For a lot of surf and lifestyle founders, the dream is not just to build a business, but to build something that actually reflects the way they want to live. For Julia Beyer, co-founder of Suntribe, that has meant creating a company rooted in the ocean, remote work, sustainability, and a stubborn commitment to doing things properly, even when that means moving slower than everyone else.

Suntribe is a natural mineral sunscreen and clean skincare brand built for surfers, families, outdoor lovers, and anyone who wants sun protection that is safer for their skin and the planet. Today, the business turns over more than €1 million per year, works with around 30 sales partners across Europe, Asia, and other sunny corners of the world, and has a remote team of five people spread across four countries.

But like most good founder stories, it did not begin with a polished growth plan. It began with a problem, a passion, and three young entrepreneurs who had very little to lose.

From University Idea to Ocean-Led Business

Julia’s background is in economics and entrepreneurship. She studied in Sweden, where she met her co-founders Karl and Hampus. The idea for Suntribe came after Karl returned to Europe from Australia, where he had fallen in love with surfing and had been using natural sunscreen that performed well in the water. Back in Europe, he struggled to find anything similar. That gap became the starting point.

“We were all young, had nothing to lose as we had no stable income anyway, and wanted to try out something that felt genuinely like us,” Julia says.

The first product they created was a minimalistic zinc sunscreen paste designed to stay on during long sessions in hot conditions. It is still part of the Suntribe range today. The early validation came in a way many Surfpreneurs will recognise: not from a pitch deck, but from a real person in the real world.

“The first time we walked into a surf shop with our very first sunscreen product and the shop owner just said, ‘this makes sense’ and wanted to buy our sunscreen straight away was an eye-opener for me,” Julia says.

That moment helped her realise they were not just making another sunscreen. They had created a simple, high-performance, no-nonsense product that customers were already looking for but struggling to find.

Building Around Values, Not Just a Market

Julia had always felt connected to the water. As a child, she spent long hours snorkelling with her dad. Surfing came later, after Suntribe had already started.

“It’s more credible to sell surf sunscreen if you actually surf yourself,” she says with a smile.

Once she discovered surfing, it changed the direction of her life. The ocean became more than inspiration for the brand. It became a guiding force for how Julia wanted to live and work.

“The ocean has always been an important anchor and playground in my life,” she explains.

Suntribe’s sustainability focus came from that same place. Once Julia learned more about the environmental and health concerns connected to certain synthetic sunscreen chemicals, she wanted Suntribe to be part of the alternative. The business became a way to align her work with values she already cared about: being close to nature, leaving no trace, enjoying simple things, and helping more people choose safer mineral sunscreens. That is one of the strongest lessons from Suntribe’s journey. Sustainability is not something they bolted onto the brand later. It sits at the centre of the product, the customer promise, and the decision-making.

One of their popular products, Suntribe Zinc Sun Sticks

Why Suntribe Serves Both Surfers and Parents

Suntribe’s customers fall into two main groups: surfers and parents. Surfers, outdoor athletes, and adventurers come to the brand looking for reef-safe sun protection that actually stays on in extreme conditions. Parents come looking for gentle, safe formulas they can trust for babies and children. On paper, those are quite different customer groups. Julia says that from a purely financial point of view, it may have made sense to focus only on parents, as that is the larger market. But Suntribe has chosen to keep both groups at the heart of the business.

“We are surfers at heart ourselves, and can therefore not let go of that part of the business,” Julia says. That decision says a lot about the brand.

Suntribe has grown into a serious product business, but it has not abandoned the lifestyle and community that gave it meaning in the first place. For Surfpreneurs, there is a useful tension here. Sometimes the “bigger” market is not the only answer. The stronger business may come from understanding which parts of the brand give it credibility, energy, and soul.

Strict Standards Make Growth Slower, But Stronger

Today, Suntribe offers more than 20 mineral sunscreen and clean skincare products. The team develops products for themselves first, because they are also surfers, hikers, and parents.

“If a formula isn’t something we’d personally use every day, we simply won’t launch it,” Julia says.

That standard has shaped the company in both positive and difficult ways. On one hand, it builds trust. Customers know Suntribe is not rushing products to market just because there is demand. On the other hand, it means development can take far longer than expected. Julia says one of the hardest parts of building the business has been accepting just how long certain things take.

Some formulas have been in development for years and still are not ready. Some packaging improvements have had to be postponed because ordering processes dragged out. Creating natural formulas that are stable, effective, pleasant to use, and aligned with Suntribe’s standards is much harder than many customers realise. But the team refuses to compromise and that patience is now becoming part of their advantage.

Suntribe is currently preparing new formulas for 2027, including products customers have been asking about for years. Julia says the team is close to a real breakthrough and is excited to show that mineral sunscreens can be just as powerful and user-friendly as chemical sunscreens when formulated well.

For newer founders, the lesson is clear: not every delay is failure. Sometimes the slow work is the moat.

Surviving the Moments That Nearly Break the Business

Suntribe’s story is not just a clean growth curve. Like many surf, travel, and outdoor businesses, the company was hit hard during Covid. Customers cancelled orders, travel slowed dramatically, and uncertainty spread across the industry.

“There were some very tough moments during Covid when our customers cancelled their orders, people travelled a lot less and there was a general state of crisis and unpredictability,” Julia says.

The team had to lie low for more than a year to recover. At one point, things came close to the edge.

“Thankfully we managed to pull through just before things reached a point where we would have had to close down shop,” she says.

That period tested the business, but it also proved something important. Suntribe had enough belief, enough customer trust, and enough team commitment to keep going. Now, after around 10 years in business, Julia says things feel steadier. The risks have not disappeared, but the company has built resilience.

“At least after 10 years, things are less likely to go south completely, especially now that we’ve built such a great team, and that’s a relief,” she says.

