Valerie Duprat Makes Waves in Surfboard Shaping

When she’s not sequencing DNA or suiting up for a surfing session, Valerie Duprat is building surfboards in her backyard. The mostly self-taught shaper has been handcrafting surfboards for seven years and has shaped 160 boards to date.

Duprat’s customers come from all over Southern California, but she has had customers drive all the way down from San Francisco to pick up their boards. The Encinitas local and France native currently doesn’t ship her boards due to the high cost.

Her favorite clients are women, but, to her surprise, most of her customers are men.

A perk of seeking out a solo shaper is the personal interaction the surfer receives.

“I don’t want to rush the process,” Duprat says. “It’s very important to me when you do [a custom board] to understand what your customer needs. If I can go surf with them, it’s even better because…I know what they need, just by looking at their surfing.”

Meremade Surfboards founder Valerie Duprat holds one of her surfboard designs after a surfing session at Leucadia State Beach.

Surfboard shaping is a tedious craft. A basic shortboard can take Duprat two hours to shape, and a long board can take three or four hours. But, she notes the most time-consuming part of the process is the artwork.

“My clients come to me because they want a special color to go their board,” she says. “And it’s normal. I would feel the same. I do the same on my board.”

The painting application can take anywhere from three to ten hours.

“You have to dry it, you have to tape mask, everything,” she says. “It’s complicated.”

But Duprat assures aspiring shapers that the process isn’t as difficult as it looks, and encourages others to give it a try.

“There’s nothing really physical about shaping,” she says. “No limitation. You can just do it. It’s not hard. You just need the education and motivation, like any art form.”