Fresh Boards from French Legend Bruno Troadec!

If you’ve been in the shop lately, you’ve probably heard us raving about the OG French shaper Bruno. For those unaware of the history, Bruno Troadec is a legend in the surf game!

Bruno began his shaping journey in the 70s on the coast of Brittany, France. In love with surfing and obsessed with board design, Bruno opened up his own workshop to learn the craft and pump out boards. In a place where surfing had yet to break out, Bruno was really the only shaper around at the time. He eventually opened up the first surf shop in Brittany, pioneering the area’s surf scene and opening the door for other endeavors.

In the 90s, Bruno began traversing the globe on the hunt for new waves and workshops, shaping boards and opening up shops in top surf destinations like South Africa, Hawaii, and California. Throughout this time he refined his craft, working alongside some of the world’s most renowned shapers, like Dick Brewer and Scott Anderson.

Bruno’s decades of shaping experience in the heart of the surf world have given him an insanely deep and intuitive understanding of board design. He is a firm believer in hand shaping, and can instantly tell you how a board will perform by closing his eyes and feeling the rails.

Luckily for us, the Frenchman recently settled in Santa Monica, and in the past few years he’s been routinely visiting the shop, sometimes to bring us his shapes, sometimes to just hang and talk boards.

In the last few weeks, Bruno’s brought a bunch of sick boards! Mostly midlengths and fishes, these boards are made with the local surf in mind. Bruno has many names that he shapes under (Breed, Plastic Machine, Bruno Surfboards), but they’re all his own hand shapes. Check out the recent batch below!