Zak Surfboards
ZAK SURFBOARDS
A leading brand in Australian surfing.
Zak Surfboards is an Australian company, owned and operated by Zak Koniaras who’s shapes and designs reflect the Victorian surfing coast lines. The range of surfboards are developed in partnership with the trusted experience of iconic Victorian shapers, glassers and surfers.
All quivers are a testament to the years of surfboard shaping.
From humble beginnings in the suburban suburb of Viewbank; deisgning, shaping and repairing surfboards in a lean to backyard shaper shack to a 20+ year career. Zak has mentored under the best of Victoria’s shapers and has produced some amazing collaborative efforts with legendary names such as Doug Rogers, Michael Anthony, Kent Mulligan and Alan 'Rousa' Rowsell.
Original Zak Surfboards Store Front - Victoria St, Thornbury
HISTORY
From a tin shed to a retail store
Zak shaped his first surfboard at 13 in a tin shed down the side of his parent’s house in Viewbank. He would catch a bus all the way to Trigger Bros on the Mornington Peninsula to pick up blanks and resin to fuel his passion. With a few advertisements in surf mags and a bunch of business cards, Zak’s small backyard business grew from repairing a few surfboards for mates, to doing board repairs and shaping custom boards for local surf shops. Through sheer determination and persistence, Zak kept shaping and repairing boards and opened a small retail store in Thornbury (an inner Northern suburb of Melbourne) in 1999, ignoring advice that the surf industry was about selling clothes rather than shaping surfboards.
Original Zak Surfboards In Store - Victoria St, Thornbury
Original Zak Surfboards In Store - Victoria St, Thornbury
Zak Surfboards - The Inner City Surfboard Shop
The first store in Thornbury packed 86 surfboards, a wall of accessories, a bunch of skateboards and wetsuits into a 6×3 metre shop in which customers had to walk around single-file to view his range.
Not long after, Zak Surfboards moved just up the road, into a bigger premises at 307 Victoria Road Thornbury, a refurbished bottle-o on the corner of Raleigh Street. With great square meterage came greater responsibilities and the identity of Zak Surfboards developed into a retail business that relied more on surfboards from Victorian shapers as well as stocking the biggest range of surfboards and surf hardware in Victoria. Although located in a suburban location, Zak Surfboards exemplified a real surf hardware store, not a clothes shop with a few boards for eye candy.
Not long after, Zak Surfboards moved just up the road, into a bigger premises at 307 Victoria Road Thornbury, a refurbished bottle-o on the corner of Raleigh Street. With great square meterage came greater responsibilities and the identity of Zak Surfboards developed into a retail business that relied more on surfboards from Victorian shapers as well as stocking the biggest range of surfboards and surf hardware in Victoria. Although located in a suburban location, Zak Surfboards exemplified a real surf hardware store, not a clothes shop with a few boards for eye candy.
Corner of Victoria Rd & Raleigh St - Thornbury
The Surfboard Studio
In 2014 Zak opened the Surfboard Studio, located in the neighbouring suburb of Preston. The Surfboard Studio offers small-groups expert instruction and tuition in surfboard shaping, design, glassing and sanding, all based conveniently in Melbourne and affiliated with a stalwart of Melbourne surf culture, Zak Surfboards. The aim is to teach not only the art of surfboard shaping, but to share handcrafting skills and knowledge of how surfboard designs work in all sorts of waves. The shop at the Surfboard Studio offers surf hardware equipment, tools and materials for building all types of surf craft.
Melbourne Surfboard Shop
After operating through a single door in the northern Melbourne suburb of Thornbury for over twenty years, owner Zak Koniaras and the close-knit team at Zak Surfboards found themselves looking at ways to expand a business that has been central to the growth in popularity of surfing in Melbourne, despite being an hour’s drive from the closest surfable waves (Melbourne’s Tullamarine wave pool notwithstanding).
The idea of Melbourne Surfboard Shop is all about furthering a process of community growth which Zak Surfboards had been unconsciously engaged in since its inception in 1999 – bringing together a diverse group of people who all have a love of surfing in the context of a unique geographical situation in Melbourne.
So as of December 2020, amidst a pandemic, Zak Surfboards, the independent surf shop, changed its branding to Melbourne Surfboard Shop and operates as a retail outlet in two bricks and mortar locations - Thornbury and Newport, to serve Melbourne’s burgeoning surf community, and nationally via the Melbourne Surf website.
Zak and the team at Zak Surfboards are working tirelessly for a seamless transition, offering the same customer service and local surf knowledge. The change in branding has led Zak to once again build the Zak Surfboards moniker as a boutique surfboard brand, and leave the retailing at the door.
