About

“Our goal is to share the love of stand up paddle boarding and help create a healthy lifestyle with our family, friends and the environment.”
— Rich Price (Founder & Paddler)

 

Our Promise

 We promise to deliver honest, prompt and quality customer service you deserve before and after your purchase. In the event something goes wrong with your order, we are here to make it right. We back all our products with a 1 year warranty and 30-day money back guarantee to ensure you are completely stoked with your purchase. One of our advantages of being a small business is that we can pay attention to detail in our operations and provide expert knowledge on all our products. This means you never have to worry about being passed around in a seemingly endless phone tree or worse, not getting a response when you have a question or concern. Positive word of mouth is everything to us and we will make your experience top-notch.

 

About Us

We live the waterman lifestyle and make stand up paddle boards (SUP) and accessories with a dash of eco materials that paddlers want to use. We paddle what you see in our product lineup, which cover all levels of paddle boarding from the beginner recreational paddler to the advanced SUP surfer. Solace SUP Boards is headquartered in the Ocean City, Maryland area, but you will always find us on the move in some of our favorite travel spots like Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Florida and Indonesia, just to name a few. What we love most about our journey the last couple of years in elite SUP racing, paddle surfing and even leisurely stand up paddling is the new friends and diverse cultures that have taught us to live in the moment. Our goal is to share the love of stand up paddle boarding and help create a healthy lifestyle with our family, friends and the environment.

 

Our Story

Hi, my name is Rich (founder/operator) of Solace SUP and I'm that guy pictured towards the top of this page. As you can see, I like to paddle and travel and I'm sure you can relate if you found us and are reading our page.

It all started back in 2010. I was living outside of Washington DC working 60+ hours a week. Sundays were my only day off and being from the eastern shore of Maryland, I was missing the water. I started renting a few stand up paddle boards in the area and developed a passion. Purchasing a board was difficult at that time as not many retailers were carrying them and online stores offered choices but there were two extremes. You could purchase a cheap generic board that didn’t perform good or a very high dollar paddle board from a large corporate company that specializes in surf boards.

As a result, I pulled together financial resources and began researching, designing, sampling, paddling, consulting with the local small business administration and custom board shapers to launch Solace SUP Boards in late 2012. We also launched a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015 helping us to expand our product line and pull in enough inventory to meet our demand. My goal was to make a well designed quality board at a mid-price point giving our customers the best value on the market. I also wanted to think a little differently and use less plastic in our product.

We teamed up with a top board builder from New Zealand who started honing his craft back in 1969. John has now owned his own manufacturing facility in Asia for sometime now. After 40+ years, he brings a wealth of knowledge on board construction and cutting edge materials when applying them to our shapes.

Another key team member is local eastern shore artist, Dean Mcnelia. He brings unparalleled art skills and creativity to our brand. He has the best ink pen and watercolor art around. A lot of the professional pictures on our website were taken by him. Check him out here: DM Surf Art

I sparked a relationship with Derek of Wave Tribe, a surf company out of California, about a collaboration idea and creating a line of eco stand up paddle gear. This made sense as they are the first eco surf company that has been around for 7+ years and we would be the first stand up paddle company to offer products such as hemp board bags and cork traction pads. Wave Tribe's proven quality in the surf market helped us stream line testing and allowed us to focus on designing great traction pads and bags for the stand up paddle market using less plastic. Derek is also considered a mentor that has helped with his wealth of knowledge in product development, logistics and overall stoke! Check him out here: Wave Tribe

 

OUR PRODUCT

All of our paddle boards and paddles are CAD-designed in collaboration with our engineers and are paddle-tested by us to bring you the best proven shapes and performance. Through SUP paddling hundreds of boards and equipment on a competitive and fun level , we know what works. Furthermore, Solace boards and paddles are made overseas in one of the top manufacturing facilities in Asia and are cut by a CNC machine for consistent accuracy, giving our customer a high quality product at the best value. Our master board builder personally oversees our construction process at the factory and is known for his attention to detail. A lot of the materials used in the construction of our boards are top quality from the USA, Australia, Japan and Portugal. One example, is the  ProBox Hawaii fin system that is made in the USA and offers full adjustability to customize your ride on our bamboo series boards. No pop-out paddle boards here! All hand finished and built using our strong Solace T-flex bamboo vacuum bagged sandwich construction technology producing a better board that will last many years of stand up paddling. Learn more about our construction process on our Technology page.

We are the first dedicated stand up paddle company to use natural cork in our traction pads and hemp for our SUP board bags bringing innovation to the market through our collaboration with Wave Tribe surf.  Imagine that......more sustainable products that perform better than the standard stuff you find everywhere else. You'll probably start seeing some of those bigger companies borrowing our ideas soon. Check out our accessory gear. 

OUR COMMITMENT

Solace SUP Boards is committed to supporting our community locally and internationally by donating our time to organizations that help protect our planet. Please reach out to us if you have a collaboration idea that promotes a positive change.