"PEOPLE" BY OZONE: TIBO DOS SANTOS, FOIL AND BOARD DESIGNER

July 22, 2022 / Kitesurf Wingsurf

Tibo Dos Santos, Ozone’s foil and twin-tip designer, joined the company in early 2017. He lives and works in New Zealand, where he designed Ozone’s first twin-tip boards in his garage in Tauranga. When Ozone asked him to build a kitefoil and board, he upgraded the workshop. Here Tibo, 37, from Grenoble, France, tells Ian MacKinnon about his passion for designing new products and working to minimise their impact on the environment. He discusses the challenges of helping to set up a foil factory from scratch at Ozone’s dedicated facility in Vietnam during Covid restrictions—from his garden. Tibo is also excited about the launch of a new Apex MA wingfoil range.

How long have you worked for Ozone, and how did the journey begin?

I met Matt Taggart [Ozone owner and co-founder] in Raglan [New Zealand] just when Ozone was looking into launching a twin-tip division. I started with twin-tips and accessories. It was something quite new because we had the whole production process to set up. Most companies don’t own the factory, which is where Ozone does things differently. Most use outsource suppliers in China and Taiwan, where they send the designs and don’t have to worry about the production side. So, it’s super-interesting, as we can tailor the whole production process to our needs. We’ve complete control, and the guys at the factory in Vietnam are amazing. We’ve the lowest quality-control issue ratio I’ve ever seen.

When did the twin-tip division start?

It was early-mid 2017. I’d been at Switch Kites and F-One doing twin-tips, boards and accessories at one, and heading production, managing quality and suppliers, at the other. I found my way into that because I’ve quite a rare Masters Degree: engineering and management of board sports. There are only three programmes like that in the world: California [US], Australia, and mine in Biarritz, France. But when I graduated in 2009 during the financial crisis there weren’t any jobs and I ended up at Airbus Helicopters specialising in composites and carbon fibre.

For long, Ozone was only about kites. So, adding boards was a big new direction?

Sure. It was a big project. Five years ago the twin-tip market was well-established. It wasn’t like, say, the wingsurf market now. It’s growing rapidly and gaining market share there is quite easy. With the twin-tip we knew we’d have take market share from other brands, and the only way to achieve that is by doing something special. The design brief was: “make the best twin-tip ever”.

We’ve had really great feedback on the Torque and Code boards. On the beach I like to keep a low profile. I don’t like being known as the “Ozone guy”. But when you see someone going out with a brand new Torque and coming back with a smile, and telling their mates it’s the best board ever. That’s so rewarding for a designer. The first twin-tip in the range was the Code, followed by the Torque.

Walk us through the twin-tip design process?

There’s a lot of testing, for sure. I’m a really curious person. Even before I started working for Ozone I designed my first twin-tip when I wasn’t even kiting. I made a crazy carbon board for a mate.

At Ozone we test as much as possible. The beginning of the design process is identifying what people want. It’s especially important in a market like twin-tips, where there are so many different riding styles. But basically there are three main goals. You want to go up wind well. Then you want to be comfortable. You don’t want to smash your ankles or get spray in your face. Finally you want to be fast, and edge well when you’re going jumping. We work around those three and adjust the shape with hours and hours of testing. Then we measure against benchmarks. Rob Whittall [Ozone co-owner and co-founder], Torrin Bright [Ozone product manager and tester] and Matt Taggart really helped me. They’re critical, in a good way. There was no bullshit. If it wasn’t good, we went back behind the computer and tried something else. But we had a deadline as well, as the guys in Vietnam were building a factory and I was helping them. I flew to Vietnam six times in the year that the whole process took.

With the Code, the first board, what was goal?

The Code is a high-performance freeride board. If you’re riding a spot with horrible chop or even big waves and you want to send it and go big, this is the board. If you don’t quite have the technique or the legs for a hard-core twin-tip, you can jump on the Code and it will allow you to focus on the goal of going high. Jamie Overbeek [Ozone Big Air team rider] uses a Code and he really loves to send it.

The Torque is quite different. It was originally supposed to be a freestyle/freeride high-performance board. But it turned out to be an absolute freeride weapon that rides the chop well. It has a very strong edge and you need the legs to drive it. Powerful riders prefer the Torque. It’s more technical on the landing. But if you’ve got the technique and the physique to drive it, it’s super-forgiving.

When you design these boards I guess you’re playing with different parameters and construction techniques. Can you explain the process?

Designing a board, especially a twin-tip, I like to say it’s like baking a cake. You have different ingredients in the mix. You put it all in the press and you cook it. It’s a combination of outline, rocker and 3D on the whole, which pretty much defines how the board will ride. But in the mix you’ve also got lay-up and the evolution of your profile, which determines the flex characteristics. You can have a great shape, amazing outline, but if your flex is not good you may think it’s the shape that’s not right.

