From bread knife to surfboard: Richard Lamont’s unfiltered journey

The only polish you will find in The Godfather of the Waves by Richard Lamont and Graham Spence is the kind applied to surfboards. This book is an unfiltered account of a man’s journey to fulfil his personal purpose of becoming a true waterman and how he simultaneously, almost inadvertently it seems, helped build South Africa’s surfing industry as well as adjacent publishing, clothing and windsurfing trades.

Ask Lamont what his business plan was and he’d probably just point at the swell. From a young age, he was drawn to the water, and some chance encounters and an adventure that landed up with a big bonfire at Jeffreys Bay had him hooked. This book is about passion in its purest form, with untold adventures and an entrepreneurial journey tagged on. The current, and everything else, the empire included, simply got pulled along in its wake. Chasing the best waves, competing against the best surfers, building friendships that outlasted any business plan: none of it was calculated. The industries came later, almost as an afterthought, the way a good wave leaves foam behind long after the surfer has moved on.

This book is about passion in its purest form, with untold adventures and an entrepreneurial journey tagged on.

It may have started out as a fluke, or rather, the need for his own board. After battling to get his own board, he used his mother’s bread knife and made his first board himself. Trial and error, with the Rolling Stones and The Doors blaring in the background, served him well. “Somehow it worked, and soon afterwards a very nice 7-foot-10-inch surfboard glistened like a jewel on the trestle table. Nearly two feet shorter than the boards most local factories were turning out, it was indeed a radical design,” he writes.

The timing of what was to become his first entrepreneurial endeavour could not have been better. Durban’s surf scene was starting to gain momentum, and Lamont’s dedication to the sport, with his ability to build relationships, source materials and adapt new board designs from around the world for South Africa’s market, aided his success.

The Gunston 500 is one example of how Lamont played an active role in building South Africa’s surfing industry: as he writes, it is “one of the longest-running professional surfing contests in the world”, albeit with name changes, which started with R500 for first prize, followed by a motorbike and hi-fi for second and third, respectively.

For any entrepreneur, this book is a reminder of what true passion looked like before it became a hashtag: what it is in its purest form. It is clear Lamont loves everything about the sport and is equally unafraid to try new things and put in some good old-fashioned hard work. That appetite for discomfort served him well when he co-founded the surf magazine ZigZag with Paul Naudé, Ray Ahrenss, Doug MacDonald and Graham Fiford, a formidable endeavour by any measure.

MacDonald recalls those days with “fondness and horror”: slaving away under a single neon light in the factory after an all-nighter of “painstaking work putting pin lines down, pasting copy in galleys with a glue stick, and cropping photos until it was all ready for repro”, only to arrive the next day and find the galleys covered in woodborer droppings, which they would have to carefully scrape off. “Looking back at it all, I still shake my head in amazement. ZigZag is a true publishing phenomenon, created in a dusty loft with little more than grit, fire and old-fashioned cojones,” Lamont writes.

As the demand for wetsuits increased, fate was once again in his favour: a bust of a surf competition in Australia led to a chance encounter (though his good reputation had preceded him), and a handshake deal with Brian Singer, co-founder of Rip Curl, was sealed on a beach in Sydney. Taking what he had learnt about building brands, a meeting with Cheron Kraak on a beach south of Mauritius and later at a market in Jeffreys Bay planted the seed for a new brand, Country Feeling, built on crafted corduroy shirts and board shorts. The book is jam-packed with these tales.

One may argue it was all down to chance, but behind every one of his biggest deals was the same thing: long-standing relationships built across the globe and an unwavering loyalty to his one true core, the surf.

If the reader believes this to be another business book, the true candour and unabashed honesty come as a surprise and a delight, delivering plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. In Peru, after a week of surfing and partying, Lamont asked a fellow surfer how he was able to sustain the lifestyle. “Coke,” came the reply. Arriving the next evening with a six-pack of Coca-Cola in hand, he was met with the Peruvian’s blunt response: “Are all South Africans stupid like you?”

Lamont is comfortable making himself the butt of the joke. He openly acknowledges his naïvety and failures, some of which were beyond his control. Some businesses flourished, others ran their course and several were undone by forces outside his control.

When Lamont expanded into the windsurfing business with Alwin Brodowicz, government officials put pressure on them to hand over 30% of their profits. This was not Lamont’s first encounter with corrupt officials, and understanding the dynamic, the partners decided to close the business.

The honesty in his writing about the various characters he met along his surfing journey does touch on drug use and those who are no longer with us. He speaks of the eclectic mix of personalities on the surf scene — some who have succeeded, some who have changed course, some who have passed, and some who made questionable life choices along the way, with respect and compassion. He bears no judgment and no animosity; he simply holds respect for all he met on his journey.

Readers will close this book wishing they, too, had once wielded a bread knife with such conviction.