New wave wave creators
Trevor Nichols - Sep 28, 2017 - Biz Profiles

Image: Conrtibuted
A pair of Kelowna entrepreneurs have created a world first

An innovative tweak to an established idea vaulted a pair of Kelowna entrepreneurs into the startup spotlight this week.

SurfStage made a splash recently when a video of it in action, set against the backdrop of Okanagan Lake, hit YouTube.

Laurence Parlane and Daniel Benson are the co-founders of Voltus Industries Ltd., which builds SurfStage. They bill their product as “the first ever floating wave.”

The floating surf machine allows surfers to gather with friends on the lake, and ride an artificially created wave.

The product is flashy and impressive, but as Parlane explains, the concept, product and business that supports it all grew out of what was essentially a joke.

Parlane has little love for formalized education. The college dropout has been building stuff since he was a kid, and his engineering prowess helped him snag an internship with Red Bull Racing right out of high school.

He learned a lot working with the company’s Formula 1 team, but only stuck around for about six months.

“It was super high-level; cutting edge; really big money; high stress. It wasn’t for me, but I learned lots,” he says.

It was around this time that SurfStage began to percolate in his brain.

Parlane and Benson both spent time as summer councillors at summer camps in Osoyoos.

Parlane explains that the camp doesn’t have a ton of money, so they often had to create their own equipment. One day, he and some others were joking about how much effort it would take to jerry-rig a Flowrider-type surf station at the camp.

After everyone else moved on, Parlane kept musing.

He realized it would be easier to pump enough water to the rig if it was closer to the lake. Then it hit him that next logical step was to just put the thing right in the lake.

“And then I realized, OK, this might actually be a legitimate business idea, and not just ‘let’s build something sketchy,’” he said.

So he started going through some preliminary designs in his head. Those found their way to napkins, and then more formal plans. Things grew from there.

He worked at it for about six months, until he moved in with Benson, who was fresh off a business management degree from UBCO.

Benson immediately got on board with Parlane’s idea, and as Parlane explains it, “made it into a real, feasible business, not just a pipe dream.”

Of course, once they had a business, they still had to actually make the product.

“We thought we were going to crank it out in like six months, and it took two years,” Parlane joked.

“It took a long time,” Benson chimed in.

For a year the pair went through a number of design iterations. Then, once they got the design where they wanted, they needed funding. After a few shaky pitches they found investors, and moved on to engineering and fabricating.

After putting together the 14-metre SurfStage prototype, this spring they dragged it to a secret location on Okanagan Lake for testing.

The massive SurfStage sat on the lake for months, and Benson recalls trying and keep the project “on the DL” as they waited for patents to clear.

“There were NDAs for days,” he said.

Now, they’ve finished testing, dry-docked their prototype, and are tweaking the design as they get ready to start production.

“The system right now has all the functionality it needs, it just needs to have that Apple shine on it, so it looks super good… more user friendly,” Parlane says.

The concept of “surfing” on a stationary platform isn’t new, but Parlane and Benson are the first ones to make that possible directly on the lake.

Image: Contributed
Daniel Benson (left) and Laurence Parlane (right).

By taking the fairly logical step of moving the structure from land to water, they’ve cut down costs significantly, and made the platform much more portable.

The SurStage is decked out with lights and a sound system, and can hold about 30 people at a time.

Parlane says the whole thing is designed to be “kind of a destination in itself,” where friends can hang out together performing or goofing off on the wave.

“A ski boat or a wakeboard boat is a lot of fun, not because you’re wakeboarding, but because all your buddies are on the boat, and there’s music and all that,” he says.

Parlane and Benson both say they’re not great surfers, but that it doesn’t really matter with SurfStage.

The high cycle rate means people can catch on quick, and it usually doesn’t take long to get good enough to start having fun.

“That’s the thing, even though I’m not that good at it, it’s actually still really fun,” Benson says.

Benson says SurfStage is now “open for business,” and he expects the product to start appearing on lakes as early as next summer.

For more information, visit SurfStage online.


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