- December 4, 2025
Flagler Beach resident Lindsay Tietje said she used to avoid going to the beach.
"Because the sand – it was just such a hassle to clean up,” she said.
It's a common feeling in her family and in Florida. The Hammock's iconic coquina sand is notoriously sticky and near-impossible to remove. One day, Tietje said, she saw a man trying to remove the sand using a toilet brush.
The encounter stuck with her and led her to create The Sand Dude: a hypoallergenic, silicone-bristled sand removal brush designed.
The brush has two sets of bristles, Tietje said, one for hard-to-reach places like between the toes or in the cracks of the car and firmer bristles to remove the sand from larger areas. The Sand Dude retails at $24.99 and is multipurpose brush for people, car seats, mats, beach gear and even pets.
Despite only selling the brush since June 9, The Sand Dude is already in seven stores in or near Flagler County: starting with Debra Jean’s in The Hammock, and then adding Ohana Food Co., the Beverly Beach Camptown store, the 7/11 in Flagler Beach, Sip & Surf Coffee Co., Big Al’s Bait and Tackle, The Inlet Beach & General Store and Yellow Dawg Fishing. Veterans Title in The Hammock even placed a bulk order to use as part of closing gifts, she said.
Now two months on, Tietje said she's had orders through her website, thesanddude.com, from as far away as California and she's already looking to expand with a distributor. According to her website, The Sand Dude made $2,000 in sales in its first week.
“It's exciting to just see something through that you didn't think that you would be able to do,” she said. “And people like it.”
Tietje said it started with a post on her personal Facebook page, which was shared by her friends, and then their friends and on to local Flagler Facebook pages until strangers were recognizing it.
“When I started going into stores, people already knew what it was,” she said. “Which was really cool.”
Tietje’s background is in real estate and teaching; She’d never tried her hand at something like this before. And it can be hard, she said, to go into stores to sell the product, but the Flagler County community has been very welcoming of the brush's "smiling" face.
Tietje said she doesn't think The Sand Dude would have been this successful without God and The Hammock and Flagler Beach community.
"When I started this journey, I didn't know anyone that I could talk to about the steps to take to make this become a reality," she said. "It was a steep learning curve in so many ways, but God answered every prayer."
