The WZ Story
The History of Wave Zone Surf Company
In 2022 founder and original owner of Wave Zone, Jeff Shinham, retired along side his wife and co-founder Lisa Shinham, but not until Jeff found the ideal candidate to keep Wave Zone at the top of its game. After a year of interviews he looked for a candidate who had the unique combination of production floor and business management savvy. In June, Wave Zone was sold to Steve Shalosky. Steve has held a variety of corporate positions in specialties ranging from finance and accounting to sales and marketing. Most of the last twelve years in his corporate career was spent in various marketing positions specializing in developing strategic business plans, creating marketing tactics, and launching new products. With a loads of enthusiasm Steve was an ideal candidate as someone who can continue to keep Wave Zone at the top of its game.
Steve is insistent on keeping and upholding the legacy of Wave Zone. He too believes that good enough is never good enough and Wave Zone should and will continue to strive every day to bring our boards and our business to the highest levels of performance.
Prior to Steve's ownership, Wave Zone operated under ownership from founder Jeff Shinham for nearly 32 years. In 1990, at the age of 24, Jeff Shinham opened Wave one in Manatee County, FL. After years in sporting goods management and windsurfing/sailing instruction he used his life savings to open the door to his own surf shop. This shop specialized in custom surf boards, custom skimboards, skateboards, and wind surfers among the hard goods product lines. With a full service surf shop by day and a board builder workshop at night, countless hours were spent building the powerful business that exists today. Jeff was found each night shaping and building custom surf boards and skimboards in a workshop in his back yard. Over the years, hundreds of Wave Zone custom surf boards and custom skimboards have been built and sold.
Originally, each skimboard was shaped and glassed in the same manner as a surfboard. In the late 1990's Clark Foam discontinued the production of the foam used in shaping our skimboard cores. Much like the surfboard blank shortage of 2005/2006 we found ourselves pushed toward new product design, while using epoxy products as a temporary fix.
Nearly a full year was spent designing and building our first pvc foam core and fiberglass skimboard product. Extensive research, design and test riding went into the first boards and continues to go into every Wave Zone Skimboard that is engineered.
The new boards were initially sold only through the Wave Zone Surf Shop, but within a year Jeff received requests to make boards for other surf shops in Florida. The first summer of wholesaling brought 30 surf shops on board and carrying the Wave Zone brand... gone were the days of back yard production.
The coming years brought 5 moves to newer, larger facilities to accommodate the massive growth of Wave Zone Skimboards. The booming business made it impossible to continue operating the Surf Shop and Jeff moved exclusively to manufacturing and wholesaling of the Wave Zone brand.
Today Wave Zone Skimboards can be found in hundreds of surf shops around the United States and island locations. Thousands of new boards are sold worldwide every year.
https://youtu.be/_loCbSP40-A