Summer Special : Two Kayak Enthusiasts Turn a Hobby Into a Thriving Business in Irvine

Doug Schwartz was searching for a hobby 3 1/2 years ago, but he found a career.

“I was frustrated that I couldn’t get to the wilderness from Orange County,” he said. “I started looking around for some kind of ocean sport. But I wasn’t interested in sailing, power boating or anything like that. I didn’t want to spend that much money.

“I kind of stumbled onto ocean kayaking, took some lessons, bought some equipment and discovered pretty early that I really loved it. I found myself doing it all the time.”

About three years ago, Schwartz and friend Joanne Turner helped form California Kayak Friends, a club dedicated to promoting the sport in Southern California.

“People were wanting us to give lessons all the time,” said Turner, the club’s president. “There was such a great demand, we decided to go into business doing that full-time.”

So, in January of 1987, the pair formed Southwind Sports Resource, an Irvine-based firm that manufactures kayaks and offers lessons.

Schwartz had been a real estate developer and Turner was a management consultant.

“It was a risk, a big risk,” Schwartz, 37, said. “But so was my development business. We got in on the ground floor of a boom in kayaking, and the interest continues to expand. We’re doing as well or better than we had expected to do.”

Turner stumbled onto the sport by accident, too.

“I was going to Maine and a friend suggested I go kayaking,” Turner, 40, said. “I said I would if I knew what it was. So I did and I had a really great time.

“I came back from the trip and started looking around for someone to paddle with. I found Doug and it led to the club and now the business.”

Turner had grown tired of her work as a management consultant and yearned for something new.

“I had a very stable clientele,” she said. “No risk whatsoever. But I felt like a change. After 16 years of having a business all by myself, doing the same types of things, it became old.

“It had always been a goal of mine to be able to do something for a living that I really loved,” Turner said. “I’m very lucky to have done that.”

Her new goal is to be able to convince her former business clients to sign up for a weekend kayaking/business retreat so she can fuse her two careers.

“It’s nothing for them to go to the desert for a weekend business meeting,” she said, “but this is something new, and they’re considering it. A lot of people who are big into kayaking probably never thought they would like it. I guess I was one of them. But I learned to love it.”