[HN Gopher] Clark Foam's demise, 10 years later (2015)
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Clark Foam's demise, 10 years later (2015)
Author : nl
Score : 73 points
Date : 2023-02-09 08:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.surfer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.surfer.com)
| JTbane wrote:
| A lot of libertarian-types might say "IT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S
| FAULT", but seems like this guy had a ton of potentially
| hazardous chemicals lying around to make foam. Those regulations
| exist for a reason, resins are very nasty.
| JohnFen wrote:
| What a fantastic example of how costly monopolies actually are.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| This article is (and when published, was) a highly revisionist
| take on Clark's impact on the surfing industry, and on the
| portion of surfboards made and sold by individual shapers.
|
| Board shops in SoCal were already selling mass-produced
| surfboards in 2005 using cheap mass-produced (non-Clark) foam
| blanks. I learned to surf on one of those boards.
|
| Clark's customers (mom-and-pop board shops) asked him to make
| improvements to his blanks and his process so they could compete
| with the mass-produced boards and he refused. He started losing
| business to cheaper, better competitors and decided to just break
| all his toys and go off into the woods instead of changing how he
| did things.
|
| This caused a relatively small disruption to the supply of
| surfboards, because cheap mass-produced boards were already
| available in many stores and high-end boards never used his foam
| to begin with. This really just affected the middle-tier mom-and-
| pop shops that had based their supply chain around his foams.
| Luckily for them, the market for boards is highly seasonal (even
| in SoCal), so they were able to find replacement blanks by the
| time the 2006 surf season began.
| serf wrote:
| foam companies have an incredibly shady history in California --
| my dad was the customer of one in the 80s, the owner had hired an
| incompetent forklift worker and a huge chemical spill proceeded.
|
| I remember my dad getting a phone call in the middle of the night
| from the owner 20+ years ago : " X, you've always been a great
| customer of mine, if you want or need anything I have at the shop
| then you're free to come get it _tonight_. "
|
| We got in the car and got sheet after sheet of urethane foams, we
| were using it for aerospace and bicycle stuff at the time, as
| well as some small hand tools and miscellaneous stuff that he
| offered us.
|
| The facility was chained and barred that next morning
|
| A week later the entire facility burned down
|
| A month later people from the EPA started contacting the owners'
| business partners and larger contracts; turns out that after the
| fire there was some extensive soil testing, and the owner and
| anyone involved was nowhere to be found to be asked to pay for
| the extensive environment rehabilitation to deal with (among
| other things, i'm sure) the huge chemical spill.
|
| We never heard from the owner again. I don't know whether or not
| the fire was an accident , but even as a kid I just presumed it
| was a failed fraudulent cover-up attempt or insurance grab; but I
| guess we'll never properly know.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if Clark Foams shut down
| as a preventative measure to avoid a huge EPA hassle for the
| owner; making foam is a nasty business, and it's expensive to do
| it by-the-book.
| beamgirl wrote:
| The previous owners of my house are, from what I hear around
| town, in hiding from the EPA for kinda similar reasons. All
| kinds of interesting mail comes for them, only to be returned
| to sender.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| To anyone from Australia reading this headline, no relationship
| to Clark's Rubber.
| klodolph wrote:
| There's a weird repetition in the article.
|
| > This was a strangely ill-conceived mic drop. A gigantic,
| misdirected middle finger to the surf world who'd done nothing
| but happily line up to purchase Clark Foam's product.
|
| This appears in the article twice.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I noticed that too. Since the article is from 7 years ago, I
| suspected that the site's CSS has changed and that the second
| one, since it was all by itself, used to be a pull quote (an
| important quotation that is emphasized with large stylized text
| as a graphic design element and to draw in readers who are
| scrolling the page without reading).
|
| I looked at the page source, and yes, that second instance has
| a CSS style applied to it called "feature-quote". I guess that
| style is no longer in their stylesheet, so now it just looks
| like a mistaken repetition rather than a pull quote.
| projektfu wrote:
| I don't like pull-quotes in web articles. Their purpose is to
| get you to stop flipping pages in a magazine, where they
| serve a real purpose. On a web page they just give you a
| spoiler.
| mulmen wrote:
| Hah, thanks for digging in. I hadn't considered a CSS bug and
| figured it was just lazy editing. Bits do rot.
| mlyle wrote:
| Easy to do when editing. You write a couple impactful sentences
| and consider putting them somewhere else, but accidentally
| duplicate.
| mulmen wrote:
| > It's telling that Clark used a fax to announce his closure, in
| the year 2005, considering that email had supplanted the fax long
| before then. The closure of Clark dragged the American surfboard
| industry from the mid-20th century to the late 20th century, and
| set the stage for the leaps forward we've made to the 21st.
|
| Tangent but the first commercial tax service opened in 1865, 11
| years before the telephone was invented. Lindy's law suggests the
| fax will outlast email, and surfboards.
| zardo wrote:
| Afaik the surfboard was invented in pre-european contact
| Hawaii, sometime between ~1100-1700.
| squokko wrote:
| Love reading about these random things.
| kurthr wrote:
| Ummm (2015)?
