer to impress the customer with how
strong it was. It never failed to impress.
One day
instead of laying it on the table, he held it by the nose
with one hand and beat the hell out of the center of it with
the hammer with the other hand. He must have hit some
harmonic junction or something in the board, because with
the last hit of the hammer, it caused the rear half of the
board to crack off and fall to the ground leaving Russ
standing in front of the customer with a blank look on his
face. That was the last Faststickboard we made.
1998?--The new owner of
Turbo was being trained by Russ before Russ left for
walkabout, and seeing that he was a business school
graduate, I guess one of his text book plans for
streamlining operations was to replace over priced older
workers with cheap younger ones.
He hired a
bunch of eager young guys. One day he came up to me with a
gaggle of them in tow and said, "Ken, teach these guys what
you are doing." Reluctantly I started to teach them for
about 5 minutes and then I came to my senses. I put down my
tools, and leaving them standing there--I walked into the
office where Russ and Dorm were talking. I said, "If you
want me to do the work, I'll do it--but I'm not teaching
nobody nothing that I have spent my time learning and
inventing myself." ---and went back to what I was doing and
not showing nobody nothing. They all got the hint, and
whenever anybody came into my area I would just stop and
look at them. Russ later told me that he was proud of me for
standing up to the new owner. From my many years of
experience making bodyboards, when most young guys first
start they all have visions that all we were going to do at
Turbo was look at surf magazines and design bodyboards.
Their dreams quickly fade when they are told to sand 25
blanks and when they were done they can sand 25 more--not
many people want to do that kind of work--except me.
Aloha |
|
Custom
Search 
