California Apparel News

With an in-your-face aesthetic and an outsider’s mentality, boutique design and marketing firm Blackhart Brotherhood is hellbent on staying core and bringing a sense of irreverence back to the boardsport industry. Headed up by surf design veterans Johnny Monson, Chris Boland and Jeff McCoy and former Von Zipper Marketing Chief Jason Arnold, the Brotherhood say they are “a band of like-minded misfits and troublemakers.”

Secretly ensconced in a sunny, Spanish-style house a block from the beach in San Clemente, Calif., the year-old Brotherhood is anything but corporate. Arnold is covered in tattoos, chain smokes and coins nonsensical phrases, and Monson, who used to design for Rusty and surfs regularly, chose the location for its proximity to the beach. There are skull- and tattoo-inspired paintings on the walls, works in progress tacked onto every surface, bocce balls in the yard and, on Friday afternoons, visits and beers with friends on the deck. “This is a feel-good place with real people,” Arnold said.

For the Blackhart Brotherhood, it’s all part of being authentic to surfing and the “work hard, play hard” aesthetic. “This is core. It’s what the industry was founded on—radical ideas. We surf every day, and we all created and innovated for the big guys. We made them their money; now it’s our turn,” Monson said. Boland, who handles behind-the-scenes operations, is also a veteran of Rusty. McCoy art directed brands such as Ocean Pacific and No Fear and consulted for Quiksilver, Billabong and Planet Earth.

With about 80 years of industry experience among them, the Blackhart Brotherhood is anything but ragtag. Still, they see themselves as operating outside the norm. “Billions of dollars will make you complacent,” Monson said, referring to surf-industry giants who, he said, have lost all notion of what it means to be core. “They get stuck just trying to make more money. There’s no room for creativity. That’s why they need us. We do something they can’t get within their own walls. We’re hungry, and that makes us innovative.” But it isn’t an “us vs. them” mentality, they said. “We have the support of everyone we ever worked for. But we also see our role as sort of being a thorn in the side of the giants,” Monson said. “We’re the underdogs, and we thrive on it.”

In calling out the big guns, the Brotherhood is tackling what most surf insiders say is wrong with the industry. A big topic of conversation and concern—the “commodification” and dilution of “core”—has retailers and brands alike trying to retain a sense of authenticity while selling the surf lifestyle to the masses. For the Brotherhood, that means there is great potential for their business.

“For people looking for product that is authentic, these guys are the right place,” said Shaheen Sadeghi, president and chief executive of The Lab and The Camp, two innovative shopping centers in Orange County, Calif. “They are really talented, and they grew up in the industry, so they have a core feel for the marketplace. The most interesting thing is that they have been able to grow with the marketplace and its subcultures— skate, motocross, whatever—and remain the real thing.”

So far, the Blackhart Brotherhood has designed capsule collections for some surf giants and private-label offerings for board shops. Their roster of past and current clients includes Ocean Pacific, Roxy,Redsand,Gotcha,MCD, Electric Visual, Rusty, and retailers 17th Street, Sun Diego and Town & Country Surf Designs. “They come to us for fresh, grassroots ideas and a rock ’n’ roll look,” Arnold said. That means a lot of hand-drawn artwork, intricate designs and plenty of black, white and red punk stripes.

In 2006, the Brotherhood was brought in to revive and marshal MCD, an art-driven men’s surf brand launched almost 20 years ago by Monson and subsequently relaunched by Perry Ellis.

Devon Johnson, the action sports marketing director at Perry Ellis, said hiring the Brotherhood was a no-brainer. “These guys embody the surf lifestyle. They live it and breathe it,” he said. “We give them a little direction, but they are the ’guns for hire,’ they are talented and they do the dirty work.” The Brotherhood created everything from boardshorts to woven shirts and skinny corduroy pants to display tables and custom mannequins for the brand, which is hitting racks again for Spring. To help with the brand’s elaborate trademark artwork, Arnold enlisted his loyal tattoo artist to create custom graphics, and Monson focuses on upscale fabrications. “MCD is the perfect example of what we want to bring back to the market. It’s a little more expensive, a little more exclusive,” Monson said. Retailers seem to be responding. MCD sells at about 70 stores, including Sun Diego, Ron Jon Surf Shop and Becker Surf.

But the Brotherhood said they have a softer side too. Roxy hired them to create a collection of 12 commercial boardshorts, and Op, before it was purchased by Iconix last year, hired them to create a vintage-inspired collection for Spring/Summer 2007. The team is also developing infant, toddler and boys’ apparel for some of its clients. “We’re not just these scary guys. We can do anything—and if we can’t, we’ll get someone who can,” Arnold said.

Their work for major apparel brands and retailers accounts for the majority of their business—and so far, business has been good. “We’re only 1 year old, and we’ve already turned a profit,” Monson said. With seven employees and more to come, Monson said part of their strategy is to stay fresh by hiring young blood. “We get these kids before the big guns gobble them up and spit them out,” Monson said.

The Brotherhood also dabbles in brand development and management, marketing management and event management. Later this year the Brotherhood will launch its own line of rock ’n’ roll–inspired swimsuits for women, Suicide Blonde. More for a wild child than a beach bunny, the suits will be sexy and laden with chunky “pirate booty” hardware. “She’s our kind of girl,” Arnold said. Michelle Divel, formerly of swim giant Lunada Bay, joined the Brotherhood and took the wheel steering Suicide Blonde.

Stone throwers, do-gooders

“We’re the ones throwing stones because we want to change the industry for the better for everyone from the kids in the water all the way up,” Arnold said. On May 13, the Brotherhood will head down to San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico, for its debut Zip It & Rip It surf contest at the Zippers surf spot. Tensions between local surfers and visiting surfers have flared recently and sometimes ended in violence at Zippers. Working in collaboration with local surfers, the Brotherhood’s Zip It & Rip It event is an attempt to “bury the hatchet,” Arnold said. Approximately 100 kids and local surfers will compete in open rounds, and everyone will win. “It’s a family event, and we’ve invited other brands to participate,” Monson said. So far MCD, Matix, DVS, Kustom, Sector 9, Electric Visual, Anon, and Surfer and Surfing magazines have signed on to donate product for the competitors’ goodie bags. “There will be no shenanigans, no promotional posters, no beer, no marketing. Just families and kids and surfing,” Monson said.