Portrait: Tabou shaper Fabien Vollenweider - the last of his kind?

Text: Vincent Chrétien

Summer. Holidays. The parents are undecided: Windsurfer or Optimist sailing boat? Fabien: Windsurfer! "I was thirteen or fourteen, and by the third day I was totally hooked," Fabien remembers. And after a one-week course, he was able to work as an assistant in the school's hire shop until the end of the summer.

We are in the early 1980s, the boom phase of windsurfing, when - alongside the forty or so shapers working in France - every windsurfer dreamed of just one thing: their own customised board. Fabien was no exception: "Two years after my first course, I bought a kit and built my first customised board as best I could. At home in Antibes, there were two workshops at the time: Radical and Adrénaline. Just two years later, I joined the Adrénaline team as a part-time repairer. As they saw that I wasn't bad, they first let me sand the boards, then I switched to laminating and continued to develop."

The great Jimmy Lewis lets Fabien Vollenweider look over his shoulder

At 23, he took the big leap: Hawaii. He arrived in Maui in the evening and because he didn't know anyone he could stay with, he rented a car and slept in it. At dawn, he made his way to Paia and tiptoed into "La vie en rose" - a meeting place at the time, a nest where all the French gathered. Fabien followed her advice and went to the weekly market where all the pros sold their equipment. It was a real windsurfing flea market. There he met Bernard Biancotto - one of the respected windsurf photographers that everyone knew and whom he had already met during a test with an Adrénaline board in Tarifa. "He recognised me and offered me a lift to Jimmy Lewis' workshop (one of the legendary shapers of the time). Bernard introduced me and Jimmy said: "Ah, you're shaping?" And then he just blurted out: "Listen, I'll leave you the keys to the workshop. Just come whenever you want."

It was my first day on Maui, and I had the keys to Jimmy Lewis' workshop in my pocket!"

Fabien remembers: "It was my first day in Hawaii and I had the keys to Jimmy Lewis' workshop in my pocket. I was totally blown away and became a permanent guest there for almost a year. In the meantime, I had asked Jimmy if he would mind if I watched him shaping. His answer was very clear: 'No problem, but you sit in a corner and don't say a word. I went there two or three times a week, often very early in the morning, taking the opportunity to look around the workshop, watching the guys sanding, laminating and doing techniques I was unfamiliar with. I was an absolute fan."

Shaper of the wave elite

Along the way, Fabien made his first boards for friends, in particular for Renaud Simhon, a good wave surfer, who testifies: "We quickly became friends and I personally wasn't a world-class surfer, but I wasn't a loser either. As we travelled a lot together, Fabien told me about his projects and I visited him when he was shaping with Jimmy. I really wanted us to work together because Fabien already had that certain something back then that still lasts today: If Fabien has something on his mind, he does it, he gives it his all. Then one day he told me that he was going back to France. I insisted that he build me my first board there - with the name Tabou."

So Fabien returned to Antibes and opened his first workshop in March 1990. Renaud immediately ordered three waveboards - at a friendly price, of course. In the meantime, Renaud began to take part in various World Cup events. Then everything happened at lightning speed: Renaud performed well and his boards with the Tabou logo attracted the attention of some professionals, in particular a certain Jessica Crisp, who ordered boards from him and became world wave champion the following year. Jessica Crisp was sponsored by Tiga at the time, but at that time it was normal for all World Cup elite prototypes to be developed by independent shapers. A better start was hardly possible. Fabien: "It was crazy, I had recently set up my workshop in a greenhouse where I had removed the tarpaulins and replaced them with sheet metal, and very quickly I saw the entire world elite turn up - Björn Schrader, Ralf Bachschuster and many others."

"The two Fabien" - ingenious collaboration with Fabien Pendle

Amongst others, a certain Fabien Pendle, a Fanatic team rider and one of the most talented slalom riders of his generation - and above all an incomparable fine-tuner - drops by. Pendle orders a board from Fabien and the adventure begins: the two quickly become mates, then friends and start working on slalom boards together - with success: Pendle comes second in the World Cup on Lake Garda and third on Sylt. The two quickly earned the nickname "Les deux Fabiens" (The two Fabiens).

