From Cornwall Surf to Team England's Kit Bag: Kate Richards

Kate Richards used to describe her early sales attempts like shouting into a sea cave and hearing only her own voice come back. This month, the surf world answered: she's a Canopy Community People's Choice winner, and her eco surf wax brand, Rad Wax, is now used within Surfing England's setup.

Meet Kate Richards and Rad Wax

Rad Wax is a paraffin-free surf wax made in Cornwall. That distinction matters more than it sounds: roughly 90% of surf wax sold today is paraffin-based, a petroleum by-product that surfers rub straight onto their boards and wash into the sea. Kate, a lifelong Cornish surfer, came home from years of teaching abroad to find the shelves full of the same damaging bars. “Lots of surfers don’t realise that they’re putting that on their boards, happily going off surfing,” she says. Once she knew, she set out to build a sustainable surf wax that performed as well as the paraffin it replaced.

From Kitchen-Table Idea to Team England's Kit Bag

Early eco waxes had a reputation problem: too slippery, or too short-lived. Kate knew a failure would spread faster than a win, so she slowed down, working with a specialist product company to get the formula right before handing it to surfers, then to England team coaches, for real-world testing. That patience paid off — Rad Wax is now endorsed within Surfing England, and Kate is building out UK distribution while setting up her first stockists in Australia.

Sales didn’t come from a single big listing. “You’ve got to be kind of everywhere for people to then... you’re kind of on their mind,” Kate says. She went to demo nights, surf film screenings, and community events across Cornwall’s small but close-knit surf scene long before she made her first sale.

The Pivot from Classroom to Cornwall Workshop

Kate trained and worked as a teacher before Rad Wax, drawn to coaching and the freedom of shaping her own time. That pull toward independence eventually led her to a Level 7 entrepreneurship master’s at Falmouth University — a decision friends warned her against. “I had this little voice in my head saying going on this course could change your life,” she says. The course gave her mentorship, a founder network, and a skill she hadn’t expected to need: how to pitch and tell her business’s story with confidence, before she ever stepped in front of an investor.

It was through that world that she found Canopy Community and pitched at a Demo Night in Cornwall for the first time. “You get up there, you’re being very vulnerable and open, and you just say, this is who I am, take it or leave it,” she says. The room voted her People’s Choice.

“I think you just got to do it. I think that’s the key. If you worry about failing, you already don’t know — you just got to fail to succeed.”

Advice for First-Time Founders

• Slow your prototyping down. A product that underperforms spreads its reputation faster than one that works.
• Get feedback from people who’ve never met you — it’s the most honest signal you’ll find.
• Show up in person, repeatedly. Community trust beats a quiet online listing.
• Treat wrong assumptions as tests, not failures. “Everything you believe is probably wrong, and that’s fine.”
• Let a course, mentor, or community shortcut your mistakes. It’s time bought back, not time lost.

What's Next for Rad Wax

Kate is focused on establishing distribution in Australia, growing her UK stockist base, and getting Rad Wax onto as many boards as possible. “I think that’s what I’d love to see, is having a real, different choice for surfers,” she says.

Why This Story Matters

Kate didn’t start with a business plan — she started by noticing something wrong in a place she loved and refusing to leave it that way. For first-time founders wondering whether they need the “right” background to start something real, Rad Wax shows that the qualification that matters most is caring enough to fix the problem in front of you, then doing the unglamorous work of testing, showing up, and asking for help.

Watch the full conversation and catch every future Founder Friday episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@canopycommunity617

Canopy Community is a global entrepreneurship platform supporting first-time founders through virtual incubation, investor circles, and Demo Nights across the UK, Portugal, India, and Turkey. We believe entrepreneurship is a route to social mobility — and that there are many origin stories behind the founders building tomorrow’s companies. Learn more at canopy.community.

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