Gregory Gremillion from Alt Fin Co is incredibly interesting… He looks at the end point of things first, then will design a plan. His restaurant in New Orleans was super successful, although it was seemingly a strange idea initially. His new project, Alt Fin Co is another interesting one which doesn’t seem to make much sense on the surface, but once again he has a plan. Gregory explains this in his episode plus much more & we hope you enjoy meeting both Gregory & Alt Fin Co in this episode!
Gregory Gremillion from Alt Fin Co TRANSCRIPT
Rich: You got a lot going on and I don’t know how your business is going to make it. It doesn’t make any sense to me, and that’s why I’m so excited about this podcast. Greg, welcome to the podcast.
Greg: Hey, thanks dude. You make no sense to me. I met you in the water. I met you in the water and you said, yeah, I think I’m starting a lounge, this thing around fins, and then just watch a lot of surf movies.
Rich: And I was like, that sounds like heaven, but how is that a business in a place where things are very expensive? It truly is expensive here to have a business, to pay everything, to pay all the taxes. Especially if you do it the right way.
Greg: I think on the surface, if what you’re looking at is just the fin shop, then yes, that probably makes zero sense. But I see the end first. It’s how I’ve always operated. I have the fin shop, Alt Fin Co. I’m there Tuesday through Friday, 11 to 3. Wake up, bring the kids to school, go surf, come back, I’m in there. It’s my office. It’s a fin shop. If you want to come in and check out some surf fins, you know where to get them in town. And then after four o’clock, it evolves into a cocktail lounge. Surf culture themed cocktail bar. We’re screening films, all that stuff.
Rich: And we’re going to do that once a month?
Greg: That’s the goal. What we’re going to try is a little series where we maybe get some of the local surfers in town, let them come in, check out some fins, grab some fins, go for a surf, film them surfing, and then come back and put them on the screen.
Rich: Dude. That’s rad. Can you tell me your story, man? How did you get here? I know you had a restaurant in New Orleans, but what you’re doing sounds so freaking cool.
[5:00] From the Gulf Coast to Portugal to Nosara — Greg’s Surf Origin Story
Greg: We’re both from the South, we have that in common. You’re from Florida, I’m from New Orleans. I remember being pushed out at a young age, always into the surf magazines. Like, where is this blue water? That is not here. I want to find this blue water.
Rich: I’m finding your commonality pretty quick.
Greg: Completely enamored by the color of the water and just how cool this thing looked. It must have been junior or senior year, around ’93, ’94, ’95, something like that. Surfer Magazine, there’s this expo on different boards and shapers. I see this one board being surfed by Taj Burrow
at the time. It’s a Maurice Cole board — MC board — has a little koala bear logo. I still have it. It’s actually signed by Laird Hamilton, who I never met but ended up coming to our fishing camp with my dad at some point. But anyway, I either wrote him a letter or called him on the old school landline, and a few months later a surfboard from Hawaii popped up in a huge box at my grandfather’s machine shop.
Rich: What?
Greg: The secretary’s like, what is this? It’s usually boat parts and engine parts. So yeah, it’s a surfboard, and I try and go out and surf in an area called Fort Fourchon
where these big offshore supply boats come out, they service the oil rigs in the Gulf, and I’m trying to surf out there.
Rich: What if they have tanker waves there now? Are there foilers there?
Greg: There is a channel and it’s very possible, but it’s just people fishing. Dirty water. That board made absolutely no sense. It was like a gun made for the North Shore, and here’s the Gulf of Mexico and I don’t know what I’m doing. Fast forward to around ’03 to ’05. I went to graduate school in London and I did a surfing safari in Portugal. I was like, I’m going to go surf, I’m going to figure this out. That was probably the first time I stood up on a board. That was with an outfit called Atlantic Riders.
Rich: What year was this?
Greg: That was probably 2004. I did it for a week. We started at the top of Porto and surfed all the way down to the Algarve. And I loved it and I did it again and I did it again — three weeks in a row. I’m hooked. But I’m not a surfer. I’m a beginner who learned how to stand up on a board and got that feeling.
[12:00] The New Orleans Chapter — Building the Swoop Duggins House
Greg: Some years pass and I’ve done a lot of different things — started a company, sold a company. And then, all right, the first dream, which was also a terrible idea by the way. I’m going to buy the single oldest building in downtown New Orleans — not the French Quarter, but the CBD, the Central Business District. This building called the Swoop Duggins House,
falling apart, but just a gem of a building. I saw the potential.
Rich: So your vision sees stuff way down the road.
