Rich Nolan

A legend among board shapers, Rich Nolan cut his teeth in the wake industry in the Pacific Northwest, first working for Wiley Bindings while in high school. He later began working at H.O. and learned manufacturing techniques involving compression molding techniques for towed watersports equipment. At the same time he was shaping wakeboards out of his garage under his own “Nolan” label. In 1989, he won a “Board Build Off” competition sponsored by Kidder and his shape became a production model board for the company. He was approached by snow industry giant K2 to design some custom wakeboards under their brand name, the fist time the wake industry had seen that level of interest from with action sports marketplace. Rich became a member of the Kidder family when he became their Director of Research and Development in 1991. Rich lent his shaping skills to other industry members like Neptune among others and went on to found his own stand-alone wakeboard company, Full Tilt.