Not many successful businesses can say that they were founded by a teenager, but Aqua East Surf Shop in Atlantic Beach, Florida is one of them. Surfer/skater Sandy Forsyth was 19 years old at the time that he opened his first surf shop in 1973.                                                                       

He learned to surf during the summer of his eighth grade year on a 9′6″ Velzy board that he purchased from a department store. Surf shops, as we know them today, were few and far between. 
 
A few years later, he began building surfboards in his parents’ garage and on April 1, 1973, he opened his first Aqua East Surf Shop in a small store about the size of his bedroom. After a while, he found that building boards and running a store didn’t leave him much time for the things he really loved – surfing and skating. He gave up building surfboards and concentrated on making his store the best possible, leaving him time to surf, skate, and test product.  
 
Aqua East Surf Shop grew in popularity, largely because its owner knew first hand what surfers and skaters wanted, since he was both. Soon the shop doubled in size and in 1983, Sandy built his own 5,000 square foot building. While a lot of people thought he was crazy, his customers appreciated the fact that the additional space allowed him to bring them more clothing (especially women’s), more surfboards and more accessories.  
 
In 1988 he opened his first superstore in Neptune Beach, Florida, giving him the chance to expand his inventory to not only include surfboards and clothing, but also skateboards, swimwear and equipment for other sports he really loved. In 1999, Sandy opened a second superstore in St. Augustine.  

Aqua East Surf Shop now carries not only items for surfing and skating, but also snowboarding, kayaking and wakeboarding. Every year, Aqua East’s employees go to a snowboard demo where they get to try out next year’s boards, bindings and boots to decide what to carry the next year. 
 
Aqua East has its own Surf, Skate and Wakeboarding teams, and many of the competitors have done well. Some have even won the USSC, the NSSA, the ESA, Pro Contests and other contests. The first female joined their team in 1974. 
 
Aqua East has always supported the sports they love through ESA, SurfRider Foundation, Wave Masters, public skate parks, beach access, and other environmental concerns.   They also sponsor surf contests, skate contest, wakeboard contests, and kayaking tours.                                           
 
Sandy is gone now, “surfing the perfect wave”, but his love of the outdoors, particularly the water, lives on with his stores and employees. Sandy believed that these sports were good to him and his “crew” and that it was their obligation to give back.

Sandy’s daughters Shauna and Andrea, and Shauna’s husband Adam, take very seriously this commitment to preserve and protect the environment and recently purchased a GatorMoto Utility Vehicles 6 passenger Electro Bubble Buddy, which Shauna and Andrea use to commute between home and the store. They have even equipped the back seat with child safety seats for Shauna and Adam’s two young sons, Austin and Colton! They hope that they can serve as an example to others and raise awareness about the ecological issues that face us all. As their website says, “We did not inherit the Earth, but instead we borrow it from future generations. Let’s leave it a better place than we found it.”