And $30 million gross minus $20 million costs leaves $10 million for Clark to worry about.
What’s you point?
Howzit Adamus, I think the reason FCS lost was because fins were considered accessories. But a mold might be not be considered an accessory. Could make a big difference.Aloha,kokua
didnt I read in the news paper that
sombody who surfs and posts on swaylocks was implicated in the execution style murder of thousands of lemmings
at the trafalger street exit on the freeway passing through santa rosa
on wendsday the seventh of march last year?
was that you?
the article was published in the Biffelrod falls enquirerthey were quoting the WASHINGTON POST
article by drew pearson
…ambrose…
newspapers arre the wellspring of all true knowitallage
and the source of hanging party vigilanteism
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And $30 million gross minus $20 million costs leaves $10 million for Clark to worry about.What’s you point?
Look, if you just wanna argue, I’m not interested.
I just don’t think its fair to say a guy “made $20 million”. Makes it sound like take-home.
The issue is one of copyright vs. trademark vs. patent. I think you should worry if you are selling a blank and calling it a 6’4" R or referencing the Clark name. i.e., “see Clark catalog for details.” That, in all likelihood violates Clark’s trademark. However, making any rocker based on any source would only be protected if each rocker had been granted a patent – which would be unlikely. Hence, the published offsets in the Clark catalogue are not protected. Can you blow up a copy of a picture of a rocker from Clark’s catalogue and make a template? Maybe not, this would be a copywrite volition.
Howzit Shine, Don’t patents have an expiration date? If so all someone needs to do is find out when it expires. I know here in Hawaii a trade mark name can be claimed after 1 year after a business closes and no longer uses the name.Aloha,Kokua
Patents and copyrights expire, but trademarks don’t provided they are protected.
FCS lost their suit b/c they had written the patent to protect the finbox but not the fin. A missplaced word or two and they would have had a slam dunk case.
At 350,000 blanks a year, and making a business margin of 50 to 100% per blank, Grubby was pocketing 3-10 million a year before taxes.
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What all this indicates is just how heavy Grubby’s thumb was.
What is $1000 to a guy who, according to the Wall Street Journal, was making $20,000,000.00 a year?
That’s $20 million/yr.
For that matter if he did pay a royalty of $1 per blank that would be $365,000.00 a year and what is that to a guy making $20,000,000.00 a year.
The main reason, if not the only reason, surfboard manufacturing has been restricted (stunted) is because of Grubby’s monopolistic business practices. I wager he will not sue anyone because he will never get past the counter suit by the justice department. If anyone ever decided to sue him for restricting free trade, racketeering, and a littany of other illegal business practices we all know about, he would probably get Martha’s cell, but for a much longer time.
And maybe that right there is the real reason he locked his door.
Boy, for someone who didn’t want to get too involved w/ the legalese, you are doing a good job of it. It doesn’t have to be too complicated. What’s a $1000.00 to a shaper that is used to making $200.00 / shape? Now, there are some shapers that can bring in that kind of fee. I’d bet more are making closer to $100/ shape. Regardless, $1000.00 for a plug shape is pretty good and in some way is compensation. The fact that Gordon Clark could afford more is not the point. His practices w/ his clients were his business. I know for a fact that he extended credit to many (who might take that for granted), and in turn, if the shaper, or board builder’s had their shit together could build boards and sell them in time to pay Clark. Anyway some might say it was peanuts but this is “surfboards” we’re talking about.
Besides, Now that we’re in the present situation, wouldn’t it be appropriate to compensate designers for their work? Or, will all this new action revolve around the designs that Gordon Clark created through his long run? If not, we’re a bit hypocritical when we bash this world economy / Chinese advancement situation. All of the negative threads on the Chinese copying us are now BS.
By the $1000 I meant a dollar per blank for each blank he produced per day, estimated at 1000 blanks a day. I meant it
to be viewed as a royalty payment for each plug designer. It is just looking at the impact it may have had on his business. I dont see much impact. One dollar per blank would not have broken his back.
It’s perhaps not common knowledge that he gave discounts to companies that placed his logo in ther ads. I’ve heard 15%(?). Perhaps someone can veriy or deny this.
I havn’t been posting any of this to cause an argument. Just looking at the facts based on the numbers bantered about and the speculation by many here and projecting a little with them. That is all. What surprises me not is the way some people take offense. I expect that, because a lot of people got hurt. People have to learn where to direct their anger.
Benny1, I’m not making value judgements. Nor am I arguing.
I reprinted a quote from the WSJ. If you think it’s unfair to publish in an international paper that a guy “made $20-30 million” take it up with them.
You have their names.
Btw life is not fair. I can live with that.
