Crafted in Maine, paddled everywhere: Tidal Roots finds niche in wooden paddleboards
Photo / Peter Van Allen
Kyle Schaefer (left) and Kent Scovill founded Tidal Roots in Eliot a year ago. They handcraft wooden standup paddleboards for specific uses like fly fishing, yoga and flat-water paddling.
Standup paddleboarding is the fastest growing segment of water sports equipment, and an upstart business in Eliot has found a niche in the business.
Tidal Roots was founded in May 2014 after three years of what could loosely be defined as “research and development.”
“We were both doing a lot of fly fishing,” says Kyle Schaefer, who started Tidal Roots with Kent Scovill.
An old girlfriend had left behind a paddleboard and they started using it for fly fishing. That sparked the idea to build a board out of wood.
“We just tried it and loved it. It was fall — a good time for a project. Once we started building boards, we got deep into the research and really got into it,” says Schaefer.
Tidal Roots combines three fast-growing aspects of board sports: standup paddleboarding, handcrafted wooden construction and boards adapted to specific uses — in this case, fishing.
In their first year, they built just a dozen boards, but they are a premium product, selling for $3,000 apiece. One of the Tidal Roots boards is currently on display in the boat-and-bike store at L.L.Bean in Freeport. This year, the partners expect to triple their output. They are also developing an aluminum stand that can be adapted to a paddleboard to hold fishing rods and a Yeti cooler.
Schaefer, 30, grew up in Annapolis, Md., went to the University of New Hampshire and spent five years in Steamboat Springs, Colo., working as a fly fishing guide and ski shop manager. In addition to launching Tidal Roots, he handles marketing for a television show on fly fishing that is based out of West Virginia.
Scovill, 28, is a native of Gilmanton, N.H. At the University of New Hampshire, he majored in psychology and has an advanced degree in marriage and family therapy. He's also a third-generation woodworker and balances his work with Tidal Roots with a business building kitchens.
They did not know each other at UNH. Four years ago, Schaefer's sister, Holly, was friends with Scovill and connected the two after Schaefer returned from Colorado.
“She said, 'You gotta meet my brother when he comes back,'” Scovill says.
“I'd been chasing fish and fun out West. Holly was basically like, 'I want to keep him here, so let's find some friends who fish.' ” Schaefer says. “Kyle and I were fishing a ton and that basically led to the discussion of how we could build paddleboards.”
Three years ago, neither had any interest in the new paddleboard craze. In 2012, Schaefer was dating a woman who had an 11-foot standup paddleboard. They tried it out as a way to catch fish.
“You're up high, so you really get a good view of things,” Schaefer says.
They were also inspired by a growing movement among surfboard shapers to use wood instead of the more common foam and fiberglass.
It should be noted that Grain Surfboards, which has building handmade wooden surfboards for nearly a decade, is based just six miles from Tidal Roots, in York. While Schaefer and Scovill say they admire Grain's work, they don't know the Grain crew that well and split off in another direction by producing paddleboards rather than surfboards.
By Fall 2012, they thought it would be a “good winter project” to build a pair of paddleboards that could be used for fly fishing.
“Our first board was built with leftover wood from a sauna,” Scovill says.
“We kind of discovered Grain deep into the process,” said Schaefer. “Holy smokes, there's this wooden board builder right up the road.”
Rather than competing with Grain, “We wanted to be friends more than anything,” Schaefer says.
Over the winter of 2012-13, they labored over two paddleboard prototypes.
“That first board took forever to build. Hundreds of hours. Lot of beers,” Scovill says. “It was the best day ever stepping on those boards for the first time.”
Schaefer adds: “We started asking, 'Could we build a business out of this?'”
The launched the business in May 2014, and started on the boat show circuit, setting up exhibitor booths, including one at the Maine Boatbuilders Show this past March in Portland.
Tidal Roots is based in an old house on State Road in Eliot. A downstairs room serves as an office, staging area for prototypes and logos and also houses a small workbench where Schaefer ties flies for fishing. The basement serves as the workshop, with templates, bandsaws and an assortment of tools; it is immaculate, without a speck of sawdust.
“We want to keep it clean. That way when you come down in the morning, you're ready to go,” says Scovill.
A two-car garage has been converted into a workshop to mill wood. Scovill added a woodstove to keep it warm in the winter.
They've gotten faster at building the boards and expect to triple their output this year, to 36 boards.
But they also recognize the need for other, less labor-intensive products.
Like many aspects of consumer products, standup paddleboarding has fragmented into a number of directions.
There are now boards made for racing, surfing, touring, flat-water paddling, downwind paddling, yoga and fishing.
Tidal Roots now offers four stand-production boards, which include wider boards suitable for fishing, a roundish yoga board and two boards for flat-water paddling. The wooden boards are sheathed in fiberglass to give them additional strength, buoyancy and watertight protection.
“Our boards are not the lightest or fastest,” Schaefer says.
Aesthetically, like wooden boats, they are a sight to behold. Like wooden boats, they have a small, but dedicated, band of followers. They will never compete with the big manufacturers — paddleboard makers like Naish or Starboard, which offer some 40 boards.
“As opposed to Naish or Starboard, or even Surftech or Riviera, which have a wide variety of boards, Kyle and Kent are the niche within the niche. They're not the giant company with the vast line of boards — something for everyone. They have super-quality wooden boards. They're utilitarian, you can paddle them into an estuary. But they also appeal to the guy who has a wooden boat… You could almost put this on your mantelpiece,” says Clay Feeter, publisher of York-based Standup Journal, a glossy magazine that covers the standup paddleboard industry.
Standup paddleboarding is the fastest growing segment of watersports gear, according to the Stand Up Paddle Industry Association.
Feeter, a lifelong surfer who grew up in California, has watched the growth of standup paddling over the past eight years.
“Surfers tend to come from a narrow funnel. Standup paddlers are surfers, fishermen, bodybuilders, kayakers, river runners, from yoga,” Feeter says. “My dentist asked me about standup.”
At the same time, the interest in wooden materials and handcrafted boards has grown.
Paddleboarding's cousin, surfing, has seen a number of makers of wooden boards rise up in recent years. Many are inspired by the alaia and olo boards of the ancient Hawaiians, while others dug out paddleboard plans published in 1937 by Popular Mechanics. Others are crafting hollow boards in modern shapes. Grain may be the best known among the new board builders. In San Francisco, board builder Danny Hess is making boards from wood. The most recent issue of Surfer's Journal features a British board builder, James Otter.
As with wooden boats, the wooden paddleboard is a niche market.
And the partners at Tidal Roots recognize that and are developing other products. They created an aluminum stand that can attach to a board and hold fishing rods and a cooler made by Austin, Texas-based Yeti, which has a foothold in the fishing market. The rack would be aimed at fishing enthusiasts and could potentially sell for up to $300, though the production would be more efficient than building a board.
Tidal Roots also has a range of swag, including trucker's hats, brass belt buckles featuring the logo and apparel.
In the next year, Tidal Roots hopes to move into larger space and hire its first employees. It has a banking relationship, but also hopes to seek out economic development incentives. They've also started working with Grain Surfboards in an informal way. At Grain's York shop, where they host board building classes and have a shop, there's a Tidal Roots demo board that their customers can use.
“We have people who say, 'Your paddleboards are really beautiful, but I really want a surfboard.' So we send them to Grain,” Schaefer says. “Then at Grain, they'll say, 'If you want a paddleboard, go to Tidal Roots.'”
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