Episode 6: Lyndsey Lee Faulkner
You have to admire someone who built a popular surf shop in the rainy and grey Pacific Northwest, a place that’s nearly the antithesis of the tan surfer vibe that has been the surf industry’s marketing campaign since forever.
Designer, artist, and surfer Lyndsey Lee Faulkner was the founder of Leeward Surf Shop in Portland, Oregon before tacking to warmer waters to take a creative director role at Teva. Surfing the cold emerald waters on the Oregon coast and hiking miles through dewy pine trees to get to a break that may or may not be working, some might say Lyndsey paid her dues.
Now a 20-minute drive from her local break at C Street in Ventura, California, Lyndsey is enjoying the warm weather. I caught up with her via phone, her in Ojai, me in the Bay, both of us in California far from the beanies and beards of the Pacific Northwest. During our chat, which is edited for length and clarity, we talk about escaping the rain, working on a small team, and the tough decision to pack it all up and move down south for her current position at Teva — pronounced TEH-VA, not TEE-VA, but we’ll get to that. Read and enjoy!
How did you get into surfing? Did you start in Portland?
No, I grew up in Florida. So I started surfing when I was eight, just a little kiddo with my dad and brother. Even my mom surfed when she had the time. It was a surfing family.
And then I moved to Portland when I got older and dropped it for a while because I was in design school and living in a city and young and doing city things. But then, eventually I thought, “Okay, I’m going to live here for a while, so I got to find a way to surf because surfing once or twice a year isn’t cutting it.” Then, eventually, I wanted to surf more and more. The older I get, the more I want to surf it seems like.
Then it got to be: is driving an hour and a half to surf once a week really going to be enough for me? I needed to be closer. Now we’re in Ojai.
And how close are you now?
It’s 20 minutes from C Street to where I live.
Oh wow, that’s awesome.
Yeah, it’s right down the hill to Ventura so that’s quite convenient. And when we moved down here, we were actually living in Ventura for the first three years and then we just moved up here.
Ah ok. And did you move to take your current job at Teva?
Yeah. That’s what brought us down here. I was selling the shoes at Leeward because they’re perfect for surfing in the Northwest since you have to hike to the break sometimes, you know?
So I met one of the reps and got to know a little bit more about the brand. Then a good friend of mine, Kira, had been working as a stylist there. She mentioned me to the previous creative director and they were looking for an Art Director at the time.
He reached out and said, “Would you be interested in moving down here and taking this job?” And I thought, “I have to entertain it even though I have a lot going on here in Portland.” But the opportunity to live down here was pretty enticing.
What a decision.
Yeah, it was a lot. But I was also ready to leave Portland even though I had set up the shop and a pretty good freelance practice and stuff there. The city had changed a lot, and I was really wanting to live closer to the ocean. So we were actually thinking about moving out to the coast anyway from the city. It was just going to be the Oregon coast instead. And now we’re here. My husband ended up getting a job at Patagonia which is also based in the Ventura area so it was meant to be in a way.
I wanted to ask about your role as a Creative Director, because I know that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. How do you define it?
Yeah, I’m the Creative Director at Teva, and that’s on the marketing side. So basically, everything that is creatively associated with marketing is under my purview. Mostly it’s content creation — so photography, video, all that stuff. I’m a little bit involved in some of the social stuff but mostly the stuff that I make is for paid advertisements, teva.com, stuff like that.
We do a couple of photo shoots a year that are our seasonal photo shoots and create all the imagery that supports the brand. It’s mostly what I do. And also, I oversee all the graphic design and ideating campaigns and strategy. But Teva looks bigger than it is. My team is just me and four other designers.
Yeah. I saw that Teva has roughly 500k followers on Instagram, which is no small feat for a small team.
It’s crazy. But I like it because I’ve always liked doing a lot of different things. I don’t love having to sit down and do one thing all the time. There’s a lot of opportunity for that, which is nice.
And I apologize, I don’t know if I’m in the minority or majority of people who think that the name was TEE-VA. But you pronounce it TEH-VA?
It is. It’s pronounced TEH-VA, but you say it however you want to say it because it’s a uphill battle to get people to say it “correctly.” But, yeah, it is TEH-VA.
Has the company ever done any marketing to put the “correct” pronunciation out there?
There has been some, yes. We had a TikTok that had a lot of views about it. I think it was six months or a year ago, talking about it. And then in the past, if you dig into the brand archives, there’s some really wild stuff that they did that’s pretty funny. But now, we embrace it.
And then there’s always the thing where people ask me where I work and I have the internal debate with myself like, “Do I say TEH-VA?” and have to have this conversation that we’re having right now, or do I just say TEE-VA and they know exactly what I’m talking about.
That’s our wheelhouse. I have that conversation with clients all the time: “What if people mispronounce the name?” And it’s like, people are going to mispronounce it. You can’t fight that tide.
Yeah, totally. I remember V.R.B.O (Vacation Rentals by Owner) recently decided that they were VER-BO (VRBO), and everybody was like, “What the hell?”
Exactly. Okay, so working on the marketing side at Teva and having a history of owning your own surf shop, do you try to inject a surfing vibe into your current role? How does surfing come into play there?
