All quotes below are excerpted from a 1987 Ron DiMenna profile in Florida Magazine, by John McAleenan.

GETTING STARTED IN SURF RETAIL, AROUND 1961


I ran across an ad in an old surfing magazine. Surfboards were selling for $100. I was married then, had two kids and was making $100 a week as a meat salesman for Swift & Co. I had just gotten out of the Marines, my education had stopped when I couldn’t deal with the 12th grade—and I sure didn’t have any loose hundred-dollar bills sitting around. 

[Note: DiMenna borrowed $300 from his father and bought three boards.]

 A few minutes after I sold the first board, a guy came in and wanted one for himself and one for his son. I told him I couldn’t do that. One of those boards was mine. The guy was insistent. "I can’t go back to the car without a board for my son, too." My dad intervened. "Sell him both boards," he said. "You’ll have almost enough to buy five more." So that’s what I did. Pretty soon I was buying — and selling — five or more boards a week. That first year in New Jersey I netted $27,000. And it’s never stopped since then.


I sat down one night to think about a name. I was with two college kids, both art students, and we were sitting around sipping from a quart of Fleischmann’s. As the night grew older we got a little sillier and began running through words that might rhyme with Ron. We all thought Ron Jon had a certain cadence to it, besides which, I had a friend named Jon and my son’s name is Jon. The kids helping me fiddled with some designs and lettering for a while, then I said just make it look like it sounds, and they did, giving it a bamboo character. Then we put something around it and I had the company nameplate. It’s been the same ever since. 

[Note: John Spodofora, DiMenna's next-door neighbor in the early 1960s, claimed that he in fact is the "Jon" of Ron Jon.]


When I got to Florida, I did the whole coastline, but Cocoa Beach attracted me because then it looked very much like Long Beach Island, the beach community near Ship Bottom. So I rented a cubbyhole store [in Cocoa Beach] for $200 a month, put up a little Ron Jon’s Surf Shop sign, cooked on a hot plate in the hallway, bathed in the ocean and washed off with sulfur water. At the time, I could deliver these factory-produced pop-out surfboards in only a few days. If the kids wanted a custom-shaped board, and most of these then were being made in California, it sometimes took three or four weeks. So I definitely had a merchandising advantage. In all, those early Cocoa Beach days had a special touch to them. Fact is, I didn’t get back to New Jersey for a year-and-a-half. I was only supposed to be gone for a couple of weeks.

ON BLOWING UP TREES WITH DYNAMITE, FOR FUN, IN THE 1970s


Those were good times. It didn’t hurt anybody. You get a neat sensation, pushing the button on a detonator or lighting a fuse and watching the whole landscape rearrange itself in front of you. I know it sounds crazy, but you gotta try it before you knock it.

ON HIS 18-MONTH DRUG-RELATED PRISON TERM, IN 1974-'75


For a long while, the only visitor I would allow in jail was my dad. What happened to me hurt him terribly. He died very soon after I got out. I know he was just holding on until I was free. That time still bothers me. They came and got me and took me away . . . it was not me they wanted. They, the police, wanted someone else. They just wanted me to tell them things.


If you’re gonna be a car dealer, I say sell all the cars, not just Fords or Chevys. I happen to have a beach- and water-sports-oriented store. So we are going to sell the best of everything that’s out there. When you get right down to it, my business philosophy is very simple. You listen to what the customer wants, find it, stock it, factor in the Disney personality, sell it at a reasonable price — and you’re on a roll.


It's simple. I’ve got three people running [the business]. Bob Baugher, of course, is the president. Gaye sifts through things at the much smaller New Jersey operation. Jack on the Merritt Island property sifts through the Florida operation. Sometimes, of course, they get mixed together. I stay in touch with Gaye and Jack, and then, if I need to, I can get a message to Baugher through them. I don’t want to fall into that telephone trap again. 

[Note: Gaye Hendricks is DiMenna's sister; Jack Van Zile met DiMenna in 1974, while the two were in prison together.]

Right now, Baugher can put on paper any major projects he wants to discuss. Gaye or Jack can forward the letters. They will both know where I am. If Baugher needs an answer about something, one of those two can relay it to him. Now, these three people don’t always enjoy talking to each other — in fact, sometimes they won’t — but I usually manage to straighten that out. I don’t want to take away from Baugher’s role in any way. Fact is, I couldn’t do it without him. And he couldn’t do it without them — all the other employees. But it’s going to be run the way I see it, the way I think it should be run.

COCOA BEACH RON JON'S AS THE ONE TRUE RON JON'S


Baugher is pushing hard to start up a mail-order business. A sure-fire money machine, he says. Other friends say they would help finance a whole chain of Ron Jon’s. To those ideas, I say "no." Let’s work the one we’ve got. We’ll still double our money. I’ve got this vision in my mind, see. Let’s say these two old guys bump into each other in the middle of nowhere. A ghost town in Idaho. A mining camp in Australia. A pub in Wales . . . wherever. They eye each other. One is wearing a Ron Jon T-shirt. The other has his beer wrapped in one of those Ron Jon foam can holders. There is instant recognition, instant connection — because chances are very, very good they were both at Ron Jon’s in Cocoa Beach at one point. They have an experience they can share. Now, I like that scenario — and I know it happens all the time, all over the world.


I’ve run away a few times. Right now [1987] I’ve been a runaway for about a year. I just got crazy with all the people tugging at me, calling me, pulling in different directions. I looked around one day and counted three phones, all of them ringing, all with calls waiting, two beepers. It became too much. I began to think I was just a computer. That’s why I live a secluded life. I used to enjoy working the store, but I don’t any longer. I’m not after big bucks anyway. What difference does it make if we grow only 30 percent a year instead of 80 percent? What are we gonna do with more money? Buy some Ron Jon T-shirts?


Those Australians know how to flout authority. That’s the place to be.

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