Our Story

Whale Rider was born on the sand in Wilmington, North Carolina in 2009.

It started small — hand-printed tees sold to the local surf and salt-life crowd, the kind of shirts you'd actually wear out on the water and back to the bonfire. No boardrooms. Just a love for the coast and a screen printer that never quit.

Then life did what life does, and we moved to Oklahoma — about as far from a breaking wave as you can get. A lot of things change when you go landlocked. The love for the ocean isn't one of them.

So we kept going. Same salt in the veins, now with a little red dirt on the boots. Whale Rider is for everyone who carries the coast with them no matter where they ended up — the transplants, the dreamers, the ones checking swell reports from a thousand miles inland.

Landlocked but chasing waves. Always have been.

— The Whale Rider crew