Patrice Guenolé

Last Name: GUENOLE
First Name: Patrice – l’Ours
Height (m): 1,86m.
Weight (kg): 96 kg.
Profession: owner / shaper at GONG.
Preferred discipline: all around surfing something.
Best Tricks: 360° tordus.
Other practices : all watersports !
Competitions: windsurf, longboard & SUP.
Nb of days on the water per year: minimum 300 ++.
Home Spot: le Blue Wave, pointe du Bec, le large.
Travel Spots: wherever it works.
Favourite meal: everything but nothing complicated.
Favourite music: depends of the mood.

Quote: “Fire burns and water wets!”

“Fire burns and water wets!”

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The Life of l’Ours (The Bear)

The story of GONG is closely intertwined with that of the l’Ours, as the elements of his life deeply influence the brand.

**Warning:** Highly soporific content 😉 Brave souls only 😉

Since 2008, Patrice Guénolé has been the driving force behind GONG's development.

As a young shaper at 12, using whatever materials he had, the Bear has always been a handyman. With limited means, he salvaged foam from old boards to shape surfboards in a corner of the garage.

At 13, he started working after school at Holywind surf shop, unpacking boards, mounting straps, and taking out the trash. Eight francs an hour, but the joy of handling all that expensive equipment was priceless.

At 17, while still in school, he worked as a salesman at Holywind and began competing in windsurfing and surfing. He was the only one in Europe to compete at a high level in both sports, attracting some welcome sponsors.

His first competition was the Fundoor in Paris Bercy for windsurfing. Thanks to Alain Pichavant, Patrice got a big boost, despite never having started a race before! He then continued to race in windsurfing, specializing in lightwind funboard with ever-larger rigs and more performant boards, sailing when no one else could.

He also excelled in wave sailing. He was among the first in France to perform frontloops and attempt double frontloops.

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His first competition was the Fundoor de Paris Bercy windsurfing competition.

In surfing, he hailed from a lesser-known region of southern Brittany. For five years, he won every longboard competition he entered below the national level, from the North to Charente. He also made notable appearances at the Lacanau Pro and the Biarritz Surf Festival. His specialty was future moves: 360s from the front, tail slashes, etc., which often landed him in the top five during expression sessions.

He spent several years with the world's best surfers, competing heat after heat. He consistently developed futuristic boards and an approach that diverged from the standard. He was among the first to surf sandwich PVC boards without battens, with extreme widths and precise fins.

However, competition wasn't his thing. As a sore loser who wasn't keen on following rules and preferred to keep to himself, he earned the nickname "l’Ours” (‘The Bear’ in english). He abstained from alcohol and parties, always focusing on equipment and meticulously examining every detail, thus remaining on the sidelines of the competition scene.

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He systematically develops futuristic boards and a non-standard approach.

At 19, Ace offered him a job as a windsurf tester and surfboard developer. Fred Meunier (former Holywind shaper) and Pascal Trimoreau gave him the opportunity to develop hundreds of boards and participate in development programs for racing and series.

Diligently, Patrice tested everything and proposed new ideas. They released the first large series wave board with the Ace 272. With Stéphane Mocher, head of Select, they were the first to work on the concept of wide windsurf boards, well before others, with the Ace 312. Stéphane and Fred sent him to Hawaii to develop the ranges, test the fins, etc.

It was with Fred Meunier at Ace that they created the first GONG shapes for Magic Surf. Fred, a true legend in shaping, a very precise and demanding guy, taught him the rigour of shaping, the precision of a beautiful line, and gave him a keen eye. The Ace workshop was at the heart of high-level innovation in shapes. It was also a significant technological reference with highly specialized expertise in composites. They innovated with wood veneer reinforcement on the deck of EPS foam boards, for example, but they were especially meticulous about the quality of each production step, a principle that Patrice always maintained.

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Hawaii provided an opportunity for him to develop a taste for big waves. As a solitary shorebreak surfer, he had to learn to fight for waves, but he was present in all sessions, including the biggest ones. His strengths were clearly his physical condition, linked to exemplary preparation, and the feeling he got from gliding on small waves. Back in France, he enjoyed some epic sessions in Guéthary and in the outer regions of his home.

At 17, Patrice paddled with Guillaume Vielliard "offshore" on his longboard towards an unsurfed wave. 4 km from shore, a wave with an Indonesian shape broke, sometimes massive for the region. Patrice made it his home spot, paddling even at night or in thick fog to access it on big days. He almost lost his life there due to the treacherous reef.

