tough times for Quik...?

Industry Talk
21

Replacemnt for Quiks? Hurley? Billabong? Or your ‘New Planet’ Surfwear company???

Ironically Q is currently in a Microsoft TV commercial about being prepared for anything and everything. Maybe the spot is apporpos?

The Tie Dye hippies of Haight Ashbury might take exception to your epoxy stain designs.

The longer you live the more you see that everything that comes around goes around. I guess Disney nailed it with the Lion King "Circle of Life’ spiel.

I guess soul is where YOU find it.

The rest is just details…

22

Oh no, New Planet Rad Xtreme Core Surfwear ™ will be so totally different, we will be a lifestyle orientated company, with a youth driven focus, a true dedication to the roots of surfing (department stores, boutiques, etc) and all our customers will be individuals even though it’ll be hard to tell that cos they’re all wearing the same getup. After extensive research our marketing people have considered the slogan …only a surfer knows the feeling (for example getting skunked).

But to avoid being too negative… I do like your circle of life analogy, I hope that each time we go round the circle expands in someway so that whatever changes any company or individual has to make today will allow us to not just survive the current moment but to somehow make the next go round better in some way that I for one haven’t figured out so far. I think something like that worked out for Simba and his little warthog chum in the end but then again I don’t think I ever watched it all the way through to the end so I’m not sure but hey… Disney… it had to work out happy in the end, right?

Soul is quite possibly where I don’t find it as well, I just need to go look again some other time.

23

You can’t use “only a surfer knows the feeling”…that was taken years ago.

But your take on individualism is on the mark.

I’d like to see Quiks pull it thru…I knew some of these guys in the early days and there’s a lot of surfer still left in them. Maybe they could morph into something like “LemmingWear” and the fabric could be holographic or offer chameleon fabric. The possibilities are endless.

Yeah, such silliness can exist within our current reality.

Aude Sapere.

24

LemmingWear already trademarked alt.surfing ~Sandman

25

Quik is very core to surfing.

They did not become the biggest brand by chance.

I hope the best for them and the industry in general.

Bob McKnight, Jeff Hackman and crew are all core surfers to the bone.

McKnight was one of the first pioneers in Indo early 70’s. The man loves surfing.

All these guy’s that made it in the industry are all core to the sport.

More than many realize!

26

Here’s a little Quiksilver crew related story…

Years ago I take Greenough and another friend, Kiki O’brien from Panama up to the Ranch in my Whaler. There’s a good swell running and George says can we surf anywhere but what he called “Ego Peak”…by this he meant Rights & Lefts.

So we head up to the northern end of the ranch and end up at Gov’ts. It’s pretty good but not fully clocking in. A little later Kiki is hyping me to go down to see what Razors is doing…it was pretty big and promising but there were quite a few guys out earlier in the day. He’s my guest, so I say okay.

Kiki is stoked but George keeps saying "we’re blowing it, we were alone up there and the tide is changing and it is going to be going perfect up there in half an hour.

I’m the Captain, so I go with George, after all he’s part fish, maybe even more than human. So I swing us around and make a beeline back to Gov’s. Sure enough, George is on the money, an empty set is rolling in and no one in sight.

Kiki decides to get drunk as George and I paddle out. George on his air mat. Tide is in full swing and now it is just connecting all the way down the point. Epic. Good call George.

About 30 minutes before dark two station wagons come flying up in a cloud of dust on top of the point. 3 guys in each car, throwing on wetsuits, frantically running down to the water and paddling out.

I’ve caught a long one way down into the cove, and as I’m paddling back out I see the first guy take off. It’s a few feet overhead and this guy punches a turn with his left arm straight like a football player and his other arm bent up over his head, sort of like a waiter carrying a tray, except with a closed fist. He drives deep off the bottom and ricochets off the very top of the lip…

I’m paddling, and thinking “nice”!..the second bottom turn and he’s up to mach 2, he goes off the bottom hits the top and up and over to the other side, then SNAP!..and he redirects from the backside of the wave into the wave face.

All the while, he is getting closer to me in distance…by then I’m thinking “Hmmmm, I think this is somebody”…

The third time he is going even faster driving off the bottom in that same straight arm style and goes even faster and further onto the back side of the wave, quite a ways down its slope, and sure enough…SNAP!!! Back into the wave again…

By now he’s about 50 yards away from me and approaching rapidly…and by now I’m going “THIS IS SOMEBODY…NO WAY THIS ISN’T A ‘SOMEONE’…eh yeah, I think I got it”…

And as he comes flying up on me, he throws a huge curtain of water as he cuts back…

“Yup…Hakman”!

The next rider up is a kid, screwfoot…pretty hot, but nothing by comparison. Turns out it’s a crew of Quiksilver team guys from Oz & CA with Hakman.

I get outside and George floats over to me and says, “I’m ready to go when you are”.

27

Great story, DS. I’ve got my own experience from 20+ years ago sharing an even more

esoteric, isolated, boat-only California reef break with Bob McKnight. My best friend and

I were on his boat, Bob and his buddy on Bob’s boat. We were the only ones there for a

couple of days. I’m sure you know the place I’m talking about. (clue: my best friend was

an urchin diver)

The point DS and surfding and I are trying to make is this:

These guys aren’t evil, it’s just that once you’re the CEO of a publicly traded multinational

corporation, you have those pesky stockholders to answer to. Quik’s shareholders wanted

growth, growth, growth; and that means broadening the brand and distribution and a whole

bunch of other business mumbo-jumbo that doesn’t have anything to do with surfing. Don’t

be too critical of them unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes…

28

That is absolutely correct.