Greg: I saw the end first. I didn’t see the ten years of work it was going to take to get it there. I had a restaurant for eight years that was wildly successful. The design was really good — both aesthetically and the business design. Owner-operator, you have your commercial real estate, you own it, but then you’re also the tenant, you’re producing the cash flow, you’re controlling everything. And if you do that for a decade in an area of a downtown city that then becomes the burgeoning district — the pandemic hit and at the end of that I was like, all right, let’s remodel right now while we have the opportunity. And when I decided to sell, I had a fully permitted, fully restored property downtown. Turnkey. Here you go.
Rich: Here’s what I just heard. Turns out you’re a very astute businessman, and your endgame has more ways to succeed than one. Can I fast forward to Costa Rica — how we got here?
Greg: Friends of friends recommended the place. We first came down around 2015. The first two and a half, three years was renting, learning how to surf. Then the pandemic — I sell my place, come back, sell my business, come back, buy a place. What do I do? Who am I? Complete crisis. Hit the rainy season. Two rainy seasons ago, which was tough on me personally, just because of the way I entered it — not having a career, not really having purpose. And I thought it would be almost disrespectful to start trying to sell boards. These guys shaped for a long time, they put in a lot of work. But there are all these little components. What about fins? And then you do the research — it’s a $300 million annual business and it’s going up.
Rich: I was about to make a joke. I think I am one percent of that because I buy fins all the time.
Greg: And there’s no better way to change your board than to buy a new fin. It changes everything — especially if you’re surfing a longboard or a mid-length or a twin fin.
[20:00] The Surf Industry Shift — Why Fins Are the New Frontier
Rich: If you told me ten years ago that twin fins would get popular, mid-lengths would be the emerging thing — you’d see professional longboarders heading to it, even shortboarders. The surf industry changed so much because it used to be magazines, movies, contests. After the internet came, you didn’t have to be a contest surfer to produce content. Now you and I get to see people riding different boards all the time. Mason Ho, Jamie O’Brien, Coe Roth — Dane Reynolds doesn’t have to go on tour and be miserable. He can put out a three-minute clip and we’re like, holy crap. You happen to launch a fin business. You are in front of a huge thing because your average surfer and your high-level surfer are heading to the mid-length market.
Greg: Look, I haven’t succeeded yet. I’m just trying. But everyone I’ve reached out to — I’m working with all independent shapers. I’m not going after FCS, not going after Futures. I’m working with Captain Finn, working with a couple from J-Bay, working with Corey Nolan from the Northeast — Hydrophile Surfcraft.
Rich: Tell me about how you found Sieve Fins. The recycled ones.
Greg: I was looking up recycled fins. I wanted to either 3D print or manufacture quality recycled fins somehow. And I see this couple running it — they started coastal in northwestern Europe somewhere, then moved to Germany. They’re using recycled bottle caps — a blend of 70 percent recycled ocean-found bottle caps and fiberglass. And they’re also doing a recycled carbon fiber. I first reached out and said, look, I’m opening a fin shop, I’d love to carry your product. Then months later I came back and said — you’re doing exactly what I’d love to do. You’re not out here in Central America, it’s probably not even on your radar. How do you feel about maybe doing some co-branding? Let me put my brand on your fin, you handle manufacturing, and we all sell a little more. They agreed. And that’s why their logo is a little bigger than mine on the fin.
Rich: Dude. Your weird story that makes no sense is making a lot of sense. You’re co-branding with companies that are very little known now but are probably about to be. You’re basically creating a craft brewing company of fins. Ahead of schedule.
[30:00] Fear, Family, and Operating on the Edge
Rich: You said you can’t live in fear. I wildly disagree. I think most people live in fear. I know I live in fear. That’s part of what keeps me motivated. Even this podcast, a lot of it is from fear. I don’t want to run out of money to provide for my family. As an entrepreneur here, there are ups and downs. People might think, because you have a nice car, that everything’s great. They might not realize the amount of money it takes to operate, keep employees, pay taxes, do everything. Fear keeps me on the line of waking up every day.
Greg: Look, maybe on the surface I can talk that game — but in all honesty, I’ve laid it on the line. I’m operating on the edge right now. I’ve got a wife and two little boys I need to look after. And I’ve always gone for the home runs. Sometimes they work and sometimes you strike out. But you can’t hit the grand slam if you’re not swinging for the fences. For better or worse, I’ve always lived that way.
Rich: I want to know how you got that way. Most people don’t think that way. When I moved down here with no money, two kids, I sold everything, had maybe $2,500 total to my name, and put it on the line. I wouldn’t change it for anything. The pains of here are way better than the pains of not trying. I watched Endless Summer every night from 1999 to the day I moved here in 2009. Programming myself, thinking about Playa Negra and the waves. I fought so hard to get here. I don’t want to lose it. So the fear is instilled.
