Signature Foils 2023 foil line up at the AWSI

OGs in the foiling world, Ivan and Nathan van Vuuren from Signature Foils talk our man Steve through their foil line-up at the recent AWSI event in Hood River.

For the full interview transcript, see below.

Steve:
Hi, I'm Steve with Foiling Magazine and I'm here with a couple legends of the sport, Ivan van Vuuren and his son Nathan from Signature Foils. And, look, you guys have been at the forefront of this since the beginning, putting out incredible foils since… You had the first high-aspect foils on the market before anybody knew what to do with them in the Albatross. And I haven't caught up with you guys in a while, so what's new at Signature? What have you been up to?

Ivan van Vuuren:
It's been a great few years, Steve, since we first started the pioneering stages. Now it's actually developed into a sport. We are at the AWSI, and it's crazy to see the development, innovation, and just so many new products on the market. But just getting back to the original days, we hooked up with Cliffy and he designed one of the early high aspects, as you mentioned. And, fortunately, that put us into the forefront right from the start and gave us a great platform to work off for Signature Foils, Signature Performance Gear. And a lot of more new gear in the market now but it's been a great adventure so far. Really, really good.

Steve:
So what foil do you like to ride at home? And then what foil do you like to ride in both prone surfing and then in winging?

Ivan van Vuuren:
Yeah, so me personally, I love the Game Changer, the one designed by Geoff Cox. He's a designer from New Zealand, one of our designers. And what I enjoy about it, it's a great all-around foil. I can wing on it, I can prone foil, I can sup, I can downwind, and it's just one of those foils that I can really do everything with. So that's me personally. Nate?

Steve:
Where does it fit in the universe? We've got high-aspect foils, we've got friendly foils. Where is it in that universe?

Ivan van Vuuren:
Yeah, so as far as the actual Game Changer, I would say it's more of a medium aspect. So you got full high aspect, you got low aspect, and the Game Changer kind of fits right in between. So, really, if I'm going to travel and take one foil somewhere, Steve, it's probably the Game Changer that I would take. Normally a 1260 would cover me for pretty much everything that I do. So the range was designed for intermediate to advanced riding. So, yeah, really all-around, really good foils.

Steve:
But where I live, we have some experts that are riding it too, so it's not just a-

Ivan van Vuuren:
That's a great thing. So yeah, if you're a beginner, I think that's a great thing with what you call the Game Changer 300. We call it the Big Daddy. I mean that thing just gets up and no matter what level you're at, if you're a big guy or you're just learning winging or supping or foiling, it's really just one of those foils that just gets you up. So very, very cool there.

Steve:
And then what do you like to ride?

Nathan van Vuuren:
I don't ride the big daddy 300. I generally stick to the slightly smaller Game Changer. Mostly riding the Game Changer when it comes to wing, prone foil. If I do a little bit more pumping in the waves, we might take an Albatross 165 square inch. That's amazing. But I've been sticking to the Game Changer 140 recently. Absolutely loving it.

Steve:
And then one last thing, you guys were early on having a variety of tails and also you've created this modular platform. So can you talk a little bit about the platform as well?

Ivan van Vuuren:
Yeah, so early days we got into the sport pretty quick with Cliffy as I mentioned, and it was just a one-piece fixed foil just to get something into market, and that exploded. And we took about a year off where we redesigned the whole setup and made it modular to make it obviously more compatible for traveling, and just more interchangeable for different parts. So the great thing is the foils, the current, the past, and the new ones that we are developing at the moment, are all interchangeable, full modular. And I think the great thing is we're trying to be, relative to where the market is now but as a foresight, where can we take the sport on the performance front, pioneering new grounds. So we've got some new innovations that we've been working on the last few years. And Nathan's helping on the design side now, which is very cool, alongside with Jeff and some of the designers we work with around the world. So the future's looking good, so past, current, to where we're going, pretty exciting.

Steve:
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you guys.

Ivan van Vuuren:
Awesome. Thanks guys.