British windsurfing champion John Hibbard on making waves in the paddleboard industry

The Red Paddle Co CEO speaks to Andy Martin about swapping wind for paddles

Hibbard’s company is now 11 years old (Red Paddle Co)

It was one of those perfect days. John Hibbard, then in his late twenties, had sailed out to Rottnest Island, off Perth, Western Australia, and was windsurfing the best waves of his life in Stark Bay. The sun smiled down on him out of a clear blue sky and a 20-knot wind and 10ft swell propelled him across wave after immaculate wave. Finally satisfied and exhausted, knocking back an ice-cold Corona, he realised it could never get better than this. But the thought occurred to him: what am I going to do with the rest of my life? The answer to that question was Red Paddle Co, of which he is co-founder and CEO.

We had a plan, John Hibbard and I, to take out a couple of his stand-up paddleboards (or SUPs) and ride them along the River Dart in Devon, stop somewhere for lunch and paddle back. It would have been idyllic. The only problem was that it was pelting with rain all day, which put a bit of a dampener on the idea. But at least he had more time to show me around his dedicated new headquarters near Totnes on the south coast with a view out over Dartmoor.

Hibbard was British windsurfing champion in 2008. He was born in Basingstoke but brought up in Devon. He windsurfed around the world, from Maui to Tahiti, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, sponsored by Nissan and Fat Face, and getting photographed while doing it. He loved the technical challenge, mastering the equipment, no matter how gnarly the conditions. It sounds like the dream life. And it was, but there were a couple of downsides. One was that it was lonely: his only friends were also his rivals so he couldn’t hang out with them. The other was the sheer amount of kit. Hibbard recalls once checking in 50 bags at an airport (admittedly he was carrying stuff for a friend too).

After becoming British champion, and sustaining various injuries along the way, he was looking for something new. “I thought there must be more to life on the beach.” Then one day he was doing a photoshoot in Harlyn Bay and there was no wind and he said: “I’ve got this paddleboard thing in the back of the car.” A friend had told him about it but he’d never tried it before. He paddled out and caught a wave and rode it all the way to the beach. The shot made a double-page spread in the magazines. He had found the solution, not just for the lack of wind, but of what to do with his life.

He took the board out on a river and he realised two things: one, that it was easy for someone who had never been on a board before to pick it up – it didn’t need the kind of dedication required by surfing or windsurfing. And secondly that it opened up a totally different perspective on the world.

“I’d lived around that river for years, but I’d never been up it before,” he says. “I was seeing things I’d never seen before. So many trees, a kiln, an old pub. And standing up you have a better view than from a kayak.” He had been all around the world but all he ever saw was beaches and airports. With the paddleboard you didn’t need wind and you didn’t need waves. This was “the bicycle of the water” – the ideal leisure craft of the future. And it was sociable: you could go out with friends, you weren’t competing for wave of the day. It wasn’t extreme, but it was an experience.

Stand-up paddleboard originated in Hawaii. For hundred of years people had been standing on boards and using paddle power to punt them from island to island. Then Laird Hamilton, big-wave surfer extraordinaire, based in Maui, adopted and glamorised them in the early Noughties. Hollywood stars could be seen riding them on the west coast. But the reality is that they were huge, unwieldy, and vulnerable to dings.

Hibbard, fired up with enthusiasm, first of all tried his hand at selling them around the country. But it was, as he says wryly, “a slow burn”. Windsurfing shops had shrunk in size along with windsurfing boards and sails and they didn’t have the space for these bigger ones. By chance, Hibbard came across an inflatable board, made in South Korea for an American company, and he realised that this was the future.

But the future didn’t happen overnight. The Korean manufacturer made him a board but it wasn’t great. For one thing Hibbard was too out of breath after pumping it up to come out with a decent sales spiel. And for another the board itself was too spongy, more like an airbed or a lilo than a proper board. “It was a great idea but badly executed,” he says. Which is what inspired him to come up with his new mission statement: it has to be authentic. Without compromise. The board has to be a real board.

Hibbard asked an old friend of his, a surfer and animator, to design him a logo. His designer friend told him that he needed a name before he could have a logo. He realised that he’d done everything but he still didn’t have a name for the company. They were sitting on the beach in Woolacombe watching the sun go down and Hibbard looked into the sunset and said, “There it is: red – red sky at night.”

Red Paddle Co was born (with a cool logo) and is now 11 years old. “I wasn’t competing against other windsurfers,” Hibbard says, “I was competing against other companies – and I wanted to be winning.”

There were a lot of technical details to get right. Everything collapses down so that it’s portable and it all goes in a custom-designed bag (wheels or backpack). The pump is now double-barrelled and takes half the time with half the effort. And when the board is inflated there’s a patented stiffening system to make it as rigid as the old foam and fibre glass but even more robust with a double skin and dimpled surface. I inspected their boards and I can confirm – having paddleboarded in Hawaii – they look and feel like real boards. They don’t bend. (Check out YouTube, where they have a 22-ton JCB grinding over one with no ill effects.) Everything is designed and engineered by Red and produced in house, using a 3D printer for the smallest parts.

Hibbard windsurfing South Africa, 2006 (SE Photography)

Now they’re exporting thousands of boards to 60 countries around the world – selling them even in Hawaii, which feels like carrying coals to Newcastle. “Customers do the selling for us,” says Hibbard. And there is a blind paddleboarder called Dean Dunbar in Scotland riding a Red paddleboard. Mission accomplished.

John Hibbard had one stroke of genius. When he took people out on an SUP for the first time they fell in love with it but then they would say, pointing at the nose, “What’s that?” And he would say, “That’s the valve.” And they would go (with an air of deflation), “Oh, really?” So he simply moved the valve from the front of the board to the back. Now nobody even notices it’s inflatable. Until he shows them. And they go, “Wow, I don’t believe it!