Greg: I’m at the beginning stages. I spent all the startup capital. I should be living like a 23-year-old entrepreneur right now. I was promoting a DJ party on Instagram last night. I’m 45 with two kids. What the actual — that makes no sense. That aspect of what I’m doing.
Rich: It does if you want to make it here.
Greg: And this is the answer to all of it, honestly. For us to be able to go out and surf consistently — because we’re from the South, from flat places, without many waves — I have a friend, Robert Barbieri, who said, Rich, if you can get me down there and I can go surf for an hour every morning, you can punch me right in the face when I get out and I’ll be happier than going so hard back home. Whenever things are tough, that’s what I remind myself. I went surfing today.
[38:00] Learning on a Gun in Guiones — The Board That Made No Sense
Greg: When I first moved here and I needed to get a board, I knew nothing about the different types. I went over to Juan Surfo.
This was rainy season, around 2015, 2016. I knew I didn’t want to learn on a longboard, but I also knew I probably wasn’t going to figure it out at 36 or 37 on a shortboard. And I saw this shape in the middle. It was a 7’3 semi-gun. A 7’3 pintail quad — Backyard Shaper, brand new. I learned on that board. As the waves got bigger, the board started to work better, started to work like it was intended. By this weird fate, I started to get better as the waves got bigger, and I wanted them bigger because I noticed my board worked better. I still have it. It’s on display at my house.
Rich: I think subconsciously that’s what got you into fin angles — because you’re associated with guns your whole life.
Greg: My first two boards were guns. One I’ve never even ridden because I just couldn’t ride it at the time. My brother ended up moving to Hawaii and I sent him off with it. He beat it up pretty good for him, but then I later got it back.
[47:00] Inside Alt Fin Co — The Shop, the Fins, the Art
Rich: Gregory. We’re at your place. I took one of your pictures and shared it. I think I said something like this strange new place.
Greg: Strange was the word.
Rich: I was 100 percent right. You have fins everywhere that I can buy or look at. You have surfing stuff everywhere. You have music playing. I guess drinks — we’re in a lounge?
Greg: Yeah. We’re in like half cocktail bar, half surfing shop, which doubles as my office during the day. Had three different groups drop in today, all from Austin, Texas, which is just really strange. Sold a few fins, some wax and leashes. Those people said, man, we want to come back at night and check this out because this looks like an interesting place in the evening. That’s the idea. Your underground weird surf shop during the day that evolves into a cocktail spot at night. Maybe we have some DJs, maybe live music. We’re going to do an eighties night thing with a vintage clothing store — Hot Tamale.
Rich: What gave you the idea for that wave?
Greg: I’ve been working with this young designer for years — found him on 99designs. Very talented, and he’s not even a surfer. I said I want a flat screen long-ways with my logo, and then let’s get some kind of wave graphic. And he sends this back a week later — it’s looking down the barrel of a wave.
Rich: It set the tone. When I walked in here I was instantly happier. The blue, the color of happiness. And then I put my head close to it to pretend I was getting barreled and I heard the ocean.
[55:00] The Shapers on the Wall — J-Bay, Douglas Evans, Sieve Fins
Rich: That blue twin fin, goodness gracious. Tell us about Douglas.
Greg: Douglas Evans, he’s out in Marbella holding it down.
He shaped boards for decades out in Bali and trained under a well-known shaper there. He’s got a really nice little shop — if you’re heading down to Marbella, it’s on your right. He and I had a lot of fun. I wanted to create some boards to go with the aesthetic. It’s all about alternative surfing. I’m not trying to rep the big boys that have already made it. It’s Captain Finn and then down to your independent backyard shapers from all over the world.
Greg: The Sieve fins — those are 70 percent recycled ocean-found bottle caps, 30 percent fiberglass. Any of the colored ones are that blend. Any of the black ones are recycled carbon fiber. I don’t even know how you do that, but they’ve come up with a way. And I’m not just another fin on the wall — I’m co-branded with them, front and center. That’s how that happened.
Rich: This is the second podcast I’ve recorded today where a business owner was implementing recycled materials back into the product.
Greg: I’m not some big freedom fighter. I just hate when I see a ton of plastic on the beach. I don’t want to surf in a bunch of plastic. This is one way to cut off that life cycle. We’re taking the plastic out of the ocean and surfing with it. Which I think is pretty cool.
[1:03:00] The Fins Conversation — Changing Your Board Without Buying One
Rich: I think fins are the unknown thing in surfing right now. Board shaping — if you look from 1982 to now, a lot of the shortboards are basically the same. The one thing we don’t have a handle on is fins. If I take my Tomo and adjust from one setup to another, the same board couldn’t ride more differently. It’s the cheapest and easiest way to get a new surfboard, without a doubt.
