The first thing to say is thanks to SIMA for making this study happen and to Leisure Trends Group for doing the research. We don’t get access to near enough industry and market data. As I’m not a member of SIMA, I don’t have access to the complete study. I’m working with the “Media Highlights” package that came out after the press release on the study. Two years ago, when the More…
Posts Tagged ‘Surf Industry’
The 2010 SIMA Retail Distribution Study
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011An Insider’s History of the Surf Industry; Good Reading!
Monday, October 11th, 2010Part of my weekend was spent reading Phil Jarratt’s excellent book, Salts and Suits; How a bunch of surf bums created a multi-billion dollar industry…and almost lost it. Phil has worked in surf publishing and the surf industry for more than 35 years, including five years as the head of marketing in Europe for Quiksilver. He seems to know and have talked to everybody in the industry over a period of years, More…
A Tale of Two Surf Shops. Kind Of.
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009I grew up spending all my summers on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. That’s where I learned to surf. And just before anybody makes the comment yes, the surf is generally lousy and for anything really good we have to pray for hurricanes and a change in the prevailing south winds