You might be wondering how FreeRideDesign first come about, well lucky for you i'm about to take you on a ride through time as we explore not only the personality behind it all but the journey that took place to get the company where we are today.
Well first and foremost I’m Joshua Cordwell the founder and self-proclaimed backbone of freeride surfboard design co. From a young age growing up along Sydney’s Northern Beaches, I spent lots of time admiring the shape and designs of surfboards.
As i grew older, i turned his admiration into a passion and had my mind set towards making it a career. It was at the age of only 16 years old I started designing and shaping my own branded surfboards under the brand name CordwellDesigns and selling them from my parents’ garage to friends and family. The little workshop in my garage was all I had going for me for a solid 12 months until a mate’s dad asked me to supply some boards for an upcoming local competition. This opportunity alone is what I will forever claim as where it all really began, from this one event I had order after order streaming in everyday and had 3 well known surf stores in my area asking if I would be interested in stocking some boards with them for a trial to see how sales would go.
By this stage I was 17, coming up to the end of year 11 in high school, and had to make the decision to either complete my HSC or throw all caution to the wind and follow my dreams as it was becoming what felt like impossible to achieve both at the same time. After a long talk with my parents and having to explain in excruciating detail my “business plan” that me, a 17 year old who at this point had just got lucky did not really have; it was eventually decided that they would support my decision to leave school and help me set up my very own little store.
At this point in my life I didn’t realise this stingy little store in the back streets of Manly would be the first of 14 stores across Australia. I worked endlessly to get the shop fit out exactly right, to have the best of the best boards on display for my opening day, I even decided that CordwellDesigns just didn’t feel right, I needed something more catchy, more intriguing. I wanted it to be personal but also be able to mean something to my customers if questioned. That’s when the name ‘FreeRide’ come to life, as I’m not the biggest fan of competing, so in essence I only like to FreeRide; smart right? I thought so.
Finally opening day come around, 20/01/2015 to be exact, to say this was the most nerve-racking day of my life would be an absolute understatement. I had not slept for even a single second the night before due to racing thoughts and anxieties I had never even considered; “what if no one is interested?”, “what if it flops?”, “what if I’m a laughingstock?”. I even triple checked at 3am that my friends were coming and bringing their family, just so I had a crowd, just so it looked like I had already drawn interest.
By 10am opening day every single doubt I had for myself and for my business had left my mind and I was unbelievably hyped up on all the locals telling me how impressed they were. Every second person told me how they know someone who knows someone who could help me do big things for my brand, and honestly who would I be to not take every word they said for gospel? I remember this day so vividly, explaining to people what my goal were in the long term, and even took 5 orders that day.
But… when I say nothing could prepare me for this moment, I cannot express enough at how gobsmacked I was to turn around to see Mick Fanning walking through MY shop doors. As embarrassing as it is to admit these days because he’s a good mate and a loyal client, I genuinely forgot how to breath when he was first in my presence.
He walked straight up to me and shook my hand and told me exactly word for word “how bloody good it is to see young minds creating what could one day be an empire”. This as you can probably imagine at this point put my already hugely inflated ego right up to maximum egotistical level. I remember the feeling of my heart dropping as he told me that his cousin had ridden one of my boards at the surf comp I supplied for and gave a fantastic review and he would personally like to try one out for himself for an upcoming event.
We chatted for a while and I took his order, gave him my business ideas speech and then trying to hold my composure thanked him for his business as if he was just an everyday customer and not one of my idols?? Truth be told I still don’t know how I managed that.
I traded at my manly store for the next 18months, trying to work out fool proof plans of how to expand my business without getting too ahead of myself at the same time.
It was around this time that a regular client brought up with me that they knew of a store going on the market in Newcastle, NSW and it would be a perfect little set up for a second FreeRide store. Something felt right in my heart, I felt this this was an opportunity I needed to look into; so that same day I called the agent for that store and was in the car up to Newcastle to see if it really was the right fit for my vision.
On arrival I instantly knew I wanted it to be mine, it was in a side street just on the side of Newcastle’s main beach and apart of the Newcastle mall. The set up was exactly how I wanted it to be fitted out and even had room for extra stock to be put out on the floor.
After a couple of calls and some calculations it was decided, it was going to be the second store of the FreeRide chain to come.
Once all my stock was moved into the Newcastle store and we had officially opened I decided I would like to use this store and its extra space as an experiment, to see how FreeRide would benefit from not only designing and selling surfboards but to designing and stocking other items such as wetsuits, leg ropes, tail pads, fins and even board covers.
This was one of my better decisions I have ever made if I do say so myself, this boosted the numbers in not only the sales department but in general enquiry’s and the website interest skyrocketed.
Since the decision to open the Newcastle store, I have made that decision 12 more times over the last 4 years expanding all the way over to Western Australia. Of course I have had hiccups along the way, hell sometimes I even felt like just throwing my hands up and walking away from it all, but I didn’t, I stuck to my business because I started it off the belief that I could make it, that I would be under some definition a success; and you know what? I will sit here head held high and say I am a success, not because my store ended up doing well, simply because I never gave up or switched up the vision for the end result because I thought it would get me somewhere faster. No, I stayed true to my core beliefs and I STILL MADE IT!!!
These days I float about all different locations, training staff and making sure that they are putting across the true definition of what it means to be part of the FreeRide community. I am apart of many organisations that are built for the little man, the people like me 4 years ago that have a dream and a goal but may need a little help achieving it. I’m the helping hand, the industry expert that people can rely on because they know that what I’m saying, is what I did; and hey it worked didn’t it?
Comments