Core Store: Ann's Cottage Surf Shops, Cornwall
You could argue that a chain of fourteen surf shops is not “core”, but every business starts somewhere, and can only get that big by striking a chord. This is the story of Ann’s Cottage, the Cornish surf retail giant that grew from a petrol station shop at the back of the beach car park at Polzeath.
Ann’s Cottage: In The Beginning
In 1978 Rob and Bev Harris took over the small village store next to the tiny petrol station in Polzeath and started selling surfboards and wetsuits – the wetsuits coming from C-Skins founder Carey on a sale or return basis to help them get up and running. The building was known as Ann’s Cottage. Before too long they took over the petrol station – all three pumps of it and the small shop that was barely bigger than a double garage. Over the years the beach and surf shop side of the business grew, in all senses of the word as the building was extended too. Right up until the early nineties they still had working petrol pumps on the tiny forecourt, before they were removed to make way for a larger shop front. As well as the shop, the Harris’ ran the car park behind the shop that overlooks the beach at Polzeath, and the trading licenses for the beach itself where they operated a hire business renting out wetsuits, surfboards, surf-skis and bellyboards.
Through the 1990s the shop grew to cover two floors with a large attic stock room and offices, from the windows of which the staff could check the surf at all stages of tide in order to update the daily answerphone surf report. This service continued into the noughties before faster internet and forecasting models overtook daily eyeball reports from surf shops. Many local surfers had their first jobs in the surf shop or on the hire van (one of the more desirable roles within the business for young groms, as they got to hang out on the beach all day), and as Polzeath and its affluent neighbour Rock boomed as staycation destinations, Ann’s Cottage went from strength to strength.
Location, Location, Location
In 2003 Ann’s Cottage opened a second store in nearby Wadebridge, the town a few miles inland from Polzeath. A few years later in 2006 they took the opportunity to open a retail outlet at Kingsley Village on the A30, and then in Padstow on the other side of the Camel Estuary from their home turf. The next year in 2007 they launched an online e-commerce website and then, driven by Rob Harris, over the next few years Ann’s Cottage opened store after store in Falmouth, Newquay and then the enormous Cornwall Surf Centre in St Columb,
In 2017 the line of old chalets at the back of the beach car park in Polzeath that had for years served as store rooms for the original surf shop were demolished and replaced by the large purpose-built Polzeath Surf Centre – a retail space dedicated to surf hardware that stocked the largest selection of wetsuits in Europe.
C-Skins and Ann’s Cottage
When Carey Brown founded C-Skins in 1997, one of the first people who he spoke to about stocking his wetsuits was his old friend at our local surf shop, Rob Harris.
“Twenty years after I’d supplied him with those first wetsuits to sell from the village shop, the minute I started C-Skins Rob showed his integrity by getting behind the brand and stocking us from the very beginning.”
- C-Skins founder Carey Brown
Ann’s Cottage has always carried a full range of C-Skins’ wetsuits, and have been a valued retail partner of ours for over twenty five years. In 2024 they were one of our retailers who backed our transition to natural rubber by stocking the full range of NuWave natural rubber wetsuits, putting some serious surf shop clout behind a more sustainable future for surfing.
“Ann’s Cottage has grown beyond its beginnings as a beach-front shop, and their size and buying power has been really important for the homegrown UK surf industry. They’ve always shifted a lot of stock, first to the booming Polzeath holiday-maker market and now across their chain of stores, and their business has allowed a lot of British surf brands to grow alongside them.”
- C-Skins founder Carey Brown
Over 40 Years of Providing For Surfers
2023 marked Ann’s Cottage’s 45th year in business. Over those decades the business has grown from a few wetsuits on a rail outside a petrol station to the biggest surf retail chain in the UK.
It would be easy to presume that this dedication and achievement would be enough to summarise Rob Harris, however before founding Ann’s Cottage, at the age of 21 he helped oversee the establishment of Polzeath Coastguard Rescue Team and dedicated fifty years to saving lives on the coast of Cornwall. In 2020 he was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours for services to the Coastguard in his role as Station Officer.
Sadly, neither Bev nor Rob are still with us, Bev having passed away in 2007 and Rob in October 2021. They were survived by their three daughters – two of whom, Becci and Emily and their husbands, are still deeply involved in the family business that their parents grew from that small beach shop. Alongside them are a team of managers, several of whom got their start working in Ann’s Cottage when it was their local surf shop before returning years later to bring their expertise to this huge retail operation.
Ann’s Cottage original shop still stands in its original location overlooking the beach at Polzeath. It has grown and developed over the years, but the view that the crew who work there can snatch out of the attic windows is still largely unchanged – that of the beach, the waves, and Pentire Head. With so many shops around Cornwall and catering to a huge customer base in-store and online, Ann’s Cottage has grown but it is still a core store: so many surfers will buy their first wetsuit in one of their shops, and so many young local surfers will continue to have their first job sweeping sand and reorganizing the rails in an Ann’s Cottage.
