Clayton started shaping in 1994 as an apprentice at Safari Surfboards, where he learned every detail of surfboard design from shaping to spraying. He was then tutored by Baron Stander where he honed his shaping skills and started testing new shapes and designs. Clayton is a surfer himself, and a good one. He surfed competitively for several years, and his personal experiments and the constant testing of his shapes makes him one of South Africa’s most innovative surfboard shapers.