Yeah, I think it sneaks in everything I do. It’s just there. Teva is an outdoor brand and more aesthetically inclined which is great for me because I love being outside and have been around the surf design industry a long time and feel super comfortable in that zone. But I don’t think about it a ton, to be honest with you. I think we do what feels right for the brand, and if that feels a little surfy, then cool. But it’s interesting that almost all of us at the senior level at Teva surf.
Oh, really?
Yeah. The photographer that we use for almost everything, he surfs. Our senior designer surfs. There’s a lot of overlap there.
That’s interesting because I associate the brand with a more river rafting, outdoorsy Colorado feel. Am I alone in that?
No, not at all. That’s the core of the brand. It was invented by a Colorado river guide. He was an inventor of the first sandal, and so it definitely has its core in that. I also think it’s become much bigger. You see it even in fashion and stuff now.
At its roots is that river story, but they’re great for all kinds of outdoor activities. Like I mentioned, I sold them in the surf shop because they were the perfect thing for hiking the trails to the surf. You don’t want to wear flip flops when you have to hike a mile to get to the spot you’re surfing. But some sort of sandal still feels right.
That’s cool to know that the senior team are all surfers. Just goes to show there’s even more of us in creative positions.
Yeah, totally. It probably has something to do with the fact that we’re located in Santa Barbara. Just by default, you’re probably going to get a higher surfer ratio.
So now I’m thinking about how surfing comes out in a brand. I’m wondering about Leeward because it was branded but still felt like an authentic surf shop. Was that conscious?
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Something we always talked a lot about at the shop was surf shop versus surf lifestyle. And what does that mean? Where does Leeward land? And some of my favorite feedback I got about the shop was in line with what you just said: “It’s obvious you guys are selling a lot of lifestyle stuff, but it feels like a core surf shop when you actually come into the store.”
Totally.
And that was super important to me because that’s what we needed when I opened the store — a resource for people to learn about building surfboards and shaping and the history of surfing. I wanted it to be a resourceful place, and so we did a lot of events, which were some of my favorite things we did at the store. Like showing Morning of the Earth and stuff like that.
Since a lot of people in the Pacific Northwest were coming at surfing from a very outdoor lens of like “This is an activity and I got to gear up” it ends up being a more techy type of thing. But I wanted people look at these boards as pieces of art that should be built by hand and you should know about them. You should educate yourself about what you’re getting. And there are a lot of different kinds of surfboards and you want to experiment to find out what you like. So I really wanted it to be a resource for that.
It was always fluid too. We were always talking about it because we sold a ton of vintage clothing in the store that had nothing to do with it. It was a funny crossover. I don’t really know where we landed.
I think since people were telling you it felt like an authentic surf shop, and it’s something I definitely recognized, you achieved that goal of being a surf resource, not just a brand that uses surfing to sell products.
Yeah, totally. It was very important to me that it felt authentic because it was coming from an authentic place. I love surfing so much — the craft of building boards and shaping and all the history behind it. Even though some of it’s not so savory, I think it’s important to know.
One thing I noticed about the shop was the California aesthetic. Looking back on your Instagram, it felt different than a lot of the Pacific Northwest aesthetic. Was that a conscious effort?
It wasn’t conscious, I think. It was more reflective of my personal taste and also reflective of the people that I surfed with in the Northwest. Also I think there’s a more existential way of coming at surfing. More about the mental health benefits of surfing and the transcendental experience you can have with it, versus the sport of it. And I think, for me, that’s aesthetically more the California feel versus the Northwest where it’s like big dudes with big beards coming at it from a much more athletic point of view — even though that has a valid place in Northwest surfing because it’s heavy to surf there. The waves are geared for performance surfboards in most cases. It’s big, it’s cold, it’s gnarly. So I think there’s a good reason for that. But I lived for those days where it was glassy and chest high.
Talking about surfing styles, what do you want to see aesthetically in surfing? What would you like to see more of or that you are seeing but hasn’t really caught on?
Oh, that’s a good question. I think there’s so much. It’s gotten so good in the last 10 years. The crossover between art and design and surfing, I think those three things have melded more than they ever have in the past. And there have been so many cool brands and projects that have come out of that. I don’t know that it’s really missing anything, to be honest. If anything, I think now you can really pick your lane and find your community based on what you like. There’s something out there for everybody.
Yeah, totally. Do you think that design and the surfing aesthetic is what surfing is now? Or do you think that could potentially crescendo at some point?
Hmm, it might have a shelf life. I don’t know. I hope it keeps evolving. I think it will because I’m always impressed with the young people and young surfers that I meet. Now, they’re so much smarter than I was and advanced with their skills and pushing boundaries and stuff. I’m really hopeful that it’ll evolve more than it will crescendo and die out.
What are you riding right now?
Since I moved here, I’ve been riding a 9'7” Dead Kooks Nausea a lot. I love that board. I also ride a 9'4" Elmore Sam’s Club, which is great for small Rincon at a lower tide, it’s super zippy.
And then my all-time favorite board is a 7'6" Mitsven egg, single fin. It works so well. I rode that board a lot in Oregon because it’s not loggable very often. And even though it’s a single fin, it works everywhere. There’s something about the way Bob does the rails on those boards that gives it this magic quality. I love that board so much.
On a personal note, I’m considering moving up to Portland and I’m so afraid that I’ll get there, surf for a year and a half, and then fall off because it’s too hard to make it work. What are your thoughts on surfing in Oregon? What were some of your favorite spots?
Are you still recording?
