Since the 1990s, the surfing community in Marin County has grown by the day. Two of those ‘90s surfers, Buzz Bonneau and Alex Salz, turned their childhood hobbies into a profession, creating a direct-to-consumer wetsuit company called FERAL. The business offers high-quality, affordable wetsuits and a welcoming, loyal environment for customers. Their success has not gone unnoticed, as the self-made brand has been featured in Vogue Magazine and the Marin Independent Journal. 

Long before taking the wetsuit industry by storm, they attended Redwood, where Salz graduated in 1998 and Bonneau in 1999. The surfing community at Redwood in the ‘90s was smaller than it is now, which led the two to become the friends that they still are today.

“[Salz and I] connected in high school when I was a sophomore and he was a junior through surfing, but none of my other friends surfed,” Bonneau said.

Being very competitive throughout high school, Bonneau was an academically focused individual who also was a part of the water polo and swim teams. Current math teacher Allison Kristal was in the same graduating class as Bonneau and spent a lot of her time with him due to similar schedules. Throughout high school, Bonneau and Kristal shared interests in honors math classes and Latin which allowed them to connect in deeper ways.

“I see [Buzz] at every reunion, or when he comes back to do Alumni Speaker Day. That’s always really nice to reconnect and hear about our families and who it is from high school that we keep in contact with,” Kristal said.

Following high school and before starting FERAL, Bonneau attended Stanford University and worked in the field of medical robotics. For about a decade, Bonneau created and worked for his own medical device company, before selling it to a larger corporation. After the sale, Bonneau and Salz came together and used the direct-to-consumer business idea that had yet to be introduced to the wetsuit market. Prior to their innovation, products were sold through a network of wholesalers, distributors and retailers. The new business model was a successful idea at the time because it allowed owners to skip the middlemen and eliminate the need to join forces with big retail brands.

“[Salz] questioned if we should just make a better wetsuit and sell it directly to consumers. We had a lot of very bad ideas when it came to the wetsuit industry, but this one seemed like it was going to actually stick,” Bonneau said.

Bonneau and Salz, using their experience as surfers, examined different types of wetsuits based on their warmth, quality, price and popularity. 

“Wetsuits that we used to wear kept us warm, but they were also $700 and we just knew that [that model] was never going to be successful,” Bonneau said. “They’re too expensive and there’s too much other tech on top of the wetsuit that doesn’t do anything.”

Finally coming to a set design after testing the qualities of different wetsuits and deciding what was necessary or not, Bonneau and Salz created a brand so successful that they were recognized by market leaders who were creating the best wetsuits at the time.

“We made Volcom-type suits and to us, that felt amazing because it was a major brand even while we were kids. We made all their suits, they sold some of them and they gave them to all their team riders, which was the first time that professional-level surfers were wearing our suits. That was the first step towards becoming a real company,” Bonneau said.

Customer loyalty and business authenticity are key in the FERAL business. Bonneau and Salz find authenticity to be an important quality of a well-run business because of the comfortability it creates for its customers and employees.

“We just want to keep it small, keep it us and keep it authentic,” Bonneau said. “I think the most rewarding part of this business is the amount of recurring customers we have. A huge number of our orders are from people who’ve ordered around five suits in the past.” 

The FERAL dream team started as a grassroots business and became one of the highest-quality and affordable wetsuit brands on the market. FERAL placed top five on the market in North America according to Stab Magazine’s yearly wetsuit survey. Salz and Bonneau have created nothing but the best for all of their customers, no matter their experience within the sport.

“It’s an important part of the story that you don’t have to know everybody or be famous to start a successful brand,” Bonneau said. “Just follow your passion and you will never look back.”