Nick Leason says his new product creates a “whole new segment in the sport.” Photo: Lift
The evening onshore winds blow steadily, moving the palm trees in a soothing rhythm as the sun goes down over Puerto Rico. The waves are minimal but there’s a bump or two to be had. I’m looking out over the Caribbean from the family home of Nick Leason. He and his Lift Foils team are hosting a media event around the launch of their new product. Out in the ocean, I can see the outline of a foiler, flying down the line of a small wave. He kicks out and pumps towards another bump on the horizon. He banks into that wave and deftly navigates the pocket while weaving between a keyhole in the reef, stepping smoothly off onto the warm sand. It’s Leason arriving at the party. That man doesn’t just create the product. He lives it.
I’ve used plenty of Lift foil products kiting and winging over the years, but had never tried an e-foil until I was able to test out Lift’s new offerings in Puerto Rico. The Lift5 and LiftX, just announced two days ago, are a complete revelation for the company (more coming later). In short, everything has been refined. Board profiles are surfier (and just plain rad), batteries are easier to use, and built into the boards, and foils can be switched out with a simple click. The LiftX is a game-changer in particular, with a slim motor profile that allows the experienced user to utilize foil skills to surf open-ocean swell and empty waves – and only rely on the motor for approach. And I can say from my own experiences riding the machine in PR, it feels incredible underfoot. I sat down with Nick to talk about his journey, flying the foil flag in the face of resistance, the Florence brothers, and what this new chapter means for one of foiling’s original brands.
So how did Lift end up in Puerto Rico?
I started Lift with my father. He’s been down here since the ’70s. My grandfather had residency here in Puerto Rico way back when and he had a manufacturing business. So when my father got out of college, he ended up moving down to Puerto Rico to work for his father. They had two manufacturing facilities here. They did automotive and medical filters, at a time where injection molding wasn’t really that big. They were doing really complex injection molding equipment. My dad ended up staying here for the lifestyle. My mom really identifies herself as a Puerto Rican because she moved here when she was 20 and never left. I was born and raised here with my two siblings. And this is home for us. We grew up surfing, windsurfing, kiting, but also got to the mainland and into other sports like skiing and snowboarding. I went to school in Utah and studied mechanical engineering. But I came home because this is where the heart is. That was about 2009. We got into foiling and we kicked off this project immediately where I jumped into building hydrofoils. We started with foils for kite surfing, and really started just learning about how to build and design them and what kind of equipment you need, and the molding process. Back then there wasn’t an infrastructure to plug in designer creations and output a product. You had to do all that stuff yourself. So we really applied ourselves with many years and many hours of figuring stuff out.
And how did that expand from there?
Foiling grew into a small industry in the kite world. And that expanded more into the world of surfing with some of these amazing athletes like Laird and Kai Lenny and these awesome Hawaiians and some other brands that were jumping into it. And in 2015, we started working on an E-foil. We delivered that product to the market in 2018. That was a big jump for our company because it was something very, very unique that the world had not ever seen before. And it allowed a lot more people to get into the sport and experience the art of flight. So that was a big segment for our company. Then we went through several years of pretty rapid growth and expansion. But we’re still here in Puerto Rico. This is home to my daughter and my daughter on-the way. And it’s part of our DNA and how we design and build product. We’re out there in the mornings in the ocean. I feel like Puerto Rico has been really key to everything that we’ve developed because we are products of our environment, and we design towards that too.
The reception to that first e-foil was pretty crazy.
I was definitely blown away. But we built some prototypes and the product of that e-foil that I knew was really cool. That’s why I sunk my heart and soul into it. And I put everything at risk to build that product. I just knew that it was going to be awesome. And, and when we actually put it together, you know, I invited some friends and some talented people to try it. I said, ‘look, we got to capture this properly.’ It’s not like we were building the first motorized surfboard in history, right? It’s been done for so many decades in so many different ways, but this has never been presented properly. You only get one shot with the public. They have a short attention span and I was like, we have to present this properly. And we did, we went around the backyard and did these amazing different spots and we got really amazing content. And we put together some videos and put them out there and we did get a solid push. This was the end of 2016 to early 2017. We had a very small social media platform, and on our platform alone, it blew up in the hundreds of thousands of views and we were like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome.’ Then a couple of people from the outside world go, ‘What the hell is this thing?’ And they started sharing it on bigger platforms. And the next thing it goes over a hundred million hits. It’s getting shared all over the place. I was like, ‘Holy smokes. What, what did we just do?’ My inbox was flooded with emails, people that wanted to be dealers. I was not prepared for that. I had no idea really what I was doing or what I was getting myself into.
