Hayden Cox, in the words of Jay-Z, isn’t a businessman. He’s a business, man. His surfboard brand, Haydenshapes, is one of the biggest on the planet, and like any good entrepreneur, he’s got his fingers in the real estate market. His house, known as Alaia, just hit the market, in Australia and it’s not cheap. A cool $16 million (AUD, I’m assuming, which is about $10.5 million USD) according to Realestate.com.au.
Alaia, located in Palm Beach, New South Wales, has been a labor of love, just like Haydenshapes Surfboards. Cox’s story of how Haydenshapes came to be is an inspiring one that begins when he was 15. He broke his favorite surfboard and couldn’t afford another one, so he decided he’d just make one instead. A year later, he was selling boards to teachers at his school. By 20, he’d opened his first factory on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Then, in 2007, he shaped a board for himself that would become the world’s best-selling design: the Hypto Krypto.
Now, decades after that first surfboard, Cox has well and truly made it. Not only did Haydenshapes blow up, but Cox is also the inventor of FutureFlex, a stringerless type of surfboard construction that you have very likely ridden. A few years ago, he sold a house in Palm Beach, a ridiculously nice suburb in the Northern Beaches region of Greater Sydney, for $3.36 million. He and his wife Danielle settled on another Palmie house to move into, but they had big plans for this one.
When they first bought the property, the plan was to keep a wonderful little home that was built in the 1950s on it. Like many renos, though, plans changed once they looked at the actual nuts and bolts.
“Initially, the couple hoped to retain the original 1950s cottage on the property,” reads the description for a video tour of the house. “But once construction began, it became clear that the structure was no longer viable. What followed was a complete reimagining of the home – rooted in the same footprint but designed anew. In the process, Hayden didn’t just build a house; he built his dream home from the ground up, embedding his personal values into every material, detail and spatial experience.”
Cox added little nods to the industry that made him so successful, with parts of surfboards built into the house itself.
“Discarded EPS foam and fiberglass offcuts from his surfboard production were repurposed into elements of the home’s interior architecture – appearing in the staircase, fireplace and breakfast nook seating,” the video above explains. “These tactile inclusions speak not only to sustainability but to the handmade, the imperfect and the deeply personal. It’s here, in these thoughtful decisions, that Hayden truly built his dream home in a way that reflects his craft and creativity.”
The build itself took nearly four years, but it was time well spent.
“They chose a north-facing house in the coveted pocket and spent three and a half years extending it and bringing all their creative energy into crafting a tri-level home where every room sees the ocean,” wrote Kathryn Welling, a property journalist for Realestate.com.au. The home has six bedrooms, five bathrooms, garaging for three cars and includes a two-bedroom guest house, internal lift, and wellness floor with infrared sauna and cold plunge bath.”
But that’s not all the Cox family added. There’s a heated wet-edge pool, media room, home theater, and a gym, so leaving the paradise they built wasn’t all that necessary, except to go surfing.
Hayden and his wife Danielle have always worked closely together. Haydenshapes wouldn’t have become what it did without her. She’s the director of marketing and public relations and does her job very well, collaborating with brands outside of surfing in order to boost Haydenshapes to heights unseen.
The house Hayden built sits on nearly 10,000 square feet of land, features a self-contained, two bedroom guest house with separate access, and is surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens. If you’ve got a whack of cash sitting around and you’d like to live in one of the nicest houses in Australia, well… you’re better off than I am. But hey, we can dream, right? You can see all the details — of which there are plenty — on the listing website.
