La Jolla native Will Salvato and frequent Windansea surfer Brendan Donovan have developed an app to serve as a one-stop shop for surf gear.
Boardal, launched in March, has nearly 4,000 s in the San Diego area and its videos have more than a million views.
“As surfers growing up in San Diego, we were always looking to get new boards and get rid of our surf stuff to make space for new boards,” said Salvato, a La Jolla High School graduate. “Other apps … were disted. They offer everything from toys to cars, so we got the idea to create one platform that gives you targeted information for just surf equipment. It makes it as easy as possible to find what they are looking for without the cloudiness of other marketplaces.”
Through the free app, s can buy and sell surfboards and other equipment. It also provides a place to view the height, weight, thickness and volume of surfboards so potential buyers can know exactly what they are getting.
“Every person has a different ability and height and weight profile, so it’s very important to find a board that works for you,” Salvato said. “I ride a 23-liter volume and Brendan rides a 30- to 31-liter volume. There are also different fin setups for different results. So instead of sifting through thousands of listings, you can type in your volume preference, fin preference and price and it gives you a clean and filtered number of listings.”
For those looking to sell, the app provides instructions on how to find the pertinent information for a listing.
“We want this to be a place for new and experienced surfers to find what they need,” Salvato said.
Though Salvato and Donovan didn’t meet until college at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, they both surfed at Windansea in La Jolla in their youth and joke that they must have crossed paths at some point. They also both worked in San Diego surf shops during their teens.
In college, Donovan, an Encinitas native, led the Cal Poly surfing team to a second-place finish in a state championship meet in 2018.
“We feel really confident working in this space,” Donovan said.
After college, the two pursued careers in finance but ultimately wanted to follow their ion.
Reconnecting with the surf community “has been a really great experience,” Salvato said.
“[It’s] a community that we have been a part of since childhood but that had fallen to the wayside to focus on our careers,” Donovan said. “It’s been awesome to rekindle that.”
And now that the development phase of the app is behind them, they’re excited to see it in action.
Learn more at boardal.app. ◆
