ABOUT
Johnny Cabianca
The story of Cabianca Surfboards begins in the late 1970s, when a young Johnny Cabianca first discovered a passion for surfing on the beaches close to his hometown of São Paulo, Brazil.
With that love for surfing came a greater talent for design, and so Johnny began his shaping journey, starting with his own Summer Birds label. After gaining a college diploma in industrial design, Johnny began his long and steady ascent through the global shaping ranks, spending the next three decades learning from and working alongside iconic shapers in Hawaii, Brazil and Europe.
But the story of Cabianca’s most notable collaboration begins in 1997, when he shaped a funboard for a four year-old from the nearby surf beach of Maresias. In 2009 the partnership began for real when Gabriel Medina, by now a sixteen-year-old phenom, burst onto the international scene by winning the King of the Groms contest – surfing his first Cabianca shortboard. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, that little grom is a 3-time WSL world champion, and his DFK 2.0 and Medina pro models are our top-selling boards.
In 2016, armed with an unrivalled technical mastery of the craft, Johnny opened his own shaping and research facility in Zarautz, Spain. The Basque Country Surf Company was born, and it is here where Johnny mostly spends his days, tirelessly honing his craft to perfection.
Today, Cabianca Surfboards are manufactured to the highest standards in Europe, Australia, Indonesia and Brazil, with regional distributions in Korea, Israel, Morocco, Taiwan and Japan. Wherever you are in the world, whatever kind of wave you surf, you too can have a Cabianca custom shaped and delivered to your door.
ABOUT
The Factory
Located in Zarautz in the heart of the Basque Country, our shaping facility and R&D centre is where most of Johnny’s work happens – testing, refining, and producing boards for surfers around the world. If you’re ever passing through, stop by the showroom to see the latest models or talk boards with Johnny directly.
