CARSON GREENGROVE
Surfboard Broker
Project Overview #4

Surfboard Broker

Fall 2018
Purpose

To find a way to pay for this custom surfboard that I found for $420 and learn how to format a business model.

Observation

I analyzed the California market and NJ surf market and found that there were a lot more people in California that surfed consistently. They knew what good boards were and how much they should cost. There were a lot of people in NJ that wanted to surf or seem like a surfer and were willing to spend more money on surfboards because they didn't know what they should cost.

CARSON GREENGROVE
Surfboard Broker
Project Overview #4

IDEA

If I could find somewhere to get many surfboards for a relatively cheap price, I could ship them to NJ and sell them to wealthy families at a local surf camp.

United Airlines and Alaskan Airlines waived the heavy fees on surfboards in and out of California, so it only cost $30 to ship multiple boards in a board bag.

I found a place in Carlsbad, CA that is a huge warehouse of used boards in great shape called Surfboard Broker. It was a very informal buying process and I negotiated a deal to get 4 boards for $1000, fins included.

If my board cost $420 then I would have to sell the other boards for about a $110 profit each to pay for my board in full.

To exploit an arbitrage on surfboards on the east and west coast in order to fund my own surfing and gain valuable customer discovery and negotiating skills.
CARSON GREENGROVE
Surfboard Broker
Project Overview #4

Development

Sold These

Surf board 2018 offering.xlsx

To Get This

CARSON GREENGROVE
Surfboard Broker
Project Overview #4

Conclusion

Takeaways‍

I want to thank my dad for helping me get my first meaningful entrepreneurial experience and backing my project. I ended up selling all of the boards, but there were some hiccups along the way.

I bought famous brand name surfboards hoping that the name would help me sell them. I misjudged my market and bought surfboards that were outside the skill level of my target market. If I were to do this over again, I would buy boards that are more conducive to beginner and intermediate levels so that I could really nail my naive target market.

CONTACT

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