This Oceanside entrepreneur's new business is making waves

Wakes & Waves coastal Long Island lifestyle apparel and accessories continue its expansion since its inception in 2019 as the once “out there apparel. Wakes & Waves has moved from one bedroom and the family home garage of its founder, 24-year-old Anthony Capellupo of Oceanside, to a new full-scale production shop in East Rockaway.

Located on Ocean Avenue across from East Rockaway High School, the new shop serves as the production hub of Wakes & Waves apparel and accessories. The shop has allowed Wakes & Waves to build and maintain a robust inventory of apparel and accessories that is sufficient for stable and persistent sales.

“Each day, this is where the magic happens,” said Capellupo in a news release. “From first ideas to pattern building for new products to the first and last seams for our wristlet bags, totes, surf bags, and other locally built accessories, zippers, linings, corners, sides, and top stitches are sewn here each day – just beyond the horizon of the western shoreline of Long Island.”

Although the shop is exceeding its projected impact on productivity and sales growth, it is small but mighty as described by Capellupo, with its three industrial machines and a few other important tools and pieces of equipment that keep Wakes & Waves flowing with every cut, fold, mark, and line done and scored by hand, all with much love along the way.

The shop is located in the historic “Joe’s” Barber Shop and “Josie’s Boutique,” which was once owned by Italian Immigrants Joe and Josephine “Josie” Ragusa. Wakes & Waves occupies the space where Josie ran her dressmaking operation for decades, handcrafting wedding gowns, prom dresses, and even costumes for the high school’s ‘Rock Rivalry’.

The Wakes & Waves new production shop and expanded inventory aren’t the only changes for the rising coastal staple. When the brand sets up shop at a street-side festival or near the Long Beach boardwalk, the brand is showcased in a pop-up shop featuring hand-crafted shelving and racks made of reclaimed driftwood, discarded wood pallets and other unfinished wood left for the trash bin he often finds somewhere on his travels up and down the beach. All in all, it’s a look that makes you feel somewhere else.

“The name and all the new locally made products speak to the ethos of the brand – it’s exactly who we are, a part of what W&W stands for – something that makes you feel uniquely connected to the roll of the waves and these shores you walk” Capellupo said.

“For me, it’s about this ‘‘local built’’ purpose as much as it is riding your own wave – bringing the good energy, chasing your own horizon, but most importantly living what we do, not just designing on or selling the place we call home, but more – building from the ground up, a grassroots, unique, style and feel stitched, sewn, and built on the Island that inspires much of what we do.”