By Jake Howard
With the holidays comes a respite in the pursuit of NSSA, WSA and all the other grom events in Southern California, which is fine with 11-year-old Carson Kropfl. In October we featured him as the Grom of the Week when he unceremoniously became the first-ever injured surfer at the Gudauskas brothers’ Stoke-A-Rama. After taking a board to the head and receiving five stitches, he was back in the water competing, which earned a special place in our hearts.
Maybe the blow to his cranium knocked a business sense into him because shortly thereafter he launched his own company called Locker Board. Taking used skateboard decks, Kropfl recycles them by cutting them down to a size that can fit in his locker at school. He then puts new trucks and wheels on the board, and bam, Locker Board! He saw a problem—his skateboard didn’t fit in his locker—and somehow he’s the first to devise such a solution.
Practically overnight the boards took off. Thanks to word of mouth and social media, out of his own home workshop he has shipped boards all around the country to places like Rhode Island, Montana, Arizona, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. He donated boards to the Spark of Love Toy Drive at the Honda Center in Los Angeles. And Jack’s Surf Shop sold them during the holiday season. Needless to say, it was a heck of a Christmas for the budding entrepreneur.
Thanks to thoughtful, driven kids like Kropfl, the future of the local surf and skate scene’s in excellent hands.
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