Reno company takes small bite out of surf-wax market

Dan Arabright, co-owner of Sharkbaitsurfwax, hopes a new product for surfers and snowboarders will draw an acquisition bid for the small company headquartered in Reno.

Arabright and business partner Bruce Condon of Truckee began making surfboard and snowboard slings six months ago. The $10 sling slips around the nose and tail of a board so it can be carried over the shoulder.

Arabright, who sews the slings and runs the small business from his northwest Reno apartment, sold several slings via Ebay and Craigslist. Once ski resorts open he might try some grassroots marketing.

"I don't see anything else out there like it," Arabright says. "If worse comes to worst,

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I will take them to the ski hill and sell them in the parking lot."

Arabright, a retired City of Sparks treatment plant operator, and Condon started the company in 2003. The idea for the name "shark bait" came when Arabright was surfing in Southern California.

"If you paddle out to go surfing you are going back to the food chain," he says. "We wanted a logo that was amusing but symbolic." The logo features a man standing next to a surfboard with a huge bite taken out of it.

The partners' strategy: Create a well-known brand and sell it to a larger wax company, such as Zog's Sex Wax or Sticky Bumps. Along with the sling and surfboard wax, the company sells branded clothing, wax remover and other accessories.

"The longer we stay in business the more people know about us and it increases the odds of maybe catching the attention of a really large brander and have them buy us," Arabright says.

Surfboard wax is the company's top-selling item. Arabright spent months concocting more than 130 batches of wax blends. He tested the product on surfing road trips to Southern California, as well as by shipping wax to surfers in California, Texas and Hawaii and asking for reviews.

The duo branched into snowboard wax in 2004.

Sharkbaitsurfwax now outsources wax production through Wax Research of Carlsbad, Calif., but the two partners distribute products themselves. Surfboard wax sells from $1.25 to $1.50 a bar.

"With the amount of money and time that we have, we felt that you can either make surfboard wax or sell surfboard wax," Arabright says.

Domestic and international distributors also sell the wax. Arabright

says the small company sells more wax in Europe than it does domestically.

"We are just a tiny fraction of the surfboard wax market at this time," Arabright says. "I don't think we are ever going to take over the surfing wax industry. More than anything we want to establish a brand name and a logo and put that on various different products and get more name recognition."