With eye on year-round adventure, Paddle Mystic rebrands and opens new shop
Mystic — Paddle Mystic has rebranded as Adventure Mystic, and with a retail store that opened on Wednesday, it is breaking into the business of boards used on surfaces other than water.
For the past three years, Jeff Jodoin has operated Paddle Mystic behind 15 Holmes St., offering paddleboard, kayak and bike rentals and sales from May through September.
"Every day people were looking for hats and sunglasses and suntan lotion and everything else," he said. Jodoin saw this as an opportunity to sell equipment for year-round adventure sports.
The Mystic resident on Wednesday opened his 500-square-foot Adventure Mystic retail store at 15 Holmes St., between Lis Bake Shop and Karma Kitchen. It sells not only paddleboards and kayaks, but also snowboards, snow apparel, skateboards, beach cruiser bikes and Strider balance bikes for kids.
Lest anyone associate the store only with summertime fun, Jodoin has an as-yet-unnamed mascot of an adult-human-sized yeti wearing snowboard goggles.
In the spring, he will swap out snowboarding gear for skimboards, shorts and flip-flops.
While there are some people who are partial to warm-weather sports, Jodoin said there is a lot of crossover between people who enjoy paddleboarding and snowboarding.
Jodoin has past retail experience from operating a skate shop in Groton in the late '90s, and a surf shop in Misquamicut. The brands he is selling now include Arbor snowboards, Yolo and Surftech paddleboards, paddles from Kialoa and skateboards from Santa Cruz and Alien Workshop.
Adventure Mystic will continue to offer lessons, tours, private parties and summer camp for kids.
Along with rebranding and opening the new store, Jodoin is focused on growing the summer camp and will be extending it from 1.5 hours to a half-day. He also is adding an "Adventure Camp" that will not focus on a single water sport but include paddle boarding, kayaking, hiking and visiting historic sites in Mystic.
Jodoin is a Groton native who purchased his first stand-up paddleboard six years ago and then became a certified coach through PaddleFit.
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