Editor’s Note: This feature is brought to you by our partners at Arbor.
Looking back on over 25 years of Arbor, it’s honestly mind-blowing to realize that while the action sports industry has seen enormous change, especially with the growing environmental attitude and focus on sustainability, Arbor has largely remained the same. I guess they were just 25 years ahead of their time. We’ve seen the Brand grow from creating responsibly made snowboards to building longboards, skateboards, and even soft goods, all with environmental awareness at their core. The recent Arbor documentary, Crossing the Grain (above), documents the Brand’s journey and ever-evolving mission of sustainability over the past 25 years.
Arbor’s Shaper Series combines Arbor’s commitment to sustainability with surf trucks from Carver and radical shapes by Tyler Warren and Ryan Lovelace. Photo: Nate Shute.
After more than 20 years of skateboard manufacturing, Arbor decided to try something new. Don’t worry, they’re not falling too far from the core: Arbor announced it will be producing surfskates as well as traditional skateboards in an exciting new collaboration with Carver, one of the first companies to produce surfskates, with legendary surfboard shapers Ryan Lovelace and Tyler Warren.
Arbor has actually been working with Carver since the beginning. In the mid 1990s when Arbor first started producing skateboards, they were having difficulty finding high-quality trucks with a wide hanger, so they turned to Carver, also a small company at the time, that was casting its trucks locally and able to produce them to Arbor’s specifications. Recently, when Arbor decided to start producing the surfskates, they again turned to Carver to provide the trucks.
Arbor’s Ryan Lovelace Shaper Series Surfskate brings Lovelace’s flow-inspiring shapes from the water to the asphalt. Photo: Nathan Khalsa.
When it came to the board design, Arbor wanted to draw inspiration from some of the most iconic and innovative surfboard shapers in the business, and bring its board designs from the water to the asphalt. Ryan Lovelace was an obvious choice. Each of his boards is completely unique – custom shaped to the surfer, accompanied by Lovelace’s unique and beautiful resin work.
To wit, the Ryan Lovelace Shaper Series board pairs Arbor’s premium Palisander wood-topped deck with Lovelace’s abstract resin art on the underside of a 32-inch long, broad, rounded-pin shape that replicates the feel of one of Lovelace’s single-fin midlength designs. With the Carver C7 surfskate truck underneath, it’s ready for deep carves and smooth cutbacks, perfect for finding your flow when the waves are flat.
Tyler Warren’s Shaper Series surf skate draws inspiration from his fast and loose Bar of Soap Mini Simmons shape. Photo: Nate Shute.
On the other end of the spectrum is the Tyler Warren Shaper Series board, based off of Warren’s Bar of Soap surfboard. Warren is known for creating innovative designs for one thing: shredding. He’s been shaping since he was just 14, and his boards draw on his years of experience as a sponsored freesurfer and his signature (see aggressive) surfing style – a complement to Ryan Lovelace’s more flow-inspired creations.
The Bar of Soap Mini Simmons shape is described by Warren as “the fastest surfboard of all time…Fast and loose like a bar of soap on a wet tile floor,” and Arbor’s surfskate version lives up to the surfboard it’s based off. At 29-inches long, his surfskate is fast and loose with a tight turning radius, made for aggressive lines and powerful asphalt hacks.
Arbor has started off strong with Warren and Lovelace, but Nate Shute, product manager at Arbor, says the Shaper Series is just getting started. “We’re looking to continue the Shaper Series by adding additional shapers and bringing in more shapes from Tyler and Ryan in the next year or so,” said Nate. Who exactly those additional shapers are and what new designs we might see isn’t info that’s ready to be released just yet, but I for one am stoked to find out what the Arbor team has in store for surfskates in the near future.
For more info, or to get your hands on one of these rad surfskates, check out the Shaper Series at Arborcollective.com
