New board hits sure break

Riding high: Hayden Cox’s FibreFlex Technology has made him an entrepreneur.

Hayden Cox has been shaping surfboards since he was just a grommet. As a 15-year-old with no money and in need of a new surfboard, he visited a local factory in Sydney’s northern beaches suburb of Mona Vale and pleaded for work experience and the chance to shape his own board. “From there, I started shaping boards for guys at school and teachers,” he says. “Before I knew it I was doing 10 boards a month.”

It was a hobby and passion that turned him into a businessman. But it is his patented FibreFlex Technology, that has shown him to be an entrepreneur.

Click here to watch a BRW TV chat with surfing entrepreneur Hayden Cox.

After graduating from high school, Cox lived the dream, working a part-time job, surfing a lot and shaping boards for friends. He also spent some time in Bali. “I would fly in and spend a month or two and surf and shape every day. It was almost my dream, there were no overheads and no responsibility.”

Cox had begun to get busy shaping boards and with the help of his brother and brother-in-law, an accountant and an engineer, he set up a small factory. He borrowed $20,000 and established Haydenshapes in 2004.

Once the early issues with the business were ironed out, Cox was after a new challenge. He gave himself a design brief for a new technology for building boards. The process took about three years but “after the first surf” Cox was convinced of the potential of FibreFlex. “You know straight away if a board feels good or bad,” he says. “I had one surf went straight back into the office and sorted out a patent.”

Cox’s patented technology is a parabolic carbon fibre frame – “that’s the frame of carbon around the rail of the surfboard,” he says. “That creates the flex of the surfboard.”

The carbon fibre frame is combined with a core made of foam (traditionally surfboards would have wood running down the centre of the board but FibreFlex avoids this) and the whole package is covered with an epoxy laminate.

“When you’re going across the wave, the board gets you speed a lot easier,” Cox explains.

He initially continued shaping under the Haydenshapes brand, incorporating the new technology. The take-up surprised Cox. “I had a product that was in demand very quickly. I had to try to handle growth in manufacturing, going from doing 10 boards a week to 80 a week.”

Cash flow was tight and Cox had to lean on suppliers and staff, but the technology had the surfing community talking. Under a new company, FibreFlex International, Cox began licensing the use of his technology to top shapers around the globe.

His factory in Mona Vale would send a “blank” board that the shapers could customise.

By 2010, Cox was manufacturing 150-200 of the FibreFlex blanks and had revenue of about $3 million. His success caught the attention of telecommunications company Nokia, and he was one of seven Australian entrepreneurs featured in the online book In Hindsight.

His latest step will see the technology picked up around the world. He has signed an agreement with Global Surf Industries for the use of FibreFlex for mass production from factories in Thailand. “They sell to 58 countries and sell to over 80 per cent of the coastline around the globe,” he says.

Cox’s one concern about the deal is ensuring the FibreFlex brand is not sullied by high-volume production.

“Global Surf Industries are good at manufacturing but one of their weaknesses is their marketing,” he says.

To maintain the brand’s image, Cox will continue to manufacture locally, catering to the customised end of the market.

“The custom board will become more expensive, more niche, but there’s guys out there that want to interact with you and have that feedback and that brand interaction.”

See FibreFlex Technology in action and hear more from Hayden Cox. Watch BRW TV on the web.

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