We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lori Fertel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Lori, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
The idea to start my Extremely Stoked®️ brand was not my first business but rather it is an idea that has evolved over 2 decades from a small at-home baby bedding business that I started soon after leaving a short-lived teaching career as a 3rd-grade teacher at Palm Beach Public in Palm Beach, Florida so that I could be a stay-at-home mom for my two sons when they were just toddlers. So with that being said, I will tell you a little about how I came up with the original idea that led me to start my super sweet Extremely Stoked®️ surf and beach lifestyle brand and online business that I so adore and enjoy more each and every day!!
So, as I always say, my name is Lori and here’s the story!! I started my first business a short time after becoming a stay-at-home mom for my two precious and adorable sons for no other reason other than I thought it would be cool and fun to own my own business. I had a friend who had a crib bedding business where she sold to her friends and clients from her home -she lived in Boca Raton, Florida and I, at the time, lived in the city just north of Boca in Delray Beach, Florida. I thought something like what she was doing would be cool so I did some research, found a few baby bedding manufactures and ultimately started my own at-home baby bedding business which I named “Goodnight Sleeptight”-a very small business that would ultimately lead me to my career in e-commerce. Initially, I sold just as my friend did just showing swatches and pictures from a catalog via word of mouth-basically to friends and friends of friends. About a year into this small at-home business, I turned my kids’ rooms into showrooms with the bedding products I was selling to show my clients. I had many themes of bedding I was selling at the time and although they were all adorable, I was most drawn to a collection of bedding from one of my vendors who exclusively made Surf and Hawaiian style bedding products and was inspired to do a super cool surfer bedroom for my youngest son when he was moving from the crib to his first big boy room! After decorating his room, I immediately fell in love with the niche surf style bedroom decor -it was the perfect combo since I was (and still am) a lover of interior design and the surf and beach lifestyle! Soon after designing his room, I woke up in the middle of the night with that small inner “voice” telling me to go buy the domain name “SurferBedding.com” and to start a new brand and online store with it. At the time, I had absolutely no idea of how to build a website nor how to market it but I just KNEW it was something I must do, something that I WANTED to do …so I did, and it paid off in extraordinary ways that I could have never dreamed possible not just financially but also in the amount of happiness and joy it brought to me and my customers! The Surfer Bedding brand and website that evolved from that little at-home baby bedding business grew quickly into a huge success after launching our online store and selling to surf and beach lifestyle enthusiasts worldwide. We received high organic ranks for our top SEO keywords on Google and we were being recognized and featured by some of the top interior design publications and media at the time like Coastal Living, Better Homes and Gardens, Palm Beach Illustrated, Extreme Home Makeover, and Discovery Channel’s “Make Room for Baby”. Our sales grew from a couple of thousand dollars a month to over a million dollars within the first year and half -and the cool thing about it was (and still is) that it was all easy and fun-not the struggle that so many think goes hand in hand with success- in fact, it was and still is the opposite! Hard work is NOT the path to fulfillment and financial prosperity-ease and flow and fun and passion are the path! There might be a lot of what you might want to call “work” during some phases of building a business, but it won’t feel like hard work; it will feel like excitement…like something you wanna do!
After successfully launching my original Surfer bedding brand, I again felt an overwhelming sense of excitement and inspiration to create something even bigger and better! So, I again followed my inner voice and my passion to continue doing what I love so much and started the Extremely Stoked®️ brand and website. The Extremely Stoked®️ brand includes products from my sweet Surfer Bedding brand as well as a wide variety of high-quality and mostly eco-friendly and made in the USA, classic surfer style and beachy home decor products as well as a super cool and fun collection of Hawaiian print swimsuits for kids, women, and men, super rad high-top shoes, and apparel products that I am personally obsessed and in love with in so many ways!!
So, that’s the short story and the businesses that were on my path that I followed that gave me the idea to start the Extremely Stoked®️ brand! And to answer your question of how I knew that it was a worthwhile endeavor to start my original at-home baby bedding business that led to starting a global Surf and Beach Lifestyle brand… well, there really was no logic to it-it was just an overwhelming feeling of excitement to do it…so I did! I didn’t always know how it would work out but I just knew it would because of how it felt when I dreamt it.