Many surfers do what they need to for work in order to surf! This might end up having one become a dentist, a contractor, a night watchman, a teacher, a nurse,a flight attendant, an insurance or real estate agent, or a commercial fisherman among other jobs.

Or carving out a career in and around our industry.

We all know people or friends that are fine with your success, just as long as you are not doing better than them.

These guys are guilty of what? Working hard and being successful at staying close to what they love.

Few of us are as fortunate as Greenough, who had the good fortune of being born into a family with a father as a railroad tycoon…and that is no disrespect toward my friend George, as he has done incredible things nonetheless.

Long may you ride.

29

You are fair and balanced!

30

…Mike,

not problem in my opinion, if Q restructure their company in a more “generic” clothing company

for me Q, B, H, etc are not surf clothes, but surf oriented crap

not problem with how hard core surfers are the Ceo s etc

the problem is that the bermudas are not good and well designed for riding, the wetsuits are very bad, the t shirts are very good grams weight cotton but bad designed or designed for fatties, the silk are bad taste too

how many surfers Q provides job?

Q, B and the other brands are the only ones that made money with the surf (read surfboards)

what is the investment that they do on surfboards?

they are the only ones that have enough money to develop or at least trial & error new methods or possible new plastics for new surfboards (and may be new designs inspired in those materials)

31
Quote:

It took me quite awhile to accept leashes. Everyone around my friend and I had leashes at Zunzal’s in El Salvador in '72. They thought we were crazy.

Maybe it’s time to buy ‘unstylish’ trunks from someone that makes them domestically, dump the leash and wetusit for some weird domestically made drysuit…or take a lot of niacin?

I’ve still not accepted leashes…other than having to use them for the safety of others. I’m not a monster all the time. When it got to the point that 99 out of a potential 100 surfers couldn’t concieve of a world where everyone didn’t wear a leash and would blindly assume every loose board in front of them was not going to cause them distress, that game was over. New rules. But when I rack boards I still put the fins forward. Maybe that’s what being a “rebellious” surfer has come to in 2009.

Trunks though…I don’t wear long trunks but I won’t wear any that don’t come from within the surf industrial complex. The rest just suck for serious water use. I “went outside” back in the 1980’s in some vague protest and regretted it. The surf trunk/boardshort is a stellar invention of surfing and the quality for our purpose is so far ahead of most of what is available out there that it isn’t funny.

New wetsuits are amazing too. Fortunately I haven’t had any quality issues but I don’t go through them very fast.

As to ragging on the surfing rag trade, which I can find great pleasure in heckling…I don’t care how “core” anybody involved in it is. That business is so big that they have way too much influence on my day to day surfing life. The business models especially of the publically traded companies require insane, deadly cancer-cell growth. I don’t challenge anybody’s work ethic or creativity or rewards even for that matter, but I can’t look at the effect surfwear business has had on surfing since maybe 1980 to now and think they made things “better”. Socially when their marketing programs all but demand conformity and denigration of anybody not deemed within their demographic target groups…that’s one of my definitions of Evil. And that’s just how it goes with marketing in this era, nothing special about surfing, same as the rest…another thing I’m not proud of.

Nels

32
Quote:

…I don’t care how “core” anybody involved in it is.

Amen to that brother!

That word should be ‘dustbinned’.

I remember an article in the LA times business section 5-7 years ago.

It was about the surf industry and how being ‘core’ had some industry relevance.

Whether that industry relevance was to maintain an image for the 13-17 year old crowd, I dont

think they pinned it down.

A particular company was ‘core’ because the workers were skateboarding

on their break/lunch and other generously company supplied time with a

ramp supplied by the company on their premises.

As an adult to say the least, I was not impressed!

33

I guess the point is to have FUN regardless of who you gotta serve?

I have no doubt that the Q guys and others that enjoyed the explosive boom of the 80’s had more than their fair share of fun. I know I enjoyed a ‘phat’ decade then.

I guess now is a time to reinvent yourself…otherwise just go off by yourself and cry in your beer?

The younger surfers have no comparitve basis, so no harm no foul.

History can be harsh when strumming chords of what was, what is, and what will be.

34
Quote:

I guess the point is to have FUN regardless of who you gotta serve?

I have no doubt that the Q guys and others that enjoyed the explosive boom of the 80’s had more than their fair share of fun. I know I enjoyed a ‘phat’ decade then.

I guess my underlying belief is that you should be free to make money and have fun and live as large as you want, so long as you aren’t causing some kind of harm. Bringing an extra 10 million people into surfing to increase your corporate profit so you can have houses in California, Hawaii, Oz and your own cruise ship for island play…and then starting a surf travel company so everybody else can go…that kind of thing created huge collateral damage to surfing…certainly to my surfing experience. It’s a free world, and sometimes that’s the price paid for living in it. So if I sling a few snide comments, oh well.

“Anyway, it’s good to hear you’re coming back to Main Street, if only for a visit. It’s a rotten place to live, but that’s where they set all our prices - so we should give the bastards a whack in the kidneys from time to time, just to remind them that it’s our world too.”

Hunter Thompson

Letter to Ken Kesey

2-15-74

FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA: GONZO LETTERS PART II

Simon and Schuster

(c) 2000 Gonzo International Corp.