However, the thrill of discovering the ultimate wave of his region was worth it. Sometimes brought back by stunned fishermen; sometimes on the verge of exhaustion against the wind and the estuary current after 6 hours of surfing, he learned there what surfing truly means: the quest. Paddling 8 hours straight offshore independently and throwing oneself into a bowl on 20cm of water that propels you into a hollow and long wave. It's not Hawaii, but it's exceptional nonetheless.

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At 23, he faced a turning point. Continue on this path or seek something else. Spending his life in workshops working on technologies, new shapes, and new ideas was great, but it barely paid the bills due to the decline of windsurfing. Patrice eventually quit everything to finally take his high school diploma as an independent candidate. Working as a nightclub bouncer to surf during the day, his physique and high level in boxing helped him survive fights with minimal damage. He emerged from this period with a darker view of humanity and an ability to push to the end of tensions without backing down, which proved useful later in China, for example.

He obtained the diploma with 10.02 points without really sleeping for a week! Working at the club from 10 pm to 6 am, and exams starting at 8 am. Not very glorious, but it was a wake-up call. He moved on to sports science to simplify things. A workaholic, he attended the first year of medicine, the DEUG in sociology, and psychology to take the courses that interested him. Always at the top of the class, he achieved record scores. Then he pursued a bachelor's degree in sports management and a postgraduate diploma in management at CNAM in parallel in the evening. His goal was to catch up on lost time by acquiring the tools he would need in his professional life from each discipline. When you work nights, you know what you come to school for during the day! And it's not just diplomas, but actual skills to give yourself a chance.

Holywind then asked him for help to boost the shop after the Erika oil spill. With Alain Clémenti, they improved the shop's performance. A few months later, Patrice met his future wife at Holywind, who lived in Corsica, and everything accelerated. Xavier Rolland, a former Holywind salesman and Bic Sport sales rep, informed him of a job in Marseille at H2O, the company managing the 80 stores of the Magic Surf and Subchandlers networks in Europe. Patrice was hired as an assistant, earned an MBA, and in three years took over as the Group's Director alongside Thierry Dumon, CEO of the H2O Group.

They redeveloped GONG in 2003, owned by Magic Surf, as one of the fifteen proprietary brands of the group. It was a flamboyant era, one of audacity and excess. Multiple trips to the USA, Hawaii, to factories, everything was possible due to the substantial resources available. The week at headquarters in Marseille, weekends in Corsica, it was an electrifying period that opened the doors to projects of a different scale than what Patrice had previously experienced. A son of workers and grandson of farmers, entering this world of opulence was a shock.

Everything was possible. Investing, inventing, overturning, the directive was to take control of the market. A vast subject, a bit megalomaniacal, but it shook up the major market balances to build two beautiful store networks. Patrice had been in retail since his early teens. He gave them everything he could to turn these two store networks into heavyweights in the global surfing market.

However, the 2008 crisis put an end to it all. Finances were bad despite multiple recovery plans. The behaviors of some team members were exposed; it was disillusionment and the end of a dream. Shareholders grew tired and decided to end the story. 90 layoffs to manage, including his and those of his closest collaborators: a truly unpleasant period that marked the end of a twenty-year relationship with the stores.

Before leaving, he bought back GONG before leaving Marseille for Corsica. To isolate himself, the island, to start over. The dismantling of the H2O Group exposed the worst sharks: theft of our molds, plundering of the image, identity theft to recover productions... GONG was not spared the worst. It must be said that the brand had polarized by creating envy and hatred. This misstep fueled forums and beach discussions, spreading the worst lies for years.

But from Corsica, Patrice rebuilt his empire stone by stone. First, by opening his workshop in the Bastia hill, facing Elbe in the blue. Alone but with his friends around Jean Valère Bordenave, he restarted a small production of very advanced SUP prototypes. These were the first ShortSUPs under 6', then under 5'. Ideas flourished in this lifesaving isolation for the reconstruction of GONG. With the brand image suffering, it was the ideal time to show the true foundations of GONG: the passion for shaping and surfing.

A small series production returned in 2010. Sales accelerated significantly in 2011: the series stock was moved to La Baule with the hiring of David. Then Fred and the others followed. It took four years to recover from the 2008 drop.

In 2016, Patrice definitively returned to La Baule. No more Corsica and its almost total freedom, but GONG had become so big that the boss needed to be there full time. The acceleration continued to reach the current situation: a great company that satisfies thousands of customers worldwide.

Always focused on shapes and products, Patrice found an exciting business at the scale of H2O, and its potential is still ten times greater. Creating products, jobs, a team, desires, passions, intense moments of joy, life in the ocean, sharing on a large scale, this is Patrice’s daily life nowadays.