Mangrove Surf Company

This one's personal. I wanted to build something real and lasting, a brand and business to pass on to my son. A family legacy, starting from nothing, in a coastal-apparel market drowning in sameness. The bar wasn't "make another surf brand." It was, "build something with a soul you can't fake, and an operation a twenty-something and his future wife can actually run."

Range was the whole assignment — there was no team to hand pieces to. I did the business strategy and the model, the brand foundation and voice (Rooted in waves. Made for those who endure. — anchored in hope, not hype), the visual identity and design system, the e-commerce build, the marketing and the messaging, the launches and the collections. Every layer, from the P&L to the hang tag. Then I built the playbook and handed the keys to Cade — because the point was never for it to need me.

A complete direct-to-consumer brand: a Shopify storefront, a system of small-batch collections with real points of view, a content and email engine, and the Ripple Effect — 3% of every sale committed to mental health, foster families, and the coastal community we call home. Built so doing good is baked into the model, not bolted onto it. And the next chapter is the fun one: a hybrid retail space landing summer 2026 — a high-end surf shop and a craft coffee bar under one roof, a real-world home for the brand and the community around it.

A growing brand with a voice you can't manufacture, a store that runs, a cause stitched into every order, and — most of all — something my family made together. My son's leading it now, with his fiancée alongside him. That's the outcome I care about: not just a company, but something built to outlast me, run by the people I love most.