For experienced Surfpreneurs, this is a reminder that a steady business is often built quietly, through surviving hard seasons, learning how to absorb shocks, and keeping the team moving when momentum disappears.

Sustainability as Continuous Improvement

One of Suntribe’s recent wins has been upgrading the packaging of its best-selling products. The brand already offered sunscreen sticks in biodegradable cardboard packaging, and now its sunscreen tubes are made from recycled material. The new lip balm packaging is 95% recycled. For Julia, these improvements matter because sustainability is not a finished checkbox, it is an ongoing process. The team is constantly looking for ways to reduce the footprint of its products and operations. That includes ingredients, packaging, logistics, formulas, and the way they work as a remote company. This is a useful distinction for surf and lifestyle brands.

Customers are increasingly alert to sustainability claims that feel vague or performative. Suntribe’s approach is more grounded: make the product better, improve what can be improved, communicate clearly, and keep going.

Growing Through Community and Partnerships

Suntribe was bootstrapped, especially in the early days. That meant there was no large marketing budget to buy attention. Instead, the team relied heavily on community. They reached out to extreme athletes, surf shops, and people in the outdoor world. Those early supporters helped them reach their first customers through word of mouth.

“The surf community and extreme sports community has been essential for us,” Julia says.

That spirit is even reflected in the name Suntribe. The idea behind the brand is that people are united by a shared belief: that the ingredients in sunscreen should be safe for your skin and the planet, and that life is more fun when you do things together. To this day, Julia says one of the best forms of support is still simple customer advocacy.

“It still makes our day when customers tell us that they love our sunscreens and have just recommended them to their friends,” she says.

For Suntribe, long-term sales partnerships have also been a major growth channel. Alongside Meta ads, particularly Instagram, the business relies on strong relationships with sales agents and distributors. Some of those partnerships have been in place almost since the beginning.

That is an important reminder for Surfpreneurs building physical products: growth does not always come from chasing new channels. Sometimes it comes from looking after the right partnerships for a long time.

How a Remote Team Actually Gets Work Done

Suntribe’s team works remotely across multiple countries, which gives the business flexibility but also requires a clear way of operating. One of their most useful practices is an “only essential meetings” policy. When they do meet, there is a clear agenda. Otherwise, the team keeps meetings to a minimum so people have more time to actually build things.

“A game changer has been that we barely schedule meetings, both internally and externally,” Julia says.

The team also works in a fluid, hands-on way. People have their main areas of responsibility, such as sales or marketing, but anyone can start a project they feel passionate about or ask for help with work that does not fit their strengths.“The main idea is that we all have fun while at work and turn our dreams into reality,” Julia says.

That may sound simple, but it is a powerful operating principle. Suntribe’s remote setup works because it is built around trust, autonomy, clarity, and shared values. The team also makes up for the lack of a physical office by organising meetups in places like Portugal, Sweden, Morocco, Germany, and Spain.

Business as a Path to Lifestyle

For Julia, building Suntribe has changed her lifestyle more than she expected. She was not a surfer when the business started. Now surfing is central to her life. “Surfing has become the perfect combination of everything I love: movement, time in nature and spending time with friends,” she says.

Remote work has also given her the freedom to spend extended periods in places like Senegal, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Morocco, and across Europe while continuing to work on the business. A good day, in Julia’s world, looks like dawn patrol with friends, focused work hours, lunch outside, more laptop time, a sunset surf, and dinner with friends.

“When all of that comes together I feel like the luckiest person on Earth,” she says.

This is not the version of entrepreneurship that glorifies constant hustle. It is more grounded than that. Julia’s story shows what can happen when a business is built carefully enough to support the life behind it.

Lessons for Other Surfpreneurs

Looking back, Julia says one of her biggest lessons is that being in the right place matters, and you often get to the right places by following your passions. That is how she met her co-founders. It is how Suntribe found its market. It is how the brand stayed connected to surfing even while growing into broader customer groups. Her other lesson is to trust gut feeling sooner.

“I would trust my gut feeling even more to sometimes say no when I feel that an opportunity is not right, even though rationally everything points toward it being a promising option,” she says. Over time, she has learned that when something does not feel right, it rarely becomes right later.

For someone starting a business, her advice is simple: follow your passion, and surround yourself with people who are just as passionate as you are.

“For me, our team at Suntribe makes the difference every single day,” she says.

What’s Next for Suntribe

Right now, Julia is focused on finalising updates to the Suntribe website after migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify, integrating AI tools and automations into business practices, and preparing new formulas and packaging for 2027. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Lovable have become part of her daily work across content creation, coding, brainstorming, and automation.

The next 6–12 months are focused on product innovation: launching new formulas and proving that mineral sunscreen can be powerful, practical, and enjoyable to use when it is formulated well. Suntribe is also looking for new sales partnerships in areas where the brand is not yet represented, as well as like-minded brands for marketing collaborations.

And Julia’s invitation to the Surfpreneurs community is very much in the spirit of how Suntribe has grown from the beginning:

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that amazing opportunities often come from simply reaching out to people. So don’t hesitate to send me a message. I’m always happy to exchange ideas or explore collaborations.”

For Surfpreneurs building product businesses, lifestyle brands, or sustainability-led companies, Julia’s story is a strong reminder that growth does not always need to be rushed. Sometimes the real work is choosing the harder standard, staying close to your community, building the right team, and giving the business enough time to become steady.

That may not be the fastest path. But for Suntribe, it has built a business that feels aligned, resilient, and genuinely connected to the life it was created to support.

Connect with Julia and Suntribe

You can learn more about Suntribe at suntribesunscreen.com or follow the brand on Instagram at @suntribesunscreen.

Building Suntribe: The Long Game of Sustainable Surf Sunscreen