Overview
Headquarters
San Diego, CA
On November 25, 2011, West Coast Paddle Sports opened it’s big roll-up door for business in San Diego. But first let’s go back in time a little. In 1993 my wife and I opened Bob’s Mission Surf in Pacific Beach, California. We wanted to offer that ‘mom and pop' feeling to a little local surf shop. We wanted a place for surfing friends and family to come and hang out and feel at home. We went back to my roots of growing up around some of the local surf shops of San Diego. Shops that were fun and cool to visit, to see who and what was going on in the surf community. We owned our shop for 18 years and it truly became the full service, friendly neighborhood shop steeped in the surf history and culture that we envisioned. But slowly we saw a change in the surf industry that made owning a small shop more and more difficult. Competition was getting more fierce for a dwindling population and the arrival of large corporate surf centers were certainly drawing away the customer base. In addition to all that the surfers that we catered to was getting older and thinning out. Something needed to change and in 2004-2005 it did in the emergence of Stand Up Paddling. I had a surfing friend who dabbled in stand up and eventually got me on an SUP and gave me a wooden paddle and I haven’t looked back. Since 2005 my passion has been everything stand up. We were the first surf shop in San Diego to offer boards and paddles. We started renting some basic boards. We made new friends. We saw the industry take off. It revitalized the little shop. We started educating potential paddlers and grew into a major source for ‘all things sup’. At the same time, through our associations with paddle companies, we started getting involved with the various outrigger canoe clubs of San Diego.
