Hobart Laidlaw Alter grew up on a citrus farm in Ontario, California, and spent weekends and vacations at his family’s house in Laguna Beach playing in the waves. In 1950, when true surfboards were difficult to find, he used a hollow, flat, 55-pound, 12-foot paddleboard and sometimes could stand on it in small waves. After Hoffman told him how to make a surfboard and where to buy balsa wood and fiberglass, Hobie spent weeks crafting his first surfboard. He had seen pictures of surfing but did not see anyone surf in person until he was 16. As surfboard design changed from solid wood such as redwood to balsa wood covered with fiberglass and then to polyurethane foam and other materials, Hobie built a surfboard business, first running his shop alone and later hiring skilled surfers as demand grew, while shaping most boards himself. When the lightweight balsa wood he relied on became difficult to obtain and inconsistent in quality, a salesman showed him a piece of watertight polyurethane foam. In a building in Laguna Canyon, Hobie and his employee Gordon Clark developed a manufacturing process for a lightweight, strong foam that could be shaped into a surfboard. In June 1958, Hobie began manufacturing foam surfboards exclusively, and although he was not the first to make foam boards, he was the first to produce them efficiently in high-quality quantities, and business boomed.
