Spooked Kooks are an eco-surf brand based out of Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach. They manufacture softboards from 100% recycled material. Softboards, as the name suggests, are surfboards designed with a soft top. This creates more buoyancy in the water for those just starting out and reduces the impact of surf collisions that are bound to occur at crowded metropolitan beaches.

Established in 2017 by surfing Kiwi mates, Tom and Ru, Spooked Kooks has ridden the wave of the softboard sector’s growing popularity and surf consumers’ desire to reduce their carbon footprint and impact on the environment. Partnering with Plastic Bank to source waste from oceans, rivers and waterways, they have helped to remove nearly 8 tonnes of plastic from the environment.

Made with 100% recycled post-consumer plastic waste, the boards certainly don’t make any sacrifices when it comes to performance, aesthetics or durability. They have a diverse range of products to accommodate all skill levels and come in a variety of cool pastel colours. Whether you’re a novice just trying to catch your first wave or can shred with the best of them, Spooked Kooks has something for you. Plus, the product’s packaging is all cardboard and recyclable/degradable materials – not a lick of shrink wrapping in sight.

Their ecological endeavours don’t stop at their core product either. For every purchase, they plant a Mangrove tree via their carbon offset partner, Sea Trees. Mangrove trees are among the best sequesters of CO2 on the planet. With each tree removing more than 300kg of CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere over its lifetime.

“Our core mission flows through our overall approach, from looking at ways we can integrate other recycled materials and sustainable non-plastic materials into our boards, to ways we can improve our manufacturing process, packaging and products to minimise the amount of new plastic used and waste created.”

The combination of Spooked Kooks’ great product and ecological impact has seen them expand into multiple geographies. With their boards now available in Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK and across Europe. The journey to get to this point has been steeped in quick learnings and adapting on the fly – a narrative that many entrepreneurs are all too familiar with.

Building such an amazing product did not come without its own unique set of challenges. Sourcing the right materials, overcoming technology issues, finding a manufacturer that aligned with their ethos and could produce the goods, funding the project and all the while maintaining acceptable unit economics to make the product viable in market. And then, even once you have a viable product, there’s still the day-to-day operations of running a growing business – which the founders were still quite new at.

To minimise the workload and focus on their core offering, the team decided to outsource what needn’t be handled by their small albeit agile team. Starting with marketing and lead generation through a local agency.

Another area where the company required some additional support was their bookkeeping and operational accounting. Why spend time balancing the books when you can be working on your business (or your backhand barrel technique)? Enlisting Aretex as their accounting partner, they have been able to rest assured that cash flow and inventory are accurately managed, BAS is lodged on time every time and they have 100% transparency on the financial position of their business in real-time. Empowering them to make informed business decisions that help them grow in the right direction.

To learn more about Spooked Kooks’ incredible story and eco-friendly surf hardware, check out their website.

If you’d like to discuss how Aretex can have a profound impact on your growing business too, contact us here.

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