In 1973 at 13 years old, Ricky Carroll shaped his first surfboard. With a remarkable understanding of board building, he then began what would be a lifetime development of craft and passion just six years later at the age of 19. Over time Ricky built his own brand, RC Surfboards, into an iconic East Coast name.

In 2004, Ricky met an up-and-coming surfer from Jacksonville named Justin Quintal who was the ripe age of 14 and their working relationship began. Justin quickly came up through ESA (Eastern Surfing Association) contests and eventually rose to the professional ranks when he was invited to enter the Duct Tape Invitational, a contest he would go on to win more of than any other surfer in history.

In 2016 Justin & Ricky officially launched Black Rose MFG and they have been making high quality, performance focused surfboards for nearly a decade. In 2019 Justin won the title as the WSL World Longboarding Champion. Equally as impressive Justin also holds a world record for catching the largest yellow mouth grouper in the world, which he caught right in his neighborhood of Mayport. Just another casual achievement on the long list of accolades for this exemplary Floridian. Justin also throws his own annual surf contest called the Lagerhead Classic which brings many notable individuals from the surf community down to Jacksonville Beach to ride and rage with their friends.

Here's some insight from Justin into the process of crafting the Black Rose Surfskate with Arbor:

“The surfskate is based off our Black Rose MFG. fish, the Sheepshead, although the design of the deck came out looking more like a mix between the Thin Liszy (our performance fish model) and the Sheepshead (our traditional keel style twin.) Once you get used to how loose the trucks are, it is a very easy board to ride; I approached it the same way I would surf one of our fishes and it translated very well to riding street. The Carver C7 trucks allow you to pump the board to create speed so don’t have to push as much as other cruisers. The board is fun to carve and slide on just like you would a twin fin fish. Regarding the colors, we kept true to the Black Rose MFG. look and aesthetic; we really wanted the board to give the rider the look and feel of riding a surfboard while skating.”

Arbor is proud to spotlight Black Rose MFG’s east coast surf legacy in our mini documentary “Trial + Error” filmed and edited by Carl Rosen.