Again, double concave, quad concave, those have been done by everyone. But it’s more a combination of how the double or quad concave evolves towards the tips that determines the flex. So, when we make a new prototype we try to change only one element at a time. Otherwise your wondering, is it the new chine or the new UD [uni-directional] carbon that’s making the difference? The UD is fibre you use to increase the board’s response. You don’t want a board to be too stiff all the way. You want it stiff in the centre with a good amount of flex at the tips to make it nice to ride.

The amazing thing is you do all this development work in your garage in Tauranga?

The first twin-tip, I made it in the garage in New Zealand. I had a blank machine and a small press in there. Now we have 3D printers, a CNC machine and other bits and pieces. It went “next level” when we were doing the foil. But now, the way things are set up, we do the twin-tip prototyping at the factory in Vietnam. That’s a big, big asset. If we were working with other OEM board makers [who manufacture for many brands], the cost of making changes is immense. It’s really tough for the designer.

I designed the first twin-tip on a CAD program. I sent all the files for the boards and designs for the tooling to the factory. Just like all our prototypes now, I send the file to Vietnam and two weeks later I receive the board. It also means we can send the same prototype to the rest of the test team wherever they are in the world and they can give their feedback. It’s a huge resource for us.

Talking of the dedicated Vietnam factory, you also helped set up the production process to make Ozone’s first foil in the middle of the worst Covid restrictions?

The idea was to rent out another building at the Parapex site [Ozone’s Vietnam factory] and set up the whole production process there. It’s a new department at the twin-tip unit. I had already been designing a foil for myself when Ozone asked me to do one. It’s a foil and board that became the Apex V1. It’s a high-performance freeride foil. The design brief was to make something that performs well, is fun to ride, but easy and accessible. Back then, many kitefoils were hard to ride and pretty technical.

So, the idea was the same as with the twin-tip set-up. I had to design the product and then set up the production process. Then Covid happened and I couldn’t fly to the factory in Vietnam any more. That was quite something. I didn’t know if we’d be able to pull it off. But Ozone said, if we don’t try, we’ll never know. I had to teach the guys in Vietnam how mould a hydrofoil by video over Skype. I had four camping tables across my garden as I gave a tutorial on how to make a mast for a full carbon foil. It’s really quite technical. There are so many layers. At the same time, I was working on the designs for the tooling and production process. That took 18 months, but the foils have turned out great. They’re strong. You can jump high and they’re fun to ride. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about this, because I felt the industry would think that a foil built by people who picked it up over video wouldn’t be good. But the guys in Vietnam are really amazing.

Tell us about the ‘eco’ side of the process and what you’re doing to lessen the environmental impact of production?

We work with a world-beating company that produces epoxy resins. It’s award-winning and has been leading the game in ‘bio-based’ resins. Thirty percent of their resin comes from plant and vegetable matter and we’re moving to use it in our production. It’s better for the environment. For me this was something that’s very important.

Epoxy resin is a chemical and it’s pretty nasty stuff. It’s used in the production process for twin-tips and foil boards. If we use bio-based resin it’s better for the environment, although there’s a lot of marketing hype around it. But the boards ride the same and have the same mechanical properties. We use it in the lay-up. And most of the wings for the foil, but not the mast, which needs to be high-modulus carbon. We try to look at all production from the point of view of minimising the impact on the environment. In the production process, much of the raw materials turn to dust in the shaping and finishing process. So we’re always looking at that. After all, we’re riding the elements, so we must respect them.

But the process is not finished. Our resin supplier is really on it. They’re aiming to have 100 percent bio-based resin. But there’s so much hype around this sector. We try not to fall for it. Some companies come along and turn it into a marketing thing, when there’s actually no benefit. If you’re using field in Africa to grow fibre for our industry while depriving people of food, that’s not progress. It’s a double-edge sword.

What does the future hold?

The big thing is that we’re going to launch a range of foils mainly for wingsurfing. This has been two years in the making. I’ve been really lucky to have so much time testing with Torrin Bright. In that time we’ve seen front wings in the market increase in aspect ratio. In fact, they’ve got so technical, they’re difficult to ride. Some are aspect ratio 10, and you need to be good to ride them. When we started working it was either super-low, or super-high aspect. So we felt something in the middle would be easier to ride and accessible.

When we started, all the foils rode very differently. But the market was moving forward so fast, we had to try to guess where it was going. Also, at Ozone we’ve got wave riding in our DNA. So, the foil we wanted had to carve and turn, but still be fun and accessible to ride. So, we have the Apex MA (medium aspect) range which is fully modular, with four different masts, two fuselages and five front wings to choose from: 1800cm², 1500cm², 1250cm², 1100cm² and 950cm². It’s really exciting to be part of something new that’s evolving so quickly.

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“PEOPLE” BY OZONE: TIBO DOS SANTOS, FOIL AND BOARD DESIGNER

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