Born and raised in Edinburgh, just 20 minutes from Europe’s largest inland surf resort, Kim Travers shares how a solo surf trip to Morocco sparked a journey that led to Portugal, Northern Spain—and now, back home to Scotland. With deep local roots and international surf experience, Kim has played a key role in molding the Lost Shore Surf Shop into a unique retail destination. While many surf park shops are an extension of the large, homogenized brands, Kim keeps the stock indy and edgy. They sell more than just one wetsuit brand (which is rare) as well as locally shaped boards and community-driven merchandise. Because, as Kim puts it, “Everything has a meaning and it is more than just a product on our shelf.”
WavePoolMag: Where are you from?
Kim: I’m from Edinburgh. Just 20 minutes away from the resort. Born and raised in Edinburgh, it’s incredible to see a resort like this opened so close to home.
How long have you been surfing?
I’ve been surfing since around 2019, after an initial solo trip to Morocco where I learned to surf for the first ever time. Since then I have spent some time living in Portugal and Northern Spain working in surf schools and surf houses.
How wonderful. And where’s your local beach?
Here, along the east coast of Scotland would probably be my local spot. It’s about an hour away, but I love going up to the North coast, there is always waves and not many people.
And when you say North coast, what is the North coast of Scotland? Is that Thurso East?
Yeah. So from around Thurso going West, you have spots like Farr Bay, it’s one of my favourite surf spots in all of Scotland. I love that one. And all the way along to the northwest there is some great beaches there.
And then, how long ago did you start here at Lost Shore? How did you become integrated into the workforce here?
Yes. So I had known about the project for quite a few years. I saw a position had opened for the surf shop, I joined in the July last year, I am almost at my one year anniversary in the company! I was the first employee of the retail department. So that was really fun. The process had already started of procuring products for the shop when I got my handover so then it was up to me to start progressing it even more to get us to opening. Eventually, the team grew to a crew of five for opening.
Do you have experience in retail buying?
I don’t actually have experience in buying. I have a lot of retail experience, but never have I been in charge of buying the product. I’ve always worked for companies who have their own branded products and their own designers, so buying individual multi-brand was totally new for me, but a really fun experience, I learned a lot in the process of the behind-the-scenes to retail.
What is your mission statement in equipping the shop?
What started with the original vision was to make the store more than just a transactional retail experience. We didn’t want it to feel like the gift shop or just a buy-and-sell experience. When deciding what brands to stock we would try to find a story or connection. A lot of the brands we work with offer an experience through activations, maybe they come from a strong environmental point of view. Everything has a meaning and it is more than just a product on our shelf. Everything gets carefully chosen by the team and there has been a lot of thought that’s gone into the products here.
I notice you have wetsuits from three different companies, whereas many wave pools I visited just have one. Can you tell us about that?
In Scotland, we’re really limited on surf shops. You could say we’re probably one of the biggest surf shops in Scotland. Not quoted, but I would say so. That kind of industry is not well established here. Rather than giving the keys to a company to run the store they might not know the market well, which is why it was decided to bring it in-house, this is something the team fought for before I joined. From there we’ve chosen Gul, obviously, because we have our school suits with them, they have proven to be great suits. O’Neill and Rip Curl are our other two brands, they are historically famous surf brands and we recently ran our first demo wetsuit event with O’Neill which was a great success, visitors could come down for a surf and try out the newest range of Hyperfreak wetsuits free of charge.
Gul—can you tell us about that brand?
Gul is a British brand. They’ve been around a really long time. For a few years, they maybe went a bit quiet on the surfing front and they excelled more in sailing. It’s kind of a bit of an upcoming for Gul to be in the wave pool. The guys at Lost Shore went through a really extensive process with the Surf Lab and Edinburgh Napier University to decide the pool suit with scientific backing, through a blind test with lots of brands and Gul came out as the best. We have since been able to run bay lessons in the midst of Winter with a pool temp of 3c. There is a video on our social media of the process! It was a no-brainer that we needed to stock them in the shop and mirror what people had tried from the pool to the shop to continue the experience.
How about your boards? You have boards for hire and boards for retail. And I believe this is the first shop I’ve seen stuff from Bell Surfing?
Our Bell surfboards landed in the shop in in December, they just started up last year through Stephen Bell (Belly) so it’s really nice to introduce this brand to Scotland. We also stock a selection of Sharpeye boards, we’ll be offering a demo range so you can demo the models in the pool to try before you buy. It’s going to be totally customized and that’s that whole more-than-a-transaction approach. We’re not just going to sell you it. We want you to try it, get the expert advice across many things.
Our third retail surfboard brand is Firewire, much loved in the UK and it mirrors what we have in our rental fleet, so again you can test out the boards to make the right buying decision.
So by doing that, you’re building a relationship with the customer. What do you hope to achieve
We’re not trying to compete with the online market because that’s really difficult to match—all the crazy deals brands can do online. We hope people come to us because they know they’re going to receive top service, great advice, and a place to try things. The pool’s just outside. They get a nice feeling, so they choose to shop with us instead of maybe saving 10 or 20% online. We cut out that in-between stage of buy and return. We also like to compliment what we have around us, we are soon to offer our customers a reward program, you build up points and in return once you reach the limit you get a free surf on us.
Tell us about the surfboards you carry from local shapers.
Firstly we have Far Surfboards, which are hand-shaped by a guy named Fraser Reed in Fife, just across the bridge from Edinburgh. He makes wooden surfboards, wooden belly boards, and hand planes from reclaimed whisky barrels. We’re hoping to run some workshops with him in our shaping bay, which looks just off the shop. You can do an afternoon making your hand plane or belly board, or over a three-day stint, you could build your own wooden surfboard.
And the resin work over here (points to brightly pigmented surfboards)?
Jason Burnett from Jay Surfboards has been a local shaper in Edinburgh for a really long time. He specializes in resin, artistic, quite funky shapes of boards. He recently shaped a board with Brad Rochfort from Rochfort Surfboards, they created the ‘Pool party’ board and it should be available to demo in the pool soon.
Are you being approached by a lot of companies—sales reps from surf brands—asking you to stock their stuff?
Definitely. In the opening, less so, but in the lead up to summer a lot of the sales reps in South of England have made the journey North to come visit us. Our most recent visit was from a sales rep who came to see us from Hawaii.
What’s your biggest sell-through?
Wax. Anywhere in the central belt of Scotland, it’s very difficult to find. You’d probably have to order online. Maybe one or two retailers stock it. We sell through a lot of wax. Apart from that, we do well in our own brand apparel, a nice memento from your visit to us. This is something we would really like to own and grow with.
So the branded merchandise?
Yeah, our own brand apparel. We decided to open with our own apparel. We were approached by other companies to stock surf tees, but we wanted to cement our brand first before opening up to others. Not to say we won’t ever, but it’s nice to put our mark on the shop. I am really looking forward to developing our own signature apparel.
What’s something in the shop that you feel is unique and sets it apart from other surf shops? If you had to pick one range.
Without much competition around, I would say that our local made products is my favorite addition in the shop. We have a brand here—SLAB—which is an apparel brand by two brothers in Edinburgh. They make T-shirts, beanies, and caps. They have a connection with the Wave Project, a surf therapy charity who run their sessions here in the pool, and 10% of every product sold is donated to that project enabling kid’s to partake in surf therapy.
Is there anything you want to mention that I might have missed?
As of this week we have just launched our Lost Shore surf shop online! You will be able to browse all of our products on the web shop and place an order for collection. The next phase would be a shipping service which we hope to have set up very soon, so you can enjoy a little bit of Lost Shore from home!