|
| And its about something 10 years before that. Original title:
| "Clark Foam's Demise, 10 Years Later"
|
| It's kinda interesting, but it was 17 going on 18 years ago.
| dang wrote:
| We've added the year and reverted the title. Thanks!
|
| (submitted title was "The unexpected shutdown of Clark Foams")
| nathanielherman wrote:
| I was a kid who started shaping surfboards as a hobby shortly
| before this happened. The hectic-ness was real -- it was almost
| impossible to find a foam blank afterwards, they were more
| expensive, and they felt noticeably lower quality. I thought my
| hobby was going to see a quick end. Glad it's turned around over
| the years for the better!
| jweir wrote:
| Clark Foam was a feature of my childhood - we would drive by it
| on the way to beach - and my dad would say with some pride that
| it is where most of the surfboard foam came from.
|
| The factory was on Crown Valley at Forbes. The site may have
| become a preschool - but it is all gone now and a giant condo
| complex is there.
|
| https://www.ocregister.com/2012/09/27/preschool-approved-for...
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@33.5578181,-117.6767446,3a,75y,...
| paradygm wrote:
| You and I may have crossed paths a few times (grew up around
| there in the mid 80s-90s)--Salt Creek beach was our go-to. I
| had no idea what Clark Foam did until I was much older (I
| wasn't that into surfing), but the 'Clark Foam' name on the
| brick wall on the corner is one of those indelible childhood
| memories.
| keizo wrote:
| Surprised to see this here! But awesome. I'm in a parallel, but
| much smaller industry of canoe building. I've made a few boards
| for fun and I'm honestly so impressed with anyone that makes a
| living building boards. It's a skilled craft, super dependent on
| builder skill, and yet requires decent volume to make a business
| out of it. Hard dirty work. Some is automated, but not to the
| extent possible. I have probably the most advanced private
| composites shop in Hawaii, sometimes think about making boards,
| as there may be room to on shore some production. And who
| wouldn't want to make surfboards. But also can't imagine not
| loosing money and canoe building already does that well.
| m-ee wrote:
| An oddity of the market that surprised me when I got into it is
| the relatively low price of a hand shaped board. They're
| described in the article as high end, and they can be, but odds
| are a local shaper can make you something custom for around the
| same price or less than mass manufactured boards like FireWire,
| Lost etc. Only issue is you'll have to wait for it to be made.
| keizo wrote:
| Yeah exactly, I don't know how people do it. Other than doing
| it has a hobby or 2nd job, very hard to make a business out
| of it.
| elbigbad wrote:
| This was a strangely ill-conceived mic drop.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| You can say that again.
| orf wrote:
| https://bendmagazine.com/foam-on-the-range/
|
| Looks like Clark is doing ok!
| mlyle wrote:
| Reading the article, I thought Clark's actions were completely
| unjustified, etc.
|
| But it really seems he did quit because of a protracted dispute
| with local fire and air quality district personnel that was
| escalated to the EPA. The threat of massive fines was looming
| bigger and bigger, and the letter he writes just exudes
| desperation that he didn't feel he could reach compliance.
| JohnFen wrote:
| As the article says, nobody really took issue with him
| quitting. They took issue with him pulling a scorched-earth
| approach on his way out.
| mlyle wrote:
| His letter explains that he wasn't selling tooling because
| he feared downstream liability.
| jessaustin wrote:
| The shapers who bought the blanks and their customers in
| turn share his responsibility for whatever environmental
| damage his manufacturing caused. Any inconvenience they
| suffered was deserved. Polluters love to run this "won't
| somebody think of the customers?!" bullshit to defend the
| indefensible.
| retcond wrote:
| I'm much more in in why nobody is apparently interested in
| the history of anti competitive business practices
| including product dumping and downstream supply chain
| hostage taking, that this article almost implies have been
| accepted eccentricities of Clark for reasons unspecified
| but implied to have something of a cult worship element
| involved.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| This headline needs (2015) added to it.
| Nzen wrote:
| and use the original headline (assuming no A/B testing) "Clark
| Foam's Demise, 10 Years Later"
| mlsu wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with surfboard construction:
|
| A surfboard is made from a foam core, with a stiff polyurethane
| coated fiberglass wrapped around the foam. This is what makes
| surfboards lightweight but fairly strong. To make a surfboard,
| you first shape the foam by cutting and sanding it into the
| desired shape (shaping). Then you lay several layers of
| fiberglass cloth over the shaped foam and pour the resin over the
| cloth (glassing).
|
| It's something of a craft -- the quality of shapers and glassers
| varies a lot. And there is no scientific "best" shape for a
| board, so it's completely up to the shaper to make a board that
| works. Nowadays many boards are CNC shaped, then finished off by
| hand, rather than being entirely hand-shaped.
|
| Clark Foam manufactured the foam core, a.k.a. the "blank," which
| is a pre-cut piece of stiff foam that is shaped down into the
| final board.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Do they still have wooden "stringers" and whatnot in them? It's
| been a while since I looked at one.
| tjknoth wrote:
| yeah usually, there are some stringerless constructions but
| they aren't super popular
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(page generated 2023-02-10 23:00 UTC)