Our Story So Far:BlackCraft Longboards began as an idea shared between 4 siblings over year ago and has grown into a small business that is preparing to hit the market with its first product line. It all started when NAME_1 had the idea to build a better longboard by going against the conventional longboard-making wisdom and using carbon fiber rather than maple wood plies. As avid longboarders, we could all immediately see the advantages of using carbon fiber over traditional wood. Because of its synthetic design and complete flexibility before curation, carbon fiber enables us to make a board that is not only stronger, lighter, and 100% waterproof, but also one that is completely shapeable to any curvature or concave we can imagine (a huge limitation with wooden models). The idea got us really excited, and we started looking into the reality of actually producing such a board on our own. To our surprise we only found a few garage-shop direct competitors, half of which weren't even located in the US. In the winter of 2016 we took the idea and ran with it. NAME_2 (then a senior in college) used the board as the flagship product of hypothetical company created for an entrepreneurship class at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. The company incorporated in February of 2016, and in a few months' time the siblings had drafted a rough 3D sketch of the board, conducted market research, organized a business plan with full-fledged marketing and entry-to-market strategies, secured a strategic partnership w