Try before you buy

One of the initiatives that Rhys Smith and his crew from Sanbah have had a lot of success with is their annual demo day, a great way to put surfboards under customer’s feet and generate hardware sales. The demo days have been well attended and the 2016 edition is on Newcastle’s South Bar Beach and Bar Beach skate bowl on October 15.

The day runs for 8am to 2pm and people can demo surfboards, fins, hand boards and skateboards. There will be 25 leading brands participating and it is a great opportunity for Newcastle surfers to check out what is happening in surfboards heading into the 2016/17 summer.

Each surfboard brand will have 15 boards or more and going on previous years pretty well every type of surfboard will be available for people to try. There is also live music and food stalls and it is always a fun day.

The after party is on straight after the event at Bar Beach Bowling club (10 metres away) right on the beach and according to Jesse Adams, “There will be beers and food and humans and prizes to be won.”

Customers receive a “goody bag” when checking in with prom items and stickers from the brands, flyers and info about the boards and vouchers for discounted boards at Sanbah.

There is also a raffle with a brand new board as the prize.

“This is a raffle with a difference,” said Jesse. “One raffle ticket will be given to each customer on the day and the winner will be pulled out of a hat at the after party at 4pm. The winner will then get to custom order his or her favourite model from their favourite brand of the day – for free.”

Participating brands:

Channel Islands

Stacey

Hayden Shapes

Firewire

Slater designs

Chilli

JS

Lost

Pyzel

ACSOD

DHD

Simon Anderson

FCS

Futures

Kinetik Racing co

Creatures of Leisure

Ocean & Earth

Catch Surf

Hurley

Rip Curl

Billabong

Dakine

Salty Shadows

ECTO hand planes

YEW hand boards