Behind the brand
with FatStick’s Reuben May
Interview: SUPM
Pics: FatStick, Steve Clarke, Caroline Rigby, Fi Plavenieks
For this issue’s behind the brand feature we catch up with FatStick’s head
honch Reuben May. Bournemouth based, but very much with a south
coast UK wide feel, FS have gone from small SUP company to branching
out into Europe for 2018. Read on for all the goss.
I didn’t sit down staring at a developing market and then make a huge business plan
leaping into the industry to make money. Instead I wanted a paddle board for my
wife and I but couldn’t afford one! Back in 2012 there wasn’t really an affordable SUP
focused brand out there, so I decided to go directly to a factory and got the boards
made for me. I had to buy ten boards to make it worthwhile due to the import costs so
thought I would keep two and sell the rest.
It tur ned out the boards attracted a lot of attention and were snapped up. People
loved them! I was at university at the time studying to become an Occupational
Therapist, so I needed an extra income as I also had a child on the way. I decided to
buy a few more and see if they would sell – they did! I repeated this pattern as the
brand grew and decided to name the company FatStick. The name FatStick derived
from my surfing days as surfers would, at times, refer to their boards as ‘sticks’.
I totally thought that it looked like a sweet idea and my brain was straight away
picking out the benefits a SUP would have over a prone surfboard (which back then
was all I was used to). I first saw a SUP back in 2006.I was away on a surf trip in
France, prone surfing an outer reef in a small fishing village on the south west coast. It
was a very long paddle out on my shortboard and I was tired from the previous night’s
red wine and camping – suddenly a big French bear of a man with a bushy beard
paddled past me standing on what looked to be a very big longboard with a paddle in
his hand.
What was even better was the fact he had his shortboard perched on the nose of his
paddleboard! He then proceeded to tie his paddleboard to a buoy out back and start
surfing the reef on his shortboard. After a while he switched boards and after tying up
his shortboard to the buoy he then started surfing his paddleboard on the reef
catching every big fat set wave that came through and cruising a few hundred meters
onto the inside.
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