CHECKING IN WITH...DAVE ALLEE:

It’s a crazy time to start a business, but this week we check in with Dave Allee, the owner of Almond Surfboards & Designs, who did just that.

Tell us about your business.

I always like to say that Almond is a collaboration of friends. I’ve been blessed to have some super-talented and supportive friends and family. Our emphasis is on the joy that comes from surfing traditional, single-fin longboards with friends. And twin-fin fishes when the waves pick up. The culture surrounding longboard is one of the most unique, artistic and simple you’ll find in any sport or action sport. I have really taken a liking to “logging” along with some of my friends.

The core of Almond is myself, Dave Allee. I’m the entrepreneur, visionary and shaper.

Jeremy Searcy is my super-talented artist/musician friend. (He’s graduating from Vanguard this month with a degree in guitar performance.)

Amanda Wittman does our website, and keeps Jeremy and I accountable to our to-do lists.

My sister Megan Allee makes bags.

Griffin Neumann-Kyle does some of our day-to-day production shaping, and he’s been doing a great job helping us keep up with orders.

My cousins Taylor and Gully are doing a lot of our wooden fins now. They’re 18 and 13, respectively.

My brother, Jeff, and Alex Shaw help me out around the shop.

Lately, we’ve been doing a few surfboards a week, and having a blast doing it. We’re even selling out of a surf shop in Portland, Maine, called Corduroy.

What led you into this business?

Almond started out a few years ago with a couple of wooden surfboards that I built for fun. And my best friend Jeremy Searcy and I were doodling on T-shirts with sharpies and drawing art for T-shirts. We had really gotten into longboarding and twin-fin fishes, which really influenced the art we were doing and the boards I was making. We got asked to do a fashion show at Pepperdine University in fall of 2007, so we had to start getting our act together to pull that off. We got a bunch of good feedback on the stuff we were doing, and had been getting similarly positive feedback on the wooden surfboards. I decided to start doing some more standard polyurethane foam surfboards, with wooden fins and resin tints.

Now we’ve involved more of our friends and family and started doing more stuff. Now, we’re in our ninth week of having the shop on Old Newport, and we’re doing longboards, fishes, stingers, kookumbers, T-shirts, sweat shirts, board shorts, bags, a collaborative wetsuit with es-cent-ial wetsuits... basically a bunch of fun stuff going on over here.

And, of course, art and music ties in with all of the other stuff we’re doing. Our band, the Tipsy Turtles, recently played an hourlong live set on KOCI 101.5.

It’s kind of a scary time to open a business. How’s it going since you opened?

Yeah, a lot of people looked at me like I was crazy when I decided to open a shop for Almond earlier this year. The surfboard industry especially has been hit hard, because surfboards are such a luxury item. The economy being slow has actually allowed us to work with some people that we might otherwise not have been able to work with.

Our reach has been so small that we’ve been able to grow even in a smaller market. Right now, we’re just trying to put ourselves in the best position possible for when things really start to pick up in the industry.

I’m only one year out of college, so I figure at this stage of life I don’t have a whole lot to lose, and can afford to be a bit more bold with my life choices.

Who’s your favorite surfer, and why?

I appreciate surfers who can transition between different equipment really well. I really like guys like Joe Tudor and Rob Machado for that very reason. They could paddle out on anything and just kill it. I also really like the way Donavon Frankenreiter and my friend Christian Wach surf. And I think Nathan Adams might have the best style around.

All in all, I really like longboarders who crossover well into other, alternative, wave-sliding equipment.

You played basketball at Newport Harbor High School. Who’s your favorite NBA team and who do you expect will be in the finals?

I don’t like to say that I have a favorite team, as much as a bunch of favorite players. I just like good basketball. I definitely root for the Lakers every time they play. I think they’re going to win the title this year for sure. Most people would point to Kobe as the obvious reason why. But if it were just because of Kobe, then it’s nearly a toss-up with LeBron and the Cavaliers. The real key to the Lakers success is Lamar Odom. Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley touched on this a little bit the other day, but Lamar Odom is capable of being much more dominant than people realize. He and Trevor Ariza are as productive as role players get. But Lamar is coming off the bench, and playing against most teams’ second units. He is so much better than any other bench players in the league that it’s hardly even fair. There isn’t a second unit in the league that can keep up with Lamar Odom.

Do you compete as a surfer?

I’ve only done one contest. It was a fundraiser for the Surfrider Foundation. I was there to support and have a good time with some other guys who were participating. I made it to the final and ended up getting fifth place behind four phenomenal surfers. I had fun, but it didn’t really spark any interest in competitive longboarding in me.

What’s more fun: designing surfboards or riding one?

That’s a bit of a toss-up because they fill such different need or interest. I’d say I enjoy surfing more though. I know a lot of shapers who basically give up on surfing, but that’s the whole driving purpose. Surfing is the absolute the best way to start the day.

City Editor PAUL ANDERSON may be reached at (714) 966-4633 or at paul.anderson@latimes.com.