Interview with Thomas Richter: I paddle in Berlin!

You joined SUP in the early days and gave up your old business. Did you sense great wealth then?

Nope! I started my apprenticeship in 1990 when the Wall came down and my teacher said: "Bad news guys, you'll have to study for a year and a half longer and none of you will be taken on." I was a bit worried about how life would go if I didn't have a job and thought I'd have to come up with something of my own. Back then, it wasn't about getting rich, it was about surviving. Of course, I always tried to be successful at what I do. That's important for a businessman. I've always managed to run a company in such a way that you have fair conditions for your employees and can feed your family - and then at some point I also managed to turn my passion for water sports into a career and can now live it out. That is the greatest value for me. We all need money to live, but I've never been interested in wealth. But time would be nice.

How did you manage the transition?

I first noticed SUP in 2006 - with Laird Hamilton in a kitesurfing magazine. I've been kitesurfing since 2002 and am a passionate sailor. And I'm actually a qualified designer, but I've spent over 20 years in a completely different industry: event business, catering, hotel business. On a large scale with events for up to 15,000 people. That was a big company. After I became a dad - I now have four children - I thought I had to get out of it. You're on the road every weekend, you're busy on every public holiday, you have a lot of responsibility for a lot of employees. Around 2010, I said "I want to do something again that I'm really passionate about" - something to do with water sports and construction, development.

Was the trained designer behind it?

Yes, that was always the incentive. I like to draw and when the first SUPs came out, I immediately made my own designs. I built a hardboard ten years ago - it weighed 20 kilos, but it was all about the shape. I have a friend who is the world market leader for certain car parts and I do a lot of tinkering with him. He has all kinds of engineers on hand and computer programmes. We also do flow simulations on the underwater hulls of our hardboards.

We put a lot of thought into it, which is why we were pretty much the first company to have an entire collection full of boards with a pointed nose back in 2014. They were practically tested by the engineer. They're just all professionals that I work with. A small team of less than 10 people, but all passionate about what they do.

The shape of your boards immediately caught the eye - the pointed bow lying flat in the water, the position of the widest point. What's behind it?

If the widest point is behind your body and the board is pointed forwards - and you get a wave from behind - then you become pretty unstable. We've been working with gliders and displacers for a long time - the widest point should always be at the height of your belly. That gives you stability. If you go onto the edge and want to steer the board - with the widest point behind your body, you can't control it at all. And the pointed shape was logical for us right from the start. I was already thinking in 2013 - what do people want to do with a paddle board in Germany in the future? People want to go water hiking in Germany, they are canoeists who want to switch, they want touring boards and they want to take a bit of luggage with them. With a round bow at the front, I always have displacement in that area, so I don't go fast. For me it was clear: touring boards have a tip. I've paddled a lot of tours myself - and if you have to carry the board for a distance, you need a lot of handles.

You started early with 13-foot boards.

We were the first. Steve Chismar wrote in the magazine in 2014 that it was the coolest thing he'd ever had under his feet.

Where did this idea come from? Were 12'6s more common?

I tried different lengths, there was already a Sportstourer 12 and I didn't want to make a 12'6'' because I didn't want it to be a racing board (editor's note: 12'6'' was a big racing class in 2013), but a pure touring board. And anyone up to 1.90 metres should be able to paddle it well. I also tested 14 feet, but in 2014 the dropstitch materials weren't that good yet, so you didn't have a bow wave, but a wave under your feet because the board buckled. In contrast, 13 feet was bombproof, the one foot made a big difference.

How is the rest of the development going? You don't glue together a prototype iSUP at home, do you?

It starts with a hand-drawn sketch. This is followed by a three-dimensional computer model and we animate a flow test at different speeds. Once the shape is finalised, you can produce a board like this for years. We have a current Sportstourer - with new materials and new accessories, of course - but the shape is based on the mould we made in 2017.

Of course, a prototype is always created and we only select the producer once we are absolutely sure. I have to go to China regularly for this. It's important to us that we get to know the manufacturers on site, the working conditions there and can convince ourselves that it's a decent factory. I really have seen hell in China. We also have a responsibility and we want to achieve a certain level of sustainability through durability. Longevity is a goal for us. This is only possible with proper factories and the best materials.

Is this your counter-initiative to the low-cost providers: quality versus price?

If you want to survive in the German specialised trade with premium products, you certainly won't be able to if you offer your products cheaper. Then a slow process starts in which retailers who also need a reasonable margin break away. And from the very beginning, our philosophy has been to work with retailers who can advise, display and sell our products. You can't just offer a discounter price.

We stand by our products in the price range. We can't sell them any other way, otherwise this whole network, which is also important for the sport, would collapse. The brands that work the way we do also finance a large proportion of the useful content that paddlers find on the internet. Buyers therefore also have to ask themselves "What do I want to support? The premium brands also finance the SUP pioneers who have been pushing and advancing the sport for ten years. Today, all low-cost discounters benefit from this. However, the premium sector only sells perhaps ten per cent. 90 per cent goes through the discounters. Everyone decides whether they don't care and are simply looking for a swimming platform or whether they want to learn to paddle properly. With a top sports product and tips from professionals. And yes, there are engineers you have to pay, team riders and new, innovative materials that may cost a little more.

