Our new name, Kingfisher Paddleventures, is now 100% live! Sure, we’ve been here for a bit, kinda simmering on the back burner, but now we’ve turned the heat on high! Our official transition to Kingfisher Paddleventures from SSI SUP/Saint Simons Paddleboard & Kayak  has begun. Over the next year, we’ll phase out all things SSI SUP and move entirely to Kingfisher.

From now on, all of our business will be conducted using this web site and new name, Kingfisher Paddleventures. Our social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, etc.) are all kfpaddle. Things are sleek, streamlined, and ready to go! No more trying to remember long names, weird abbreviations, or whether there’s an underscore in our name.

Anything and everything SSI SUP or Saint Simons Paddleboard & Kayak is now in one place with a new name that makes more sense in relation to what we do, where we work, and who we are. We are Kingfisher Paddleventures, and this change is very exciting for us. We’re proud to be making this transition to Kingfisher Paddleventures, and we hope that you’ll join us for the journey – both figuratively and literally.

Why the change to a new name?

1. We outgrew the old name.
   “SSI SUP” didn’t fit us anymore, and Kingfisher Paddleventures is “more us.”We serve more than St. Simons.
   We’re no longer “just” on St. Simons Island. We serve all of the Golden Isles, meaning that we serve people on Jekyll Island, St. Simons Island, Little St. Simons Island, Sea Island, and Brunswick. Heck, we even venture as far as Darien and Sapelo to the north and down to Amelia Island and the Okefenokee Swamp to our south (but only rarely).
   We do more than paddleboards.
   We’re not “only” a paddleboard company anymore, either. In addition to paddleboards, we also have kayaks. Within the next year or so, we’ll probably also add some other types of watercraft to product line, too. More on that later.
2. Kingfishers are cool and invoke the ecological aspects of what we do.
   We are really, really proud of our ecotours, and we want people to associate with us nature/ecotourism. So, we picked a bird, the kingfisher, for our mascot and our namesake. Kingfishers are found throughout the world near water and are a common sight for many paddlers. They hunt for fish and put on impressive aerial displays, and they’re just pretty to look at. Given their many fine qualities and the being relevant to water-based ecotourism, they were a natural choice (pun intended!).
3. “Paddleventures” captures what we do, too.
   All of our watercraft – paddleboards and kayaks, for the time being – require you to paddle. And, for many, our excursions are an “adventure.” So, paddle+adventure=paddleventure.
   It turns out we’re not the only company out there to land on the same made-up word, and a small handful of other really cool ecotourism businesses also use paddleventure in their name. We like to think that we came up with the idea first, but that’s probably not true.
4. “SSI” was confusing to many people.
   Not familiar with the Golden Isles and the local nicknames for places around here? Don’t worry, it took us a while to get used to local names, too. One local name you hear a lot – and might already know if you watch bumper stickers – is “SSI.” SSI is short for Saint Simons Island, but if you’re not a regular /resident around these parts, you wouldn’t know that. As a business that caters to tourists, many who are visiting here for the first time, it’s not the best idea to have an abbreviation like that in your name.
5. “SUP” confused people too.
   Remember what I just said about tourists visiting here for their first time? Well, many of them are new to the sport of paddleboarding too. Consequently, jargon like “SUP” leaves them out in the cold, sorta like when we were all in high school and the cool kids had their own lingo that reinforced the “them” v. “us” cliquishness of our teenage years. As a company that wants to include everyone and invite new people to the sport, we decided to do away with the abbreviation. Now, with “paddleventures,” what we do is a little more evident.
6. We feel like changing to the new name somehow makes the company more “ours.”
   This one might be a little silly, but so be it. Our emotional sense of ownership means a lot to us because we pour our heart and soul into what we do. We want the new name of our company to reflect who we are and what we do, not someone else’s vision or idea.
   Don’t get me wrong: the people we bought the company from are really nice folks who we like a lot. And they built a company that we were happy to buy. It’s just time for us to emerge from their shadow and grow tall on our own.

We hope that you’re as excited about the future as we are! We can’t wait to see where our path leads as we move forward, and we would love to have you all join us on our journey.