Fabien Pendle: "We had a job that didn't feel like work. Renaud and I surfed to the podium in the World Cup, otherwise we hung out at rave parties, enjoyed the nightlife and everything that goes with it. Fabien was different, he worked a lot." So was it a one-sided collaboration? Fabien Vollenweider wants to be honest here: "It was Fabien Pendle who brought 90 per cent of the know-how for our first slalom boards, he knew exactly what he wanted and where he wanted to go."

Tabou? Tabou!

A brand name is important. Even crucial. But not too cheesy or pretentious, please. Sleeping on it helps. After the first coffee in the morning, the thought: Tabou? That's lame. Or is it? "My brother and all my friends spent hours trying to come up with a name for the brand. Tabou is Tahitian and refers to everything that belongs to privacy. As our boards were not yet so well known, we thought the name suited us well, it was short, original and a bit unusual. Hence the tiki as a logo," recalls Vollenweider.

Let's skip a few steps. A few World Cup stages. That's it, Fabien now belongs to the elite of the most respected shapers. After becoming a must-have for waveboards, his reputation, or rather the brand's reputation, exploded. Companion Renaud Simhon: "At one of the first World Cup events organised in the Almanarre wave, there were almost only Tabous on the water."

During this happy time, Fabien worked almost around the clock: "I had no ground under my feet. Sometimes I came into the workshop at seven in the morning and didn't leave until three in the morning. But I didn't ask myself any questions. I lived my passion to the full, the rest didn't matter. Eighty per cent of my production was destined for World Cup racers. So I packed my suitcases for every World Cup stage, which were pretty heavy and bulky (laughs)and delivered the prototypes to the professionals on site."

The Bic adventure

At the beginning of the 90s, production boards were selling better and better as they were more efficient and, above all, much cheaper than customised boards. Each of the major brands of the time - Tiga, Mistral, F2 and Fanatic - now had their own shaper. All except Bic. During this time, in 1992, Vollenweider received a somewhat surprising call from Bic, in the person of Thierry Verneuil. The aim: to guide the two Fabiens to Bic. It had been almost two years since Bic had an in-house shaper. The brand developed its own boards with engineers from its research and development department. They checked all the boards on the market, measured them, but it took them too long to get a board into production, sometimes it took two years.

Vollenweider accepted the Bic offer, but his partner Fabien Pendle made one condition: He didn't want to build any prototypes for Antoine Albeau so that he didn't benefit from all the work. "Perhaps," says Vollenweider, "he was also afraid of being beaten by Antoine in the slalom. (Laughs) I agreed in the name of our friendship, but I remember being told by Jean-Marie Albeau (Antoine's father) was properly scolded."

The contract with Bic stipulated that Fabien had to develop four series boards per year. This resulted in models such as the Vivace, the Saxo and the Techno - "Les deux Fabiens" developed several bestsellers for the Bic brand. However, the production of prototypes for the professionals was also labour-intensive. For Robert Teriitehau alone, the brand's figurehead at the time, there were no fewer than twenty per season.

Love story without a happy ending

Ten years of ups and downs followed, quite normal. Ten years in which Fabien learnt what it means to develop, manage and promote a brand worldwide. In the final years of their collaboration, as the market consolidated, Bic only commissioned him to develop a single board per season. The problem: Fabien was being paid as a freelance contractor at the time, he could no longer make ends meet financially and felt the wind was changing. "I had already planned to develop a real wave line and some freeride boards under the Tabou name that I thought would be suitable for the market. Svein Rasmussen had just launched Starboard, his own brand, as well as Roberto Ricci (RRD), who was an important source of inspiration for me."

