Father + Son Shapers Join Tesla and Xbox On Good Design’s Honour Roll

With the Surfer Poll Awards long gone, there are few remaining occasions where surfers can justify a suit, tie, and a glass of something sparkling. A shame, really. As Leo Fioravanti’s wedding recently proved, the species cleans up alright when given some bubbly and a dress code.

But that’s precisely the red rope treatment Noosa-based father-and-son duo Stuey and Ryan Campbell got last week at the 2025 Good Design Awards, Australia’s longest-running program recognizing innovation across industries from automotive to architecture, for winning a coveted Gold Tick, one of the program’s highest honors, for their “mechanical spring” surfboard technology.

Their Exo-Flex™ tech took out the Product Design: Sport & Lifestyle category, marking the first time in over six decades that a surfboard has earned gold at the prestigious awards. Previously, Haydenshapes and MF Softboards were recognized with green ticks, a few rungs lower on the design ladder.

“Yeah, it was nice to get dressed up in a suit and tie,” laughed Ryan. “It’s just a nice bit of affirmation, really. You don’t win a cash prize or anything, but to be mentioned alongside companies like Commbank, Tesla, and Xbox is a pretty good feeling.”

“Without bragging on any particular [surfboard] companies, a lot of them put out pretty dubious technology and then try to make a big deal out of it. Like ‘spring this or spring that.’ It’s like, ‘mate, you put a little piece of carbon on your board, you’re not doing shit.’ That’s one of the hardest things we face as a small business, that our legitimate innovation gets lumped in with the gimmicky stuff.”

The Campbells’ Exo-Flex™ tech isn’t only impressive in theory to people with no idea what a grub screw is. Mikey C previously gushed over their patented multi-layered carbon-fiber spring system inside the board’s core in Joyride.

Each “leaf” in the spring stack is tuned to the surfer’s weight, wave type, and desired flex pattern. The result: faster response, more drive, and a longer-lasting board that can be measured as much as it can be felt.

“The idea came from Dad’s background building racing yachts,” Ryan explained. “He noticed how they were using carbon fibre in different ways, not just for strength, but to control how the structure actually moved. So we started experimenting with the same logic in surfboards. The more we refined it, the more we realized we’d built something that behaves like a mechanical spring. It stores energy and releases it through turns.”

Ryan’s father, Stuey Campbell, has shaped more than 25,000 boards by hand since 1974 and worked for labels like Nev, Hot Buttered, Aloha, and Gordon & Smith. Ryan, a Billabong poster kid known for his silk form, joined him after having kids and hanging up the jersey for good.

The Good Design Awards jury described Exo-Flex™ as “a revolutionary composite surfboard construction that advances surfboard engineering by translating performance into measurable data — a significant leap from traditional shaping methods.”

“The next step for us is to get this tech under a proper pro surfer and see what they can do with it,” he added. “We know it works. We’ve tested it every way we can. Now we just want to see it pushed at the highest level.”