Howzit Mark, Clark could have just added the $1.00 to the blank price, that way he would lose only the wholesale tax on $1.00. Don’t know what Ca wholesale tax is but in Hawaii it’s only 1/2 %. Aloha,kokua
Howzit blakestah, Not in Hawaii, I went through the process of obtaining a trademark name years ago. A friend and I bought a lunch wagon from a friend and he said he wanted to retain the name. Well when we were getting ready to do a full service restaurant my partners wanted to secure the name since they wanted to protect their investment. I first talked to the guy and he said noway so I got in touch with the Dept. of Commerce and they informed me about the 1 year thing and sent me the paper work and the guy had to sign off or he was looking at a law suit that he could not win. At first he still didn’t want to sign until I showed him the paper work from the D.O.C… Aloha,Kokua
Let me just add a little to that -
The numbers that are being bounced around for Clark Foam seem to be more hearsay and ‘surfer BS mathematics’ than anything else. $30 million gross, at a wholesale average price of $60-$70 per blank means they had to be producing around 2 blanks per minute every minute of a 12 hour workday, 300 days a year.
That’s a bit much. Even the WSJ gets caught up in hype now and then, and I would bet this is one of 'em.
Then you have the costs associated with doing it… now, just how much does it cost to make a blank in labor, materials, mold costs, overhead of all kinds from electric bills to legal fees. If profit was 5% of gross, I’d be surprised. And this after what, something approaching 50 years in the business?
Naaah. If there was that kind of money in it, one of the sports equipment conglomerates would have either bought out Clark Foam long since or gone into the business themselves. See who owns the various bodyboard companies, for instance, or whose corporate name is in the fine print on Churchill swim fins. They see a profitable business, they get into it one way or another.
This wild idea of riches in the blank biz is, I suspect, at best somebody’s overactive imagination and at worst conspiracy theory gone mad. Like Gordon Clark being the biggest private landowner in one of the Pacific Northwest states. Yeah, right. see http://www.endgame.org/landlords-100.html . Next they’ll be saying it was Gordon Clark on The Grassy Knoll in Dallas, TX, in 1963. Get a grip, people.
But, to the question of paying somebody for the use of their blank shape -
If I was Clark Foam, and some Joe Shaper came to me wanting me to make him a specific blank shape so he would have an easier time making his production model board, from a shaped piece of foam…
and I had to make the mold, test it and tune it, produce the blanks, stock the blanks, with stringers and all that entails…
at no cost to him, all costs out of my pocket, using my technology, factory space, work force and all, with no guarantees that Joe Shaper would buy enough to recoup my costs or that anyone else would buy any at all…
And he wanted a royalty on every one? I don’t THINK so.
If he got a few free blanks, I’d think he was more than compensated for what was, after all, something to help his production and was a risk for me. Think about how many blanks you would have to sell to recoup the costs on one mold, after costs. Joe Shaper should maybe think he was lucky not to be charged for the custom tooling and production line time , as he would be in any other manufacturing business.
some people just don’t know when they are well off, I guess…
doc…
These numbers are safe and conservative.
I’ve heard much higher production numbers, but I won’t quote them here because they are hearsay. Lets just say a guy with his name on 3-4 Clark molds told me a top production guy at Clark Foam told him how fast they cycled the molds and how many molds they had to cycle. Suffice it to say the numbers quoted in the WSJ are conservative. Everyone would be shocked by what I heard.
One piece to consider is that the master craftsmen that were picked to make the mold plugs had the experience to back up the costs Clark undertook. All of that experience was rapped up in those close tolerance blanks … that most shapers use
And the quote of the day goes to Kokua!
“Clark could have just added the $1.00 to the blank price, that way he would lose only the wholesale tax on $1.00.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you! YOU have just created a brand new business model for all the guys already in the foam blank business and all the new guys going into the foam business right now to follow.
This time I’ll make a value judgement… It would be great if they all followed your idea. Rusty rocker $1 dollar, Brewer rocker $1, etc. Loehr concave $1. This really would cement the future to the past. Great idea.
I guess it’s up to the guys whos names they want to trade on to make the request and make it stick. Every one of the top shapers knows who contributed which design feature and much of them have been written about in the mags so there is traceable verification. It would be real standup of the new and existing foam companies to associate each shapers name with the design feature they invented, that the foam companies put on the blanks, and that they reimburse the shapers in the form of a $1 royalty for the use of their name.
Add it to the price. That’s Kokua’s idea. So simple it’s brilliant.
