If you were to design the ideal pedigree for a surfboard shaper it would look a lot like Adam “Sparrow” Fletcher’s CV. Up and coming competitive grommet and running mate with the celebrated Cooly Kids, Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson in the ‘90s. Apprentice and factory grom for shapers to the stars Darren Handley and Jason Stevenson in the early 2000s, Sparrow was soon developing his own shapes, brand and following among the better young surfers around Coolangatta.

“Sean Fanning was my best mate, and we grew up at Mick’s house. We called ourselves CK7 (Cooly Kids 7). We just surfed all day, all the boards got left up at Mick’s,” says Sparrow, of those halcyon grommet days.

But tragedy struck when Mick’s older brother Sean and his friend Joel Green were killed in a car accident, forcing the Cooly Kids to grow up fast. “We went through the tragic thing of Sean’s death, which really makes you think about what you want to be doing with your life,” says Sparrow. “I was getting free boards. Darren used to pay my entry fees, and help with sponsors, and making my boards but the results didn’t come. The best I got was a quarter final and it became apparent I needed to get a job. I was a year older than Mick and Parko and got thrown straight into the work force. Darren gave me a job and it kind of exploded from there.”

At the time, a Japanese distributor was looking for a young up and coming shaper to produce high performance boards at an affordable price point and Sparrow was in the right place at the right time to seize the opportunity and the Sparrow brand was born. When Darren Handley joined a collective of Australia’s top shapers at BASE, Sparrow went along for the ride, working with the likes of Simon Anderson and Murray Bourton, in one of the most sophisticated surfboard operations in the country.