Legendary South African shaper Spider Murphy together with Safarisurfboards.com in North Beach Durban, have signed up with the Surfboard Tracker system (SBT) to offer this state-of-the-art technology on their custom performance boards for world-wide delivery.

“Safari-Tracks” will be a key component for registering new custom Spider boards on the new Safarisurfboards.com website to be launched in May this year.

Safarisurfboards.com is not only the largest production facility for hand-crafted surfboards on the African continent, but also the exclusive licensee for Spider Surfboards; distributing boards across Africa and the world directly and through selected retailers.

Safari Surfboards has been a leader in surfboard innovation and quality since 1963. Spider Murphy started shaping for Safari in 1972 and his name has become synonymous with the success and growth of the Safari brand. A legend in his own right, if there was a world championship for surfboard shapers Spider Murphy would be a multiple title holder. In his 45 years of shaping he has personally shaped around 70,000 boards for thousands of surfers, including 20 World Champions. He is still setting the benchmark in the shaping industry today.

Lonnie Tiegs, Spider‘s partner at Safari said that “

We are reengineering our business to differentiate ourselves in a world of mass-produced surfboards, and the implementation of SBT is one facet of this strategy. It is easy to install, easy to use, and will provide us with full traceability of our custom orders through the factory and out the door to our customers, wherever they may be. We later plan on implementing the system across all our production for the South African and global market where we have key retailers who we work with closely.”

“What makes SBT so crucial to the direction we are going with Safari” Lonnie added, “is with the system our custom boards can be registered with a unique identity via our website, with an optional extra being the ability to insure them against theft. We obviously already know who these customers are, however when we later roll the system out across all the stock boards coming out of the factory for the global market, the system will allow us to gain and maintain contact with our end-customer who otherwise would have remained anonymous to us.”

Fellow South African Shaper Gunther Rhon who has major world success with his shapes based in Ballina, NSW; Australia has been using SBT for some time for his own brand of shapes and licenses including Local Motion Australia and Rip Curl models.

Gunther recently finalised a license deal with Ben Skinner and Jason Gray, of Skindog Surfboards in Newquay, Cornwall, where SBT plays an integral part to help manage the relationship.

SBT will help Gunther keep control of everything that is produced and registered in the UK, Channel Island and France via his SBT online account in Australia also allowing Gunther to form links with the surfers who ride his boards where ever they may be.

Shapers join SBT for a variety of reasons but once its up and running SBT becomes a simple routine operation to implement and will quickly become recognised and expected.

SBT - Surfboard Tracker is continuing its global push to support all shapers and surfers and having Spider, Safari and Gunther on board is a real privilege.

Find out more on Safari Surfboards

Find out more on Gunther Rohn