Greg: I’ve changed my fin on my longboard three times in the last two days just to see what the different fins do. First I had a really fat Joel Tudor-style fin — rode like you’d imagine a Lexus or a Cadillac. Old school comfort. Then I switched to this one from J-Bay. It’s a poplar
template. And this one from Corey Nolan. The way he describes it — there was a longboard built in the ’60s or ’70s called a pig: really fat on the back and the bottom, then pulls in toward the nose. A Del Valle, I believe.
His idea is to take that older shape and give it a little more modern feel. Let it flow and grab a little — more maneuverability.
Rich: Hey, can I ask your opinion? Fins are the unknown thing in surfing right now. If you’re riding a standard setup and adjust, the same board couldn’t ride more different. It’s the cheapest and easiest way to get a new surfboard. And now if we’re talking about single fins, twin fins, bonzers — it’s completely wide open.
[1:12:00] The Board Greg’s Been Riding — Christensen Long Fish
Greg: If you’ve seen me surfing for the last two years, this is the board I’ve been on 99 percent of the time. It’s a 6’6 — it’s called a long fish. And if you look on Christensen’s website,
he describes this board as: if you were stuck on a deserted island and had one board to surf big waves and small waves, this is it. You can surf this in longboard Guiones conditions, low energy, catch waves easy. And you can surf it at max Guiones and it will just fly. The glassing was done at Moonlight Glassing.
The flex you get from a good glass job that’s meant to give a little is absolutely worth the pressure marks.
[1:18:00] The Cocktail Side — Sound System, DJs, Listening Nights
Greg: My background before I moved out here — I had a restaurant and a cocktail bar in downtown New Orleans. I wanted to bring some of that cocktail culture here into the surf shop. I’ve always been into music, so I brought in my two Technics 1200s.
Rich: Would you do that again?
Greg: No. They got absolutely beat up on the way in. But they look really good and when it’s all said and done they’ll probably stay here because they just weigh too much. The mixer made it in alright. I put in a cool little boutique hi-fi audio setup so that whenever we watch films you get good sound, when we’re just listening to music you get good sound. We’ve been doing a listening night with an artist by the name of Carlos Saldana.
He’s not a DJ, not mixing records — just brings his curated vinyl selection. He brought in some Radiohead, some Beatles. Really eclectic. And then we have DJs — tomorrow night it’ll be some downbeat ambient, mushroom jazzy, slower, more sophisticated. On Thursdays, we have Juan, the cafe manager upstairs, who’s also deejayed for years out in San Jose. More of a deep house or minimal house vibe.
Greg: In the evening, what we’re going for is a surf culture arts club kind of place. Come in, have some cocktails, have a beer. We have a few different mocktails. I even made a point to bring in a non-alcoholic Bellini — that’s sparkling and pureed peach, but non-alcoholic. I’m 45. I’ve got a lot of friends that don’t drink anymore. I’m trying not to drink as much. Not too easy when you own a place like this. But I want people to be able to come in and have a non-alcoholic option because this is a healthy town.
[1:25:00] Russell Spencer’s Photography and the Art Wall Coming In
Greg: I saw this guy Russell Spencer — he had really cool abstract, superimposed fin images that were on the cover of The Surfer’s Journal a few years ago.
I wrote him an email: look, I’m opening this fin shop, I love your photography, I’d love to work with you in some capacity. We chatted for a year and a half, two years. He let me license a few of his photos from his double exposure project — all from the California Surf Museum.
We had them printed on the West Coast, had them signed. He signed them as editions of ten, numbered them. They’re in San Jose being framed right now. I’ll have one of each framed here at the shop — you can purchase them framed or unframed. I’ve always tried to put the art first, and I think you can build a business out of anything.
Rich: The end game — talk me through where this goes.
Greg: What I’d like to do is take it online. And there’s not one all-encompassing surf fin shop online — there are a few board warehouse-type places, but everyone’s doing their own thing. The goal is to create the central hub, and more for everybody. But I have to build it. I’m not some tech guy in San Francisco trying to crank out a surfing website. You have to live it. You have to be here, be surfing, have the beach life credibility — and then someone might patronize what you’re trying to do. The physical shop is the proof of concept.
Greg: Gut-wrenching as hell to be an entrepreneur, man. It’s been rough lately, straight up. I’ve been really stressed. But just lately I’m starting to see it turn the corner like it always does. You have to get through the difficult part. High season is here, waves will be small for a while, but come out of December — January, February starts getting bigger. That’s my ride up. Please come in, support the shapers, support the people in their backyards who are trying to make a living putting artistic surf fins out into the world.
Rich: I wish you the best, man. You and your family. The absolute best of luck.
Greg: All right. Thanks, man
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