Do you feel like you’ve been able to create acceptance for foiling after all your years of work?
A little bit, you always get your haters. You always get people that are like, ‘God, it’s stupid. And I’m not doing that.’ But it doesn’t matter what you bring to market, those guys are just hating. I don’t really pay attention to those people. I think I would certainly say that the praise and enthusiasm from the public far, far, far outweighs any kind of negativity or resistance that we’ve had. Cause really, look at what we’re doing, right? We’re building toys. Look at where we’re coming from and what we’re doing. We’re coming from the surfing world where, let’s face it, I go down to the breaks that I knew as a kid and it’s crowded. I know a lot of the people there, they’re friends and neighbors, but I’m like, ‘Damn, I just want to catch a wave.’ I don’t want to sit and wait and fight with my neighbors to catch a wave. I got an hour, and the toys that we’re building allow you to go catch whatever wave you want, wherever you want. I don’t have to rely on these perfect point breaks (and lineups). I don’t have to get into the mix of that crowd. I’m going to go and surf wherever the hell I want. And I’m going to get my fun in and my exercise and feel great. If anything, the products we’re putting out are just expanding the playing field so that everybody can go out and have their fun. Where it’s less crowded. I’m not running into people in the middle of the ocean when we’re riding open-ocean swells. So really if you’re hating on that, then it’s like, ‘Get out of here, these are a benefit for all.’
John John’s favorite Lift toy, with the help of Pyzel.
Bringing John John and Nathan Florence into your fold seems like a huge step in the surfing world finally understanding what foiling is all about?
That’s all John and Nathan. I wouldn’t take credit. The only thing that I do with all these awesome athletes is say, ‘I got a couple of toys. You want to borrow a couple of toys? Yeah, man, be my guest. Let me know what you think.’ With those guys, it’s still that relationship. You know, for them, they really love the sport. They love the product. And I basically came and said, ‘Let me work for you. Let me build you what you’re thinking and what you need. Let me give it my best shot.’ And they’re fired up on that. And they’re showing everybody the possibilities. They are amazing ambassadors. They’re doing something that I could never do – convince the world of surfing that, ‘Hey, this sport is awesome.’ Because when you get into the surf aspect, the foils, I think you have a group that are pretty stubborn about it. But the reality is, every day is a good surf day when you have a foil. Every day there’s something to ride, you know, and it’s fun. So having John and Nate to fly that flag and show people the way is massive for the whole sport and the industry. Not just for our company, that’s the exciting part.
How big is it for Lift to basically rebrand its e-foil line?
It was a huge deal. I try to explain to people, but it’s hard. What we started, especially on the e-foils, right? What we started in 2015 was the first step of an architecture into the product, right? We didn’t know anything. There was no e-foil out in the market. We were building it from scratch. So it was like, how big is the battery? Where does the motor go? How big is the propeller? What does the product look like? And all the things that we see today that we kind of take for granted, those were unknowns. It was a blank piece of paper, right? And we established that architecture for the industry. But there are also things that could be better and could be improved. And we were kind of locked into that architecture for quite a few years. The Lift 5 and Lift X is where we had to break it. We had to go, okay, look, obviously there’s a lot of stuff that worked out really, really, really well that we’re going to carry forward. A lot of things that we fine tuned, but there’s a lot of things that we want to change. And that’s what we did. It took us years to rebuild that, even with the experience that we have, and a lot of hard work to put that together. It’s the start of the next chapter.
What do you think these new designs mean for the industry?
When we put this product out there in the market, it will be the new standard in architecture for other people to be like, ‘Shit, now we have to figure out these mechanisms.’ So it’s a big deal for us. We’re also coming out with a new team internally, there’s been a lot of changes to kind of revamp and fortify the business. And, you know, we’re going out against big companies like Brunswick – our biggest competitor got bought by a massive corporation, Mercury Marine Brunswick. They kind of pat you on the shoulder, like, ‘Good job, son, we’ll take it from here.’ And I’m like, ‘Fuck off. We’ll take it from here. You don’t know (the work we put in), get out of here.’ I’m excited. I’ve got bit of an ego, like everybody, right? All these guys are going to run you over. I’m like, no, they’re not. They don’t know surfing. I’ll show you what the future of the sport is. So I’m excited to put it out there. I’m competitive in that sense. I want to compete with all these guys and I’m excited to roll some heads out there. And really, what we’re doing with the LiftX, I think when we got it in the ocean for the first time, it was the same emotion that I had when I took the first e-foil out, just something so different. And it really truly feels like a whole new category of the sport. It’s just opening my eyes to what’s possible. I’m really excited to get it launched and have people start to understand it.
