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academia and surfing

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advertising and surfing

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angle

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Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

Extroverted surf-world entrepreneur; founder of Shane Surfboards, Australia's top-selling boardmaker in the early '70s; described by 

 magazine in 1999 as "Irrespressible, enthusiastic, with a sharp head for business and a great nose for promotion.”

Anthony Stedman was born (1941) and raised in rural Crescent Head, New South Wales, began surfing in grade school, and received an industrial engineering degree from the University of New South Wales. Just after college graduation, he began calling himself "Shane," after Alan Ladd's cool-handed gunslinger in the like-titled movie.

Stedman began making surfboards in 1963. "But my first boards were so rough," he later recalled, "that I used to wax them straightaway and advertise them as second-hand." By 1967, Stedman had a factory-showroom in Brookvale, Sydney's boardmaking capital. A tireless worker, Stedman soon had four separate factories— three in New South Wales and one in Queensland—and was advertising his talented pool of shapers and surfers as the outlaw-themed Shane Gang. Ted Spencer, Russell Hughes, Simon Anderson, Terry Fitzgerald, Butch Cooney, David Trealor, Josette Lagardere, Peter Cornish, Judy Trim, and dozens of other top Australian surfers of the era worked for, or were sponsored by, Shane Surfboards. Spencer's stubby White Kite signature board, introduced in 1969, remains the best-selling model ever produced in Australia.

Meanwhile, Stedman introduced a line of self-named clothes (including Shane Jeans), and in the late 1960s began to distribute an early version of the sheepskin ugg boot. He trademarked "Ugh," the original name, in both Australia and America, but sold the rights in 1983, before the boots' became a global fashion hit.

Steadman is perhaps best known for the short, stubby, Shane Surfboard "popout," a mass-produced board designed for beginners and offered at discount rates in sporting goods and department stores. The brightly-colored boards earned Stedman a lot of money in the early '70s (an Aussie magazine nicknamed him "the summer millionaire), but pushed him out of favor with Australia's surfing tastemakers. Stedman didn't seem to mind, and remained very much a public figure, doing daily radio surf reports in Sydney for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1975. "It was the infancy of pro surfing," one local surfer of the period later recalled, "and I remember Shane's blistering voice, the furious enthusiasum, the over-defined surfspeak roaring out of every car radio."

Luke Stedman, Shane's son, retired pro surfer and clothing entrepreneur, finished #11 on the 2008 WCT tour. From 2007 to 2009, Luke was married to surfer-model Malia Jones.

In 2024, Shane Stedman received the Order of Australia (OAM) medal for his contributions to the surf industry. 

Stedman, Shane

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