Surf Retailers Find Big Sales in Contemporary
The surf-and-skate market’s fastest-growing independent boutique chains are making waves by increasingly selling contemporary clothes from non-surf labels. Jack’s Surfboards, Active Ride and Beach Bums will all open their biggest stores this year or finish a rollout of boutiques. In the past, the top items these retailers sold were strictly clothes designed and manufactured by companies that were gold-standard names in the surf industry.
These retailers and their customers still maintain allegiance to the active sportswear market. But contemporary clothes, especially jeans by labels such as True Religion and Citizens of Humanity, are changing the meccas of surf into equal-opportunity playing fields for active-sports and contemporary manufacturers.
Surf manufacturers have been following the success of contemporary clothes with some dismay.
“Surf accounts seem to go to the California Market Center on Wednesdays and do their buying there. They never did that before,” said Kelley Smith, the Southern California sales representative for Lost Clothing, based in Irvine, Calif. “They’re straying away from surf in certain categories such as denims and knits.”
Jack’s Surfboards, based in Huntington Beach, Calif., was named the best retailer by the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association in 2003. When Jack’s opens its largest store by May in Corona del Mar, Calif., 20 percent of the shop will be dedicated to contemporary brands. A significant portion of the offerings will be featured prominently in a 40-by-20-foot section of the store dedicated to premium jeans, said Bob Abdel, partner and buyer for Jack’s.
“We want to keep our grass roots in the surf market,” Abdel said. “But we want to get the premium brands, too.”
Jack’s began retailing contemporary brands one year ago, and the store’s retail mix made it a more attractive tenant to the Irvine Co., the landlord of the new store at Corona del Mar Plaza, said Jeff Dodd, senior vice president of leasing.
“If it was just another juniors sportswear store, we wouldn’t have considered them for this space,” Dodd said. “We love the juniors sportswear stores, but we have them elsewhere.”
Dodd explained the Irvine Co. did not judge its prospective tenant by price point. Instead, he said it was the way Jack’s showcased emerging talent and sportswear fashion that led to the deal.
The basic forces driving every shop owner changed the tide in surf retailing, said Cliff Haddadin, president of Beach Bums, based in Anaheim, Calif.
“We’re going the route as customers dictate,” Haddadin said. “Whatever the customer wants, we’ll supply it. That fuels our growth.”
Haddadin opened four stores last year and will open three 5,000- to 7,000-square-foot stores this year. Thirty percent of the stores’ retail mix will be fashion. The new Beach Bums stores will be located at Simi Valley Town Center in Simi Valley, Calif., Corona Crossing in Corona, Calif., and Main Place in Santa Ana, Calif.
“The surf industry is having to go back to their drawing boards, especially in the girls’ market,” Haddadin said. “Girls are demanding good fashion tops with a lot more appliqueacute;; a basic screen T-shirt won’t do the job.”
While surf industry companies such as Hurley International and Rip Curl have answered the challenge by manufacturing premium denim and more contemporary-styled tops in the past year, true contemporary brands also have been attractive to surf retailers because of their higher price points, said Roy Turner, president of the Board Retailers Association in Wilmington, N.C. Retailers can make more money by selling a pair of $150 premium denim jeans instead of lower-priced jeans manufactured by traditional surfwear manufacturers.
If there was once a price point ceiling for surf retailers, some traditional surfwear makers are helping to raise it—thanks to a savvy mix of style and innovation. O’Neill’s “Superfreak” boardshort, a seamless style made with neoprene panels, retails for $60. The most expensive boardshort sold in the history of the surf industry, it has been the top-selling item for three years.
“It’s great for industry,” Turner said of the “Superfreak.” “The whole industry can expand price.”
But introducing higher prices and contemporary clothes takes time, said Shane Wallace, vice president of Active Ride, based in Chino, Calif. This month, the company will open a 6,000-square-foot store in The Village at Orange shopping center in Orange, Calif. In February, Active Ride opened a 6,000-square-foot free-standing store in Valencia, Calif. The company opened three stores last year, including a 12,000-square-foot store in Riverside, Calif., and its premier store in downtown Burbank, Calif.
Wallace considered introducing premium denim four years ago when he observed his wife and her friends consistently favoring those jeans over less expensive styles. He now sells contemporary brands Ben Sherman, Penguin and Nike along with Billabong and Hurley.
“It took a lot of time,” Wallace said about introducing contemporary brands. “A lot of areas we were in weren’t used to high-ticketed items. They didn’t even know the names to the labels. We brought it in slowly and grew it, and we didn’t flood the stores with it. Since then, it’s been fun to watch everybody’s business grow together.”
