Dare Jennings

Dare Jennings might be Australia's most accidental business success story. The farmer's son from central NSW made his fortune through Australian surf-culture icon Mambo clothing, which he founded and sold and custom motorcycle brand, Deus ex Machina.

Jennings arrived via the unconventional career path of university drop-out, 'state-sponsored' surf nomad, rebel record-shop proprietor and backyard T-shirt screen-printer.

Boyish, witty and eminently engaging, Jennings was guided into his multi-million dollar businesses by his own hobbies - surfing, sex, rock music, comic books and motorcycles, and an innate distrust of anyone with an MBA.

Born in 1950 in Griffith, NSW, Dare Jennings (whose sister is award-winning author, Kate Jennings) quickly grew to suspect there was 'a lot more going on in the world than just driving a tractor around in ever-diminishing circles'.

Attaining a Teacher's Scholarship, he left for Sydney University, where he also discovered there was a lot more to life in the late-60s than attending classes.
Having a motorcycle and a surfboard but no car, Jennings made family visits by hitching rides in interstate trucks. On one such trip, the driver wore a Mack Trucks T-shirt. Told the T-shirt was imported from the US, Jennings had the inkling of an idea to screen-print some and sell them to friends.

Jennings' intuitive feel for both business and popular culture had propelled his screen-printing dalliance into a mainstream enterprise. As a soul-enriching aside, Jennings channelled his passion for alternative music (including the fresh, frenetic 'punk' genre) into an import-record store, Phantom Records.

The record label that it spawned would launch the careers of Sydney bands The Hoodoo Gurus and Mental As Anything, and create some of Australia's most enduring album-cover art.

Jennings was frustrated by the conservatism and cultural-cringing of both the rag-trade and record industries. Likewise frustrating was the fragmentation of the music, surfing and motorcycling scenes into warring factions, as myopic marketing took hold.

Mambo was perhaps the inevitable product of Jennings' world of music, art, rebellion, surfing and T-shirts. Mambo gave voice to Jennings' belief that having fun shouldn't be an exclusive, devotional exercise. Mambo was, in Jennings' words, 'a big, fat, roly-poly brand that encompassed everything my gang felt was important'.

The adoption of Mambo's larrikin humour as a national identity was sealed when the brand was chosen for the Sydney Olympic Games ceremonies and athletes' uniforms. With this business landmark, and the personal one of a 50th birthday, Jennings knew it was time to poke fun at someone else.

Marketing wisdom holds that oil and water don't mix. Jennings' wisdom, meanwhile, stems from the knowledge that, as a surfer in the late-1960s, he bought and enjoyed an old Harley-Davidson without even knowing what it was. 'I just saw this great bike', he says.

Deus ex Machina, the motorcycle business founded by Jennings, is a melting pot for all the creativity and adventure of custom-motorcycle, street-sport and surfing cultures. 'It's all fun, and it should never be anything more than fun. It's not a competition to see who knows the most', he says.

Deus ex Machina sprang from a Tokyo custom-bike culture whose followers were stripping away the graphics and plastics of basic, modern bikes to create raw, honest and individual works of art. Jennings identified with it immediately: 'I'd sit on the street corners and go, 'Wow, everyone would want one of these, surely!' That's always been my failing: 'I like it, so will everybody!'

Dare Jennings' enthusiasm, self-deprecating humour and instinctual feel for the cultural zeitgeist make him a compelling speaker. As he once asked himself: 'How on earth did a radical left-wing, dole-bludging, pot-smoking surfer with a short attention span, manage to turn his mates' worst failings into a business?'  It's a story that's as inspiring as it is entertaining.