Fabien started production in Slovakia in 1997, then from 1999 at Cobra in Thailand, on the initiative of Bic, which at the time ensured the worldwide distribution of the brand. Tabou? Only one or two wave models went into production under the logo, but things started to go well, especially thanks to young team riders like Thomas Traversa and Yannick Anton.

The future of Tabou was pushed during the surf test

After a very heated discussion in Vannes, Fabien travelled to South Africa to attend a test event organised by surf magazine. There he met Knut Rudig, the importer of Bic and Tiga in Germany at the time - with far-reaching consequences. "We had dinner together one evening in a restaurant," says Fabien, "I told him about it and we agreed to do something together. At that point, I hadn't even had a proper contract with Bic for four years. Actually, in my eyes, I was completely free to go. I think what offended Bic, shall we say, was that I left with Knut and his company Newsports, the distributor of their products in Germany at the time."

When I was eleven, I was standing in Fabien's shape workshop. He sold us a 45-litre waveboard for a ridiculously low price. It was the beginning of a friendship." (Thomas Traversa)

So it came to a legal dispute. David against Goliath. Bic demanded one million euros in damages. It dragged on, and eventually the two parties parted amicably, with neither owing the other anything. The Bic adventure officially and definitively ended in 2003.

Don't talk for long. Do it!

Since spring 1995, Fabien's workshop has been located in a large warehouse in Marseille, in Le Pharo, on the Vieux-Port. The two workshops are on the ground floor, while the upper floor is where he lives. Naturally, Thomas Traversa, now a teenager and an up-and-coming talent, was a regular guest there. From 2005, when the Tabou "machine" was running at full speed, a newcomer joined the team. Cédric Bordes, still a student at the time, remembers: "I first saw the Manta slalom boards with the famous grey decor and the big green and red star at a World Cup in Almanarre, and I fell in love with them straight away. The shape was really innovative and extreme for the time. But I didn't know Fabien Vollenweider at all, I didn't even know what he looked like.

I didn't even know Fabien, and he stuffed three prototypes straight into my car. That was a bit crazy." (Cedric Bordes)

A few months after the event, Fabien Pendle told me that Tabou was looking for someone to test boards. Vollenweider called me, I visited him in his workshop and he immediately stuffed three slalom boards into my car. I had no experience with testing other than my personal equipment for my set-up. He didn't give me too many instructions, in hindsight I think that was a bit crazy. I was a student and I remember driving to university with these three prototypes in the car. The years have passed so quickly since then, we've worked together for over 15 years and I feel like it was yesterday! I think our great strength was that nothing was written down or contractual, with fixed working hours, fixed deadlines and so on. There was work to be done and we did it until everything was perfect.

Fabien Vollenweider is one of the few shapers who owns his own brand

Fabien has never counted his hours, he is today the only shaper besides Keith Teboul to own a global brand, and that is no small thing, because it requires many sacrifices. I have always given my all: When the prototypes arrive, you have to be fully focused and present, because you never know how they will behave on the water, how many changes will be needed and whether another round of prototypes will be necessary. It's super interesting because you often jump from one idea to the next, but you always have to keep in mind who you're making the boards for: the normal everyday rider! There is also a production deadline and costs that have to be met.

The Rockets are almost more famous than the name Tabou." (Cedric Bordes)

The tests? The feedback? When I had tested a board, I would call him on the way back to tell him everything in detail while it was still fresh, and often he would analyse everything with a clear head and decide what we should and shouldn't adjust. Over time, I realised that he often thought at night, so I liked to give him a few ideas in the evening because I knew he would have solutions the next day. But not too many either, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to sleep! Which boards from our collaboration am I particularly proud of? I think the Rockets are almost more famous than the name Tabou, which means that the boards have often found favour. One regret? Maybe that we never had a top rider in the slalom team for budget reasons, because the boards were super powerful. We had very good riders, but never one who could win the slalom title."

But the title-less period ended in 2014 when Thomas Traversa won the World Championship title in the wave. A crowning achievement for Thomas, for the Tabou brand - and of course for Fabien Vollenweider, perhaps the last of his kind.