User:AlKeester/sandbox

Glide SUP
Glide SUP (also known as Glide Paddlesports) was founded in July of 2010 by former professional whitewater kayaker, Ken Driscoll. Driscoll had broken his back going off a 50 foot waterfall for a photo shoot. Because of his injury, he was no longer to sit comfortably in the cockpit of a kayak. He was, however, able to use a stand up paddle board to paddle on waterways. Because his first love was whitewater paddling, he set out on a mission to manufacture stand up paddle boards that were strong enough to survive the rigors of the river. Eventually, he stumbled upon a polymer that was used by the US Dept. of Defense to make submarines travel more efficiently through the water. He called the polymer "Glide Surface Shield".

As it turns out, this polymer allows the boards to absorb 600 times the punishment that an epoxy board can handle. Shortly after Driscoll had formed Glide as a company, he realized that he was going to need some financial backing. He turned to high tech entrepreneurs Ken Apperson and Scott Knorp who had recently sold their tech company to a Fortune 500 telco.

The trio soon realized that the whitewater paddle board market was limited in size and soon expanded to sell to paddle board rental companies since renters can be quite abusive to SUP boards. They also created retail versions of their ultra durable stand up paddle boards that could be used for flat water cruising, ocean surfing and SUP yoga.

As inflatable paddle boards became as popular as hard boards, Glide soon expanded into this market. Since they had been so successful with ultra durable hard stand up paddle boards, they decided to make their inflatable paddle boards ultra durable as well. They combined 4 layers of military grade PVC using a cutting edge fusion process and used woven drop stitch to fill in the core of the board. These two processes created boards that had 90% of the rigidity of a solid stand up paddle board and was very difficult to puncture.

Glide currently makes hard and inflatable paddle boards for ocean waves, flat water cruising, SUP yoga, SUP fishing as well as whitewater SUP.