Longtime SLO County surf shop moves to a new, bigger spot — and it’s adding a museum
The Cayucos Surf Company has moved from its longtime home to a new, larger space, allowing the shop to increase its merchandise and even add a museum of surfing.
The store’s new location is even closer to the beach in the historic, circa-1909 building at 146 N. Ocean Ave., next to the Old Cayucos Tavern and Saloon.
For 26 years, Kevin McClory had dispensed equal amounts of surfing equipment, supplies and advice from his previous location at 95 Cayucos Drive, a yellow-awninged building on the corner of Cayucos Drive and Ocean Avenue, about a block and a half from the pier.
At the new spot, the store is more than doubling its footprint (to 4,400 square feet from 1,700), which gives McCLory space to incorporate lots more goodies along with a surfing museum and other Cayucos memorabilia.
The museum will feature old surfboards and an area where the Cayucos Historical Society can “set up a section that people can come to and look at things from Old Cayucos,” McClory said.
One of the first items to go on display in the upstairs exhibit area will be the well-known front door from the shop’s former location, McClory and his wife, Lisa McClory, said in a Jan. 26 phone interview.
On Jan. 27, a contractor removed and relocated the door, which is decorated in decades worth of stickers. The McClorys said they wanted to preserve all those memories for their customers and themselves.
He said remembering those shared experiences fits snugly into his philosophy of being friendly, helpful and informative.
“Don’t oversell and make sure you always treat the customers right,” he said of his retail philosophy.
Those techniques seem to be working.
“I’ve been raising families in this store since 1996,” he said. “Now I’m selling to those kids’ kids. That’s a special kind of thing.”
Store brands and legendary products
The McClorys’ store will continue to focus on its own line of products, “since our brands are what people are driven to a lot, the Cayucos Surf Company brand,” which they say is what makes their selection unique.
Cayucos Surf will offer an expanded line of T-shirts, skateboards, surfboards and bodyboards, wetsuits, booties, wax and more.
“We’ll also have things for the moms” and others who don’t surf yet, he said, including swimsuits and lots of different brands of sunglasses.
They’ll continue to carry many of the legendary surfing brands, such as Quicksilver, Billabong, O’Neill and others.
The McClorys won’t, however, be renting equipment anymore, as they did in their old shop.
Filling a vacancy
Cayucos Surf’s new location has been vacant for a while after housing the Rich Man, Poor Man antique store for years until 2013, when it moved to Cambria. Other smaller businesses had located in parts of the building for a time.
“It’s hard to find a new location in Cayucos,” Kevin McClory said. He knew the building’s owner, which helped the negotiations along.
McClory said he moved to Cayucos in 1984 from Oregon after growing up in (and hating) Hollywood. He even spent some time living and working in Kodiak, Alaska.
“I felt like Cayucos was my kind of place, and I loved the area,” he said. “Who wouldn’t love the Central Coast?”
While working in the area’s construction trade, McClory one day found himself “sitting on the coast, looking at the waves, thinking how nice it would be to open a surf shop here.”
So, he did.
Blended family, new shop locale, lots of excitement
A decade ago, the couple met and married, creating a blended family of “six kids between the two of us, ranging in age from 47 to 23,” she said.
They and their staff of six will keep the store open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week, McClory said.
The move was challenging, but “we’ve had lots of great help, who got it all over here in one day,” she said of their vast stock and fixtures. “It’s ultimately been such an exciting time.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
