Sport Technology's Flowboard sales pick up speed

When tattoos became all the rage, Kern developed a sunblock for body ink. And when actress Demi Moore sported a henna tattoo on the cover of People magazine, he began selling a do-it-yourself kit.

Now, looking to profit from the action sports craze, the Long Beach entrepreneur is marketing a product he sees as a crossover for boarders of all kinds. It looks like a skateboard, rides like a surfboard and, as Kern put it, is "the next best thing to the snowboard." It's called the Flowboard.

"See? I'm carving just like I'd do on a surfboard," business partner Scott Rickett said as he demonstrated the board's ability to make sharp turns in an alley outside the company's warehouse in North Long Beach.

For five years, Rickett and Kern have been working to bring the experience of carving deep powder and awesome waves to the asphalt. Their goal is to make it the nation's latest skating sensation.

"We're being compared to the Rollerblade trend where it started out as a hockey trainer in the off-season," Kern said. "From there it went into recreation, workout and transportation."

Developed in 1999 by a couple of San Francisco design students looking for a way to skate down the city's steep hillsides, the board appeared in Kern's warehouse one day when one of his employees rode it to work. Unlike a regular skateboard, the Flowboard has 14 wheels, enabling the rider to make the curving motions of a snowboarder.

"We all started riding it around the warehouse and we thought, 'This is pretty cool,' " Kern said. "We realized this is more than just a trend -- it really works."

Kern saw an opportunity.

After licensing the product for a year, the Southern California native made the Flowboard a long-term investment. He bought the board's maker, Flowlab, in 2003 for $400,000 and has been steadily increasing sales with a company he founded in 1991 called Sport Technology Inc.

Today the board can be purchased at many specialty skate, surf and snow shops as well as some broader sporting goods retailers such as El Segundo-based Big 5 Sporting Goods.

Since Kern became the sole distributor, Flowboard's annual sales have increased to nearly $4 million in 2007 from $1 million in 2002, and this year the 11-employee company is set to reach $5 million in sales. Kern expects that number to increase to as much as $15 million next year.