Devon-based surfing site Magicseaweed bought as part of £7m deal

A technology start-up providing wave and weather information for surfers worldwide from a base in rural Devon has been acquired by Australia's leading surfwear retailer as part of a £7m deal.

Magicseaweed, launched in 2002 in Kingsbridge near Salcombe, is the world's largest online surf forecasting platform with 2m users a month, providing weather and wave forecasts for 4,500 beaches worldwide.

The company has been bought as part of a cash and shares deal by SurfStitch, the Australian listed retailer.

"We're not in a tech hub, in London, or Bristol or Exeter for that matter," says Ryan Anderson, one of Magicseaweed's three founders. "We're just in this sleepy little town. But I guess we are a bit of a tech success story coming out of the southwest of England."

Mr Anderson's background is in digital publishing while his co-partners Ben Freeston and Nicholas Lott are described as self-taught software developers and oceanographers. The company employs 22 people, many of them software developers drawn from Plymouth.

The transaction price includes SurfStitch's purchase of Stab Magazine, based in Sydney, which is the world's largest online surf publishing network.

The Australian company said the two deals were worth A$13.8m (£7.1m) and 4.8m SurfStitch shares.

According to the SurfStitch website, the deals "represent a digital ecosystem capable of capturing and influencing customers at all points of the surf and action sports lifestyle cycle".

Magicseaweed draws its site data from offshore weather buoys, web cameras on selected beaches, and its own long-range forecasting by in-house programmers and oceanographers working on its supercomputer in a warehouse in Devon.

One user William Murray in Belfast described it as "the go-to site for surfers" providing wind and wave information in real time, and even details such as the swell period, the distance between each wave that determines the quality of the surf.

Magicseaweed has a small online retail operation in UK and Europe selling surf boards and wetsuits. But Mr Anderson says SurfStitch was attracted by the large following the company has in the US and Australia.

The deal is just the latest reminder of the value of the surf economy in Devon and in the wider UK, where there are an estimated 500,000 surfers. Worldwide, Mr Anderson says there are 10m-12m surfers.

Last year a private investor paid £11m for the nearby Evans estate in Bantham, which includes one of the best surfing beaches in the Southwest.

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