Why we started
I'd been on the water for about a decade before any of this started. Rivers, lakes, ocean. The boards I could buy off the shelf were good for one thing and bad at everything else. If you wanted a board that could handle a flat lake on Tuesday and a moving river on Saturday, you were out of luck.
So in 2011, my brother Nick and I started taking notes. Materials, shapes, rocker, rail profiles, pump specs. By 2012 we'd built our first boards. Not for a market. For us.
The company that grew out of those boards wasn't supposed to be a company at first. People paddled them, asked where we got them, and we kept building more. Word of mouth carried it until it had to become something formal. We named it Hydrus.
"We built boards we'd actually paddle. The only test that matters."
What we built
Hydrus is direct-to-consumer. We design the boards, test every batch on Idaho water, and ship them to you. No retailers. There's no shop in your town. There's no rep marking up your board so they can earn a commission. You buy from us, you talk to us, and the price you pay is the price the board costs.
We make boards, paddles, fins, pumps, repair kits, and the parts to keep all of it running. Inflatable boards are designed and tested in Eagle, Idaho. Our Armalight hard boards are built 100% in Idaho. The materials are the highest grade we can source. The seams are machine-welded. The construction is built for a decade of use, not a season.
The thing we say out loud that most paddleboard companies don't: if you want a Hydrus and we know it's not the right board for you, we'll tell you. We'd rather lose the sale than send you home with a board you'll fight for the next two years. Helping you choose well is the whole job. Selling you a board is what happens after.
"Helping you choose well is the whole job. Selling you a board is what happens after."
Nick
Co-founder · 1976–2021
My brother Nick co-founded Hydrus with me in 2012. He was an engineer with a paddler's instincts and a builder's patience, and he co-invented the construction approach that became Armalight. Half of what's good about a Hydrus board has his fingerprints on it.
We lost Nick on the Main Payette in 2021. He was wearing his gear and paddling the way he always did. The river took him anyway. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and to this company.
The way we honor him is the way he'd want: keep building boards that earn their keep, give back to the communities he loved, and paddle the way he taught us. Paddle Like Nick is more than a phrase. It's how we run the business. Three percent of every Hydrus sale goes to environmental and humanitarian work in his memory. Read more about Nick →
Fourteen years in
Hydrus is still small. Still founder-led. Still answering the phone (and the texts). My partner Angela runs customer experience and writes about half of our Learning Center content. Michelle runs creative and is part of our hard-board shaping team. The four of us, three living and one honored, are the company.
We've shipped boards to thousands of paddlers since 2012. The same lifetime warranty applies to every board that's left our hands. The same phone number reaches a real person. If you have a question about a Hydrus board, you can text the founder. That's not a marketing line. That's still how this works.
What we've built is a small company that takes paddling seriously. What we want next is to keep doing that. Browse the boards, read the Learning Center, or text us a question. We'll answer.