Our aim is to ensure that we can continue to develop this sport. And there's no way discounters can do that. They don't have a development department for SUP.

Do you now have a permanent location in Berlin?

This is a showroom. We receive our dealers here, with whom we also organise product training sessions, and we can shoot short videos here using studio equipment. This is in the centre of Berlin on the island of Eiswerder. You can try out everything here at a test station right on the water. People also want to see where the boards come from. You can see us live here, we work here and there's a coffee here too.

"Made in Germany" is - and this is rather unusual - the collection of accessory fins that you have developed. How did this come about?

Of course, you could find someone in Asia who makes the fins more cheaply. But we asked ourselves why we had to save a euro or two. That way, I can easily travel to the production site and discuss details on the spot. And I would also like to support someone who has a plastic moulding company in Bavaria. He also works on a customised basis. If I need 40 fins for the DLRG, for example, or 200 - then he can also produce them in a special colour. In Asia, you have to order 2,000 or 20,000 to get your own colour or shape. That's a bit more expensive, but our fins cost around 25 euros in the shops - I think that's fine. You don't buy 10 fins in a lifetime. Maybe a grass fin or a touring fin. The grass fin is our most popular fin because you can use it all year round. Nothing gets stuck if you ride through the wilderness and the fin still has a large surface area.

Are the fins available for all systems?

Unfortunately, this is not available for the US box. We favoured the sliding system right from the start because it works simply, quickly and without tools. I didn't understand why people started using US boxes. But of course there are manufacturers who are very strongly represented on the market, who are also strong in windsurfing or surfing and wanted to have a standardised system. That may have been the reason. But nobody swaps fins between sports. That's purely theoretical.

You now also make SUP hardboards. Do you see a trend there?

It's actually always been around. However, 95 per cent of the sport had to evolve from inflatable boards. Because it's convenient and mobile for people. But of course there are also real enthusiasts, athletes and people who have the option of storing the board. They buy a hardboard once and now I'll just say: you can paddle with it for 30 years, or even 40. Our hardboards - that was the idea - should therefore be the most sustainable thing we can do at the moment. If you don't want to buy a new board every six years - and assuming you have the possibility to store it - then you buy something really cool once and can paddle with it forever. It's really something special when you ride a hardboard touring. You really take off with one of these. But our main business is still inflatable boards and high-quality paddles.

Where is the creative leeway in the development of paddles? You also wanted to use carbon tubes from Germany.

That was also in Bavaria and the production of the tubes would be no problem at all. But I also had a look at the production of the paddles in Asia, which is incredible work. When someone sees a carbon blade like that, with a fancy sticker from the respective company, no one can imagine how it is actually made. What it looks like beforehand and what you end up with. If a paddle like that costs three or four hundred euros, it's absolutely justified. There is no machine that makes it. It's all handmade. Two stainless steel moulds, a foam core and carbon fabric and then it takes ages with the flex and steel brush and polishing machine until the paddle looks like it does in the shop. What you can influence as a designer is the winding of the tube. Then the material: glass fibre, carbon fibre or even Texalium. I can influence the shape of the blade and produce my own mould for it. Standard components can be used for the closures. This year a new paddle is coming out with special carbon fibre from Japan with a further weight reduction and the same stiffness.

What is your assessment of the wing trend?

We've been developing wings and foil boards for two years now. And manufacturers sometimes tell me, "At some point, Thomas, we're going to throw you out." Why? "Because you're too German!" But what am I supposed to do? If they send me shit, I can't sell it to the customer. If the wings lose air after half a year, then I can't produce them, I'll wait another year. That's why we're still in test mode when it comes to wings. In addition, the good production facilities in Asia are very full at the moment. We are also simply not big enough to elbow our way out and say "Make room." Nobody is waiting for us at the moment. They're really full because the big premium manufacturers and others in the Wing see the issue. And that will also be the topic in 2021. But we're getting a collection of inflatable wingboards at the end of the year and wings too. For foils, we rely on specialised suppliers who make very good foils. Development is too expensive for us. What we can do are great boards and wings.

Does the touring board specialist also have a touring tip?

I'm being selfish now. I've been in Berlin since 2017. I come from Dessau and the Elbe and Mulde were my home routes. But now I love Berlin. You can theoretically paddle from here to the Baltic Sea and you'd be travelling through nature like in the Everglades. The only thing missing are the alligators. I've already travelled in the Amazon - but the land from Berlin via Mecklenburg to the Baltic Sea with its lakes is just as unique in the world. We have the largest nature reserve from the Baltic Sea to the Thuringian Forest - it says so in the Unity Treaty - paddling there is a dream. We have a perfect infrastructure, we have clean waters, I can drink from the Havel here, we have the highest environmental standards. That is our advantage. We can be part of this fantastic nature and I can recommend paddling here to everyone. We don't even have to go to the Amazons.