Wakey Wakey. Time to step out of bed and prepare for a day in Hawaii. Since paradise comes at a price, I’ll usually get right to the computer and do emails, along with breakfast and some coffee, till about 8 AM.
At the office and the shaping room till about 11:30 (a game or two of fussball included). Maybe some bullshitting with different friends passing by, Levi, Bernd, Matt, the team and random customers. Then I’m in for a small kind of lunch.
At the beach either sailing or surfing, obviously testing new shapes.
Back in the shaping room if I didn’t finish everything in the morning.
At home. Shower. Dinner with friends or my girl. Later towards the night I might be designing some more on the computer. Final emails.
Lights out. Dreaming of travel. Clean barrels. Clean waves. Warm water. Doing it all over again.
Keith saw the light of day and grew up in Madagascar, far away from the Hawaiian Islands, so while that keeps him from adding a “Born & Raised” to his bumper, he sure does come pretty close to the definition of aloha lifestyle. If you read through his daily routine above you already know why.
What makes Keith so unique is the combination of talents and assets he has under his belt. He has progressed from a threat on the water to a dominating force in the shaping room. Of course, what we’re getting at is that he is among the most outstanding shapers of today, but let’s dig a little deeper and dissect just why that is.
A vital factor in being not just good but excellent in what you create is your ability and frequency of using or performing your creation yourself and develop a blind understanding for what effects your actions have. You can sit and simulate something all day long, but if you don’t find out whether it works in the real world or not, all that elaborated theory isn’t going to do your customers any good. Keith is an incredible athlete, dedicated to massive waterspray on the thickest and steepest part of the wave. He calls it research and development, and we’ll just leave it at that.
Keith lives and works on the North Shore of Maui. There is no substitute for when it comes to developing toys for waves. Some of the best and most consistent conditions on the planet can be found right here all year long. When it’s on, Keith is around.
It’s wonderful to shape boards all on your own in the backyard shed, but it’s when you can really plug into the resources of a dedicated factory and exchange thoughts and opinions with the likeminded, that you really step up to the next level. Our factory is literally housed in the same building unit as our headquarters. Everything is right at hand.
Having the backing of a brand and a company is another element that distinguishes Keith from so many other shapers. He’s still just cooking with water, yes, but that water doesn’t sit in the same pond all the time. It gets used, gets feedback and reviews around the world and creates a magnificent database of “who likes what”.
Unlike most shapers Keith is enveloped by both the Production and the Custom World. When only focussing on production boards, chances are high you will at some point stick with what works and stop to innovate, and when you’re only doing custom work it’s easy to overlook the common denominator that makes one thing work for many people, and how to give more people a smile on their face at the same time.
Having a shaping machine in house is just as priceless as it is mandatory in today’s world of making boards. How else would you manage to build a Jaws board from scratch in time after the swell got forecasted. After as in after. Many big names count on Keith to deliver. And doing so is what makes him happy.
As with everything, the longer you do it the better you get at it. What you focus on expands. Keith has been shaping since the early Nineties and been with Quatro from the very start, nay he has been the start of Quatro. We’ll let you do the math.
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