Sometimes the smartest move isn’t to invent something new. It’s to recognize what’s working, understand exactly why, and build your own version of it better suited to your riders.
That’s the Bandwagon.
For a few seasons, the wider-tailed, more rockered-out longboard had been creeping into contests everywhere — boards built to sit deeper in the pocket, to hold a critical line through a tighter, faster wave. Ian watched it happen from the shaping bay the way he watches everything: quietly, for a long time, before he ever picks up a planer. He wasn’t trying to chase the trend for its own sake. He wanted to know why it was working.
The answer was simple. Wave conditions in the Philippines — fast, hollow, demanding — were asking for something the CA Gold, brilliant as it is, wasn’t built to give. So Ian went back to the rocker curve and the tail outline and built a board specifically for riders who needed to commit to the pocket and stay there.
The Bandwagon was the result: a bit of edge in the back, an aggressive rocker through the nose-to-tail line, and a wide tail that lets it pivot hard and hold a critical noseride without losing the wave underneath it. It’s a board that rewards riders who like to be in the most demanding part of the wave, not the safest part of it.
It didn’t take long for our PH team to notice. One by one, riders who’d been competing on the CA Gold started switching over — Roldan Pacañor, Perry Ventura, and Rico Dumaguin among them — drawn by how the Bandwagon handled the fast reef breaks that define so much of Philippine competition surfing. Today it’s the board most often pulled out of a board bag on contest day among our PH riders, the one that’s quietly become the default choice for athletes who need a board that can stay locked into critical, fast-breaking sections.
It’s not the board for every wave. It’s the board for the wave that demands you commit.
Best suited for: fast reef breaks, critical sections, riders who want to hold deep in the pocket
Known for: aggressive rocker, wide tail, critical noseriding performance