If like your surfboards all candy-coloured in tints and pigments of bright orange and beige, then a pilgrimage to Freshwater’s Keel Surf & Supply should be on your regular rotation. Keel is a candy store of surf and snow aesthetics with the relaxed vibe to match. Picture soft organic tees, handmade coastal ceramics and a rack of surfboards with any number of fins from one to five (we’re talking Bonzer not a goofy quad + thruster set-up). Right now the doors of Keel are closed to the general public, but the lust and envy continues online.

Support Local - Drop in to Keel Surf & Supply Online

MF - Tell us about Keel Surf & Supply, how did it come to be? 
K - Keel kinda just happened for us thru the want of wanting our own gig and a way to live and work on the beaches. We used to work for a few surf brands and saw a huge amount of excess stock and samples that were just being warehoused and potentially going to waste. We started doing pop up shops around the beaches with all the excess product to help clear brands inventory and give the people some solid deals. Things went from a weekend pop up, to a month, to 6 months. As we started to get our flow on with the retail game we slowly began introducing new brands, products & accessories that we loved. We got a great response and we organically headed in a new direction. We found we wanted to give a more premium offering along with a unique retail experience that we felt was missing from the market. 

Keel Surf is a place for crew that dig twin fins, single fins, snowsurf, campvibes, books, art and apparel from the best brands in the industry. A place to hang and celebrate the surf culture and all the things that revolve around it.

It all stems from the amazing community that we have, we've been super lucky to be a part of the Freshie community and have some like minded businesses here doing some rad things. It sounds corny but we would be nowhere without all the support of the crew through even the craziest of times. 

Tell us about your customers and how do you serve them?
Our customers are what makes Keel....It's the constant visitors and Friday arvo hangs that keep the vibes real. Good crew coming thruough the door keeps us pumped and motivated to keep our offering relevant and unique. They want to see new cool stuff, rad books, new boards, local art & products. We have to make sure we have selected the best products from the best brands each season, so we can cut down the hunting for crew and make sure we have the best offering around. Our customers are from all areas of our community...all ages and all backgrounds. Tarshie actually wants to do a book on our customers, there's some crazy talented people around doing some insanely amazing things. 

What’s the one product at Keel that generates the most conversation with your customers? Tell us a little about it.
Definitely the boards...both surf & Snow. The froth can build and we can lock in for a half hour chat on boards, trips & waves.

We stock a more alternate selection of boards that I feel offer an awesome experience and feel in surfing..highlines, trim, speed, flow and goodtimes!

You wanna really froth me out, we stock GENTEMSTICK snowboards from Japan that are probably my favourite things to yarn about along with Japanese POW POW and Aussie back country adventures.

How are you continuing to serve your customers while we’re all in shutdown? What would you recommend someone nabbing from Keel while we’re in this collective semi-hibernation?  
We're trying to keep the shop vibes going but in the online world. We've just launched our new website and have had a bunch of support from local crew.

We're hand delivering local orders packaged the same way as if purchased in store. It's epic to see where all our customers live and see them outside the shop...keep the local feels going. We're open by appointment for anyone wanting to check out boards or know what ya after and online pretty much 24/7 for any needs. Holla and we'll make it happen. Just trying to adjust and adapt in this new world we find ourselves in.

Got some fun things in the pipeline to hopefully help people a little through the ISO madness. I'd recommend hitting up our book section for some travel for the mind.

With everything going on it feels like we're in uncertain and unprecedented times, what are positives you think we can emerge with?
I feel like it's a full reset for a lot of things and maybe we needed it. It’s a good time to reflect and look at what's important and how we want life to look like after all this. A good time to realign and move forward after a few solid steps backwards. The sad part is seeing so many awesome people out of work and afraid about what the future holds. There's some crew that have lost a lot in the last week or so and that's super heavy to see. I feel like local community support and some old fashioned ideals may come back into play big time to make sure everyones comes out sweet. Make sure to smile at everyone too, cause I'm feeling some tension around the place....everyones scared and we're in this together. 

Looking forward to a beer at Stow off the tap and a camping trip up north getting salty as for a week or seven!!

Stay Safe amigos!

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Shop in store or online at - keelsurfsupply.com and order by phone on  9976 6548
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