Lori, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am the creator and the curator of the Surfer Bedding and the Extremely Stoked brands and the brands’ products. I, with the help of other talented beings and companies, design, market, and sell all of our products via our ecommerce stores and various social media platforms. I am also a licensor which means I license my brands’ names, logos, and designs to licensees/manufactures in exchange for royalty payments. Licensing is a new adventure for me and my brands, and I am loving it as it is passive income and has the potential to be huge-and I know it will be!! I also sell high-quality exact match domain names from a domain portfolio that I own which include approx. 20 properties-several of my favorites are CollegeSportsCompany.com, KidsCookingChannel.com, KidsTennisShop.com, KidsSurfShop.com, and ShellYeah.com which I hope to sell to the Shell (the gas company) as a campaign and/or tagline for their company!
Also, to answer the question of what I am most proud of and the main things I want my clients/customers/followers and fans to know about me and my brands and domain properties is that I am proud of ALL of it…I sincerely LOVE the surf and beach lifestyle the brands represent, the high quality, fun and catchy domain names and every single product that we sell!! As well, I sincerely love and am so extremely thankful for anyone who has ever contributed to this brands’ success which includes my angel investors, my supportive friends and family members-those who believed in me and even those who didn’t, my suppliers, for the brands’ fans and followers, for those who awesome geniuses who created the awesome platforms that we market and sell on such as Shopify, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest and for all the wonderful influencers, publications and media like YOU who have so kindly and excitedly featured me and my brand to your audiences and of course to the real investors- my clients and my brands’ customers! I appreciate you all for your part in co-creating with me in making the Surfer Bedding and Extremely Stoked® brands and company-owned properties such a huge success, so very fulfilling and fun in so many delightful ways! In addition, I also want my customers to know and appreciate that I work with extraordinary suppliers/manufacturers who print my brand’s designs on their beautiful high-quality products and do so with love and the highest integrity. Selling high-quality products is important to me…I enjoy having the best in life for myself and want that for my customers as well! I want my customers to know how much love and fun go into creating their purchases and I want them to feel just as excited and in love with the products that they purchase as we are when we create them. I want our customers, clients and fans/followers to always be delightfully surprised in the most wonderful, pleasant and exciting ways with the Extremely Stoked® brand and brand products! I am so extremely proud of everything we do and what the Extremely Stoked® is evolving into – it has truly surpassed my wildest dreams and I’m a big dreamer so you gotta know that it’s really, really good! I invite you and all the readers here to check out my site at www.ExtremelyStoked.com and to follow along in my fun on insta @lorifertel and @extremelystoked
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Yes! I studied and learned from various sources along the way but the most influential is the teachings of Abraham Hicks who teaches Universal Laws and how to apply them to create a life that you love! The knowledge from knowing these laws and applying them into my everyday life has significantly impacted the success of my business and every aspect of my life! I have learned that if you are following your passion-whatever that may be – then you are on the right path. I have learned that setbacks are only disguises that will lead you to something greater than you can ever imagine if you will give the so-called “setback” a positive meaning and then let go, have fun, be happy, go with the flow, enjoy the journey and allow the universe to show you the way! The Universe /our Creator/our inner beings/higher minds always knows what you need and will bring it to you right at the precise perfect time via your path of least resistance. The Universe knows how to bring about what you desire in way, way, way better ways than your physical mind does but you have to connect to your own inner being/higher mind first via meditation, appreciation and by consistently doing things that bring you joy coupled with a knowing that you are worthy and loved beyond measure and that you deserve your hearts desires. We are extensions of our creator and it wants us to create-that is how the creator and the universe expands! You have to trust the process even when there is no evidence yet of your success -keep believing and knowing with full confidence that just like a seed that is planted to grow a flower or a harvest, it will “bloom” in the perfect timing when properly tended to-that is what faith is-believing in something when there is no evidence. If you follow and apply these Universal laws and processes to your own life, then I promise you that everything you need and want will flow into your experience easily and effortlessly and in the most exciting, joyful, fun and extraordinarily wonderful and delightful ways!!
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
My first initial “money” capital to start my baby bedding business over 20 years ago was a $1000 investment from my parents. I have also had quite a few “angel” investors along the way that contributed their gifts. Some invested money and some invested their talents. I also invested in myself by taking good care of my health and my happiness and by working various jobs along the way which included driving for LYFT as one of their XL and LUX drivers. It was such a great gig that I thoroughly enjoyed as it allowed me to set my own schedule (which is super important to me) and it provided me with some nice income to pay bills, rent, and to invest in my company and was a great way to talk about and test market my business while having A LOT of fun and meeting cool new people every day!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ExtremelyStoked.com
- Instagram: www.Instagram.com/ExtremelyStoked
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ExtremelyStoked
- Other: Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/extremelystoked TikTok: @ Extremely_Stoked
Image Credits
Images owned by Extremely Stoked®️