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Howzit Shine, Don’t patents have an expiration date? If so all someone needs to do is find out when it expires. I know here in Hawaii a trade mark name can be claimed after 1 year after a business closes and no longer uses the name.Aloha,Kokua
Good question. A visit to the US Patent Office website indicates Clark’s trademark is already expired. He has three patents (shown below) – only covering the manufacture of blanks, not the blanks themselves. Clark’s catalog does not include any copyright notations that I have found. At this point, I know you can call and ice-box a refrigerator (once the brand name of Frigidaire), I would bet you can start calling all urethane blanks “Clarks” – albeit, irreverent.
1 [URL="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1='clark+foam'&OS="clark+foam"&RS="clark+foam""]6,878,025[/URL] <img src="http://patft.uspto.gov/netaicon/PTO/ftext.gif" alt="" class="bb-image" /> [URL="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1='clark+foam'&OS="clark+foam"&RS="clark+foam""]Shape-adjustable mold, skin and interior-core structures for custom board production [/URL] 2 [URL="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1='clark+foam'&OS="clark+foam"&RS="clark+foam""]6,623,323[/URL] <img src="http://patft.uspto.gov/netaicon/PTO/ftext.gif" alt="" class="bb-image" /> [URL="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1='clark+foam'&OS="clark+foam"&RS="clark+foam""]Flexible male female mold for custom surfboard production [/URL] 3 [URL="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=3&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1='clark+foam'&OS="clark+foam"&RS="clark+foam""]6,561,118[/URL] <img src="http://patft.uspto.gov/netaicon/PTO/ftext.gif" alt="" class="bb-image" /> [URL="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=3&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=ptxt&S1='clark+foam'&OS="clark+foam"&RS="clark+foam""]Flexible male/female mold for custom surfboard production [/URL]
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These numbers are safe and conservative.
I’ve heard much higher production numbers, but I won’t quote them here because they are hearsay. Lets just say a guy with his name on 3-4 Clark molds told me a top production guy at Clark Foam told him how fast they cycled the molds and how many molds they had to cycle. Suffice it to say the numbers quoted in the WSJ are conservative. Everyone would be shocked by what I heard.
Ah huh. Well, lets try some more realistic numbers than ‘somebody told me somebody else said’, okay? Do a little math.
The thirty million dollars gross you are talking about as your low figure, well, that means ( at a wholesale price of fifty to seventy five bucks each) between 400,000 and 600,000 blanks a year by Clark Foam alone. Look at the retail prices at FoamEZ, subtract a fair amount for Foam EZs markup, and you get the wholesale price range. $50-75 is a reasonable number.
And that’s your low figure, right? ‘Suffice it to say that the numbers quoted by the WSJ are conservative’, right?
Okay, as more reasonable industry numbers are (from http://www.surfline.com/surfnews/article.cfm?id=1681 )
"…approximately 550,000 polyurethane blanks produced annually in the US and Australia. Clark Foam produced 250,000 of those before it closed. For all the non-math majors in the house, that means we’re short about a quarter million blanks. "
You wanna tell me where those other 150,000 to 350,000 blanks a year you think Clark produced, wanna tell me just where they went?
I mean, I could believe up to 10% going under the table, out the back door for cash money, but backdooring three for every five you put out legitimately, let alone seven , nah, the tax people are gonna be all over that, just to start with.
In fact, I’d maybe call the figures cited above as a bit high, being as this is an industry figure from an industry that consistently hypes itself up. Are you trying to tell me that the surfboard industry is producing up to 350,000 more boards than it admits to? And thats with figures you are calling ‘conservative’…what, the real numbers are twice that? Three times maybe?
Come on, man. Give it up.
And do yourself a favor. If this joker who gave you these ‘real numbers’ tries to sell you something…like maybe a bridge in Brooklyn… don’t buy it.
doc…‘For all the non-math majors in the house’
“As SIMA’s executive director Sean Smith says, “As an industry, we need to approach the EPA about chemical issues; these are not going away.””
Who do you think went nose to nose with Sean Smith two weeks ago in Orlando on the floor after the SIMA meeting and put that thought in his head? Yours truely. Yup.
Ask Greg. He started it. I got his back. Bert was there, he witnessed the whole scene. Took a while but Sean Smith, Greg Loehr Hank Johns, another shaper whose name escapes me and I’m very sorry for that but I think it may have been Kevin and he makes amazing boards, and I, redirected SIMA to take a leadership role so that closings like Clarks don’t ever happen again. So that chemicals are not the reason for shocks to the industry.
I don’t think you know me well enough to make those kinds of statements, Doc.
Doc,
You may be on to something! Gordon Clark, “Grubby” Clark, not too big a leap to “Grassy Clark”! You even said “Get a Grip”… more use of the letter G . Hmmmmmm, I wonder if this has something to do with the G-spot? Is that somewhere near Dallas?