Izzy and Coco Tihanyi are twin sisters who started Surf Diva, a surf school and surf apparel company for women and girls, despite the odds. "When we first started it, we were told, 'You're crazy. You're not going to start a surf school just for girls since girls don't surf,' " says Izzy. "There was quite a bit of resistance [to it]--mostly from guys."
Izzy, a former competitive surfer, knew there was lack of good instruction for women in surfing and also knew there would be a huge market for it. She and her sister worked hard during their off-hours from their full-time jobs to launch their La Jolla, California-based business in 1996.
"Neither of us quit our jobs for almost three years," says Izzy, who was selling advertising for an action sports show when they began. Every day, after getting home from her day job, Izzy would start returning phone calls and booking surf classes for the weekends. Then, during the weekend, she'd teach the classes while Coco, who was working full time for a marketing firm, would market the business by distributing fliers to local surf shops and doing tradeouts with local radio stations by donating surf lessons and doing the surf report in exchange for air time.
Now, 10 years later, the sisters, who in true diva style declined to give their ages, have expanded their California surf school to schools in Australia and Costa Rica, and have just landed a top Brazilian designer to manufacture a new line of swimwear. In the past year, the number of retail stores selling the Surf Diva brand has doubled, and their clothing line can be found in surf and specialty shops, sporting goods stores and even airport gift shops throughout the country. Sales from their surf schools, which they're looking into franchising, have increased nearly 13% a year, and product sales are expected to double each year, but it took nearly three years of tight budgeting to get their business off and growing. "I found an ATM receipt of how much money I had in the bank [when we started], and it was about $324," says Coco. "My rent at the time was $425. I don't know how we did it."