Stretch

Buy Stretch | Reidel Surfboards

NNSS Online Surf Shop Australia

Building innovative and distinctive boards for over 25 years.

History: Since 1979, William "Stretch" Riedel has been building distinctive and innovative custom boards for surfing, sailing, kiteboarding, and wakeboarding. Born in Malibu, CA he was the first taught to shape by his father, a shaper for Velzy Jacobs Surfboards in the 1960's. Stretch worked at several Los Angeles surfboard factories before starting Stretch Boards.

This small, mid-town Santa Cruz factory tucked away in a junkyard is a prime location for scheming-up unique and alternative construction techniques, and progressive designs for the best wave riding imaginable. Combine our team of unbelievably talented riders with premium California coastline and you've got a recipe for success.

Getting Results

Stretch begins shaping by sunrise. Headphones on, cigar in mouth, and tool in hand, there's only one way to get the job done. All our boards receive 100% attention. That's the way we get results.

At a towering 6’6” and as skinny as a rocker stick, Stretch looks more like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz than one of the world’s most forward-thinking shapers. But make no mistake: the 47-year-old Santa Cruz resident has a brain — a brain that’s obsessed with pushing waveriding equipment to unseen levels.

This has always been his driving force. For the better part of 25 years, he’s been making Stretch surfboards lighter, stronger and faster using different foams, different resins and different constructions. And for more than half of this time, after a tragic windsurfing accident, he’s done it with a locked-up hand and partial paralysis on his right side.

His efforts didn’t get him much more than an underground following in Santa Cruz until sometime last year, when the Stretch surfboard started to get some attention.