About Us – ecoPro
Driven by Nature.
We build cork traction pads that grip harder, last longer, and cost the planet nothing extra.
Our story
ecoPro started with a piece of cork.
Working on a design project, one material kept standing out: cork. Light, naturally waterproof, used since the Romans — a raw material Portugal has refined for centuries. The potential was impossible to ignore. So the question wrote itself: why not build a traction pad from it?
It had never been done. Every traction pad on the market is EVA foam — a petroleum product. The landfill it ends up in when it peels off your board is only half the story. The bigger problem happens earlier, mostly out of sight in factories across Asia: EVA production generates huge volumes of scrap and dust, far more than most people imagine, with little visibility into where any of it goes.
Cork was the opposite in every way. So we started close to the source — on a workbench in Porto, a few hundred kilometres from Portugal’s cork-producing heartland — and built the world’s first cork traction pad.
The founder
ecoPro is the work of Ruben Verdadeiro — Azorean-born, surfing since he was 13, trained in Design in Porto. It began as a design project, but the material turned it into an engineering one: nobody knew how to make cork behave like a traction pad. So he started from the cork itself, working his way from design into engineering until it did — designing the pad, building the production process from scratch, and filing the patent under his own name.
Driven by nature was never just a tagline. It’s the reason the pad exists.
The mark
Our logo is a tree, built from hexagons — the same honeycomb structure you’ll find inside a slice of cork. Cork cells, stacked into the shape of the oak they came from.
It’s not decoration. It’s the whole idea, drawn in one line.
Our timeline
–2015 — The first prototype. The idea leaves the workshop bench and becomes a real, ridable pad.
–2016 — The patent, the name, the mark. We quietly file an international patent application for our cork traction pad, and keep it under wraps while it moves through confidential review. Meanwhile, the ecoPro brand is born — a hexagonal mark stylised into a tree, the “Driven by Nature” signature, and the first decks off the new production line.
–2017 — Going official. The patent publishes, the wraps come off, ecopro.com.pt goes live, and the first commercial orders ship.
–2018 — ISPO finalist. ecoPro reaches the finals of the ISPO BrandNew Award in Munich, Accessories category — one of the biggest stages in sports gear.
–2019 — Winner, German Design Award. ecoPro takes the win in the Excellent Product Design — Sports, Outdoor Activities and Leisure category, one of the most respected design honours in the world.
Same method today as in 2015: one solid piece of cork per pad, no shortcuts.
Why cork
Cork isn’t a compromise — it’s an upgrade.
–It grips. Cork’s cellular structure — millions of tiny air-filled honeycombs — bites into wax and wet feet better than foam ever could.
–It lasts. Our pads are built UniBody, from one solid piece of cork agglomerate, for a bond and durability that outlasts the board itself.
–It’s organic. The cork oak is the only tree whose bark regenerates across its 250-year lifetime, harvested by hand around 15 times — without ever cutting the tree down. No forest lost, ever.
–It’s reclaimed. Our cork agglomerate is made from the leftovers of the wine-stopper industry — the shavings, offcuts, and bark that don’t make the cut for corks. No new cork forest consumed, just material that already existed, put to better use.
–It gives back. Cork forests lock away over 20 million tonnes of CO2, generate oxygen, fight desertification, and shelter endangered species like the Iberian lynx and Iberian eagle. Every pad we sell stands on that.
How it’s made
We source our cork from the forests of mainland Portugal. What started on a workbench in Porto now happens in the Azores, on a production process we engineered ourselves — purpose-built machinery, and an internationally published patent (PCT) behind how we turn cork into a working traction pad, built for traction, comfort, and robustness in equal measure.
Nothing is wasted. Nothing is generic. Every ecoPro pad is one solid piece of nature, shaped to perform.
What drives us
We’re not chasing “less bad.” We’re building the eco performance standard the surf industry hasn’t gotten to yet — gear that works harder than what it replaces, made from a material nature already perfected.
Give something special.
