Wave Pool Mag

Blake Hess, a surf park manager, shares his experiences running and managing surf parks. He talks about the challenges and triumphs of the early days of inland surf parks in America. The podcast also mentions Lewis Hamilton learning to surf in a wave pool and the positive impact of staff sessions. Hess discusses Beach Street Development's role in creating man-made surf resorts and highlights their projects in Houston and Palm Desert. The revenue drivers for wave pool projects, including the main wave, secondary wave, and food, are also discussed.

Dr. Jess Ponting joins us to touch on several projects and points including Stoke Certification, Surf Park Summit, the new Consumer Trends Report and more.But the heart of the convo comes during his big-picture view of surfing. “People aren't used to thinking about a surf park as a legitimate recreation facility in a community," he says. "And there's, you know, a certain cultural cringe about the frivolity of surfing and how could we possibly allocate resources to something as frivolous as surfing? And the answer is because surfing is really good for people and it can be a real economic driver for communities and it doesn't have to be a drain on environmental resources.”

Skip Taylor is the guy we call when we’re stumped as he is one of the few veterans working the nascent wave pool landscape. This industry being what it is, he’s up to his elbows in NDAs so getting him to spill is basically impossible. That said, Zooms with Mr. Taylor are like a perpetual cocktail hour where the conversation is easy, funny and punctuated with sharp insights. We always emerge with more knowledge and insight. In this episode Skip spills the beans on a few off-radar topics, dives into some gory specifics and delivers on his latest project, The Lineup at Wai Kai.

Brad Gerlach held down a very successful pro career during the ASP’s 3-to-the-beach era, finishing ranked at #2 in 1991. He then went on to pursue big wave riding, winning an XXL award in 2005. At some point, Brad merged martial arts and surfing fundamentals in a new training regimen called Wave Ki. In a nutshell, it’s practicing movements on land over and over again until those motions become engrained in your memory. Then, when you surf, you tap into this databank of movements without really thinking about it. We wanted to learn more about how this dry-land training can help surfers improve their wave pool game.

In this episode we speak with Julie Kline of EpicSurf whose goal is to bring the benefits of sliding along a wave to everyone. The deepwater standing wave revolution will allow more waves in more places than ever before, bringing surfing to people who ordinarily might not have the chance to become surfers.

In Rip Curl’s Search campaign, we are teased with images of empty lineups from far-off, exotic locations. So how does a company that built its core messaging on the nearly unattainable aspect of surfing, align itself with surfing in wave pools? In this episode, we speak with Angus Forrest, marketing manager for Rip Curl Australia and New Zealand, and discover how it’s really not that much of a stretch. During the discussion, we learn why Rip Curl identified surf parks as the next growth step for the company. We also get a sneak peek at how their tech gear will adapt and evolve in wavepools worldwide.

Brandon Lowery, interim CEO of USA Surfing, discusses how wave pools can benefit the American surfing team. He shares his collaboration with wave pool legend Greg Webber, explores the benefits of surf pools in the industry, and discusses their global growth and future potential.

While we’ve been watching the surf industry shrink since 2008 – it’s never quite come back to where it was – we’ve also been watching the wave pool space accelerate with nothing but limitless possibilities. In this episode we learn how Billabong and other surf brands are courting the wave pool space. Evan Slater, VP of Marketing at Billabong, shares his insight into the complexity of branding in the surf park space and why “there’s more to it than just getting as many people as possible to stand-up on surfboards.”

Quick Update with Nick Hounsfield of The Wave. We’ve had Nick on the show before and The Wave’s history is well documented. For this episode of the podcast we branched out to explore community and how The Wave is helping diversify the lineup.“We’re starting to see people of very different backgrounds come here, rather than feeling like it’s constantly a middle class white playground which would make me feel like I failed. So I want to make sure that diversity is embedded from the start.”

Luke Altschwager is the Managing Director at Parkwood Village on the Gold Coast of Australia. He’s a former pro golfer currently merging resort know-how with surf park potential via the Club at Parkwood. Well-spoken and sharp-witted, Luke walks us through the similarities and the gaps between surf and golf as we explore how future wave pool developments can learn from this established leisure blueprint.