INSIDE: DEAR ABBY, HOROSCOPE, PUZZLES & FEATURES
C1
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, JUNE 27, 2021
bendbulletin.com/business
SURF’S UP
Dave Chun, who owns Bend Surf,
surfs the standing wave on the
Deschutes River in Bend Thursday.
Dean Guernsey/Bulletin photos
Local outdoor sports icon lends expertise to Bend businesses
BY SUZANNE ROIG
The Bulletin
N
ecessity may be the
mother of inven-
tion, but it is also the
spark that leads to
collaboration and
eventually a business.
Bend resident and former business
owner Dave Chun was at the Bend
Whitewater Park by the Old Mill Dis-
trict and realized that he could build
a surfboard designed for the waves in
the Deschutes River. With collabora-
tion from standing wave surfers and
from big wave surfer Gerry Lopez,
Chun perfected his craft and now
sells his boards under the banner of
Bend Surf.
Lopez, a Bend resident, is often out
in the community, surfing or snow-
boarding. He also shares his board
know-how with James Nicol, owner
of SnoPlanks, a Bend snowboard and
skateboard manufacturing company.
Nicol sells Lopez-inspired skate-
boards that are based on designs cre-
ated by Lopez after the pair met while
at a Big Wave Challenge at Mt. Bach-
elor more than five years ago.
The craft snowboard and skate-
board maker said that business has
been good and part of the mission
is to give back to the community. In
years past, he’s donated proceeds for
various charities, and this summer he
is donating all the proceeds from the
sale of skateboards to the Conserva-
tion Alliance in Bend.
From beer making to the art and
craft of making snowboards and
surfboards, collaboration is at the
heart of what makes Bend a mecca
for entrepreneurship, bringing about
a broader range of available services
than what is usually found in a city
the size of Bend, said Ben Hemson,
city of Bend business advocate. It also
Dave Chun, owner of Bend Surf, shapes a surfboard in his shop
in Bend Thursday.
makes people become business own-
ers who are willing to take on the risk
and the angst of owning and operat-
ing a business.
“At their core, entrepreneurs are
passionate problem solvers,” said
Adam Krynicki, Oregon State Uni-
versity-Cascades Innovation Co-Lab
executive director. “They tinker, they
make and they solve. It’s what they
love.
“The business is just a vehicle that
allows them to work on their passion
and fund their livelihood.”
As a start up coach, Krynicki said
he tells aspiring entrepreneurs to find
the key to unlocking that passion.
In the Bend-Redmond area there
were five sporting goods manufac-
turers paying about $1.1 million in
wages in the fourth quarter of 2020,
according to the U.S. Bureau of La-
bor Statistics. Statewide there were 55
sporting goods manufacturers pay-
ing $12.4 million in wages during the
same period, according to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In the first six months of 2021,
there were more than 3,200 business
registrations filed, Hemson said. Less
than 10% of those registrations are
for new businesses, he said.
Surfboarding building in Bend
Chun and his wife, Meg Chun,
already have the knowledge of a
building a successful outdoor recre-
ational business in Bend. They are
the founders of Kialoa Paddles, the
maker of outrigger and stand-up
paddleboard paddles, which was
forged in their Hawaii backyard and
moved to Bend in 1992. At the end of
2018, the Chuns merged their busi-
ness with Werner Paddles.
The Chuns continued working
for the new company, overseeing the
transition, until January 2021 when
Bend Surf was born, Dave Chun said.
After years of standing in the lineup
at the standing wave, Chun decided
he would try his hand at shaping new
boards designed just for river waters.
He reached out to his friend, Lo-
pez, and together they crafted a surf-
board that allowed for the uniqueness
of the standing wave and freshwater.
“Dave Chun and I share many mu-
tual interests,” Lopez said in an email.
“We liked stand-up paddling when
that sport was just beginning and
worked together as it developed and
specialized into racing, SUP surfing
and recreational paddling.
“We became friends because we
were two local Hawaii boys loving the
Central Oregon lifestyle. The river
wave at the Bend Whitewater Park
became more common ground.”
Chun asked Lopez about opening
up a surfboard shop in the middle of
Oregon, far from the rip curls off the
coast, Lopez said.
“I said, well … you’re good at build-
ing things, you know how to make
surfboards and there’s a lot of surfers
in town who need boards for the river
and the coast. … It’s probably not a
bad idea. And Bend Surf came to be.”
Chun said he likes to build things
and had watched Lopez shape
countless surfboards. Thinking that
this would likely be his last job, the
64-year-old Chun saw surfboard
building as work that gave him deep
satisfaction, he said.
“With this custom surfboard busi-
ness, I spend a lot of time with the
customer,” Chun said. “For me, it’s al-
ways been about the connection and
contributing to the customer having
fun.
“The added benefit is how much
the surfer would be part of our com-
munity.”
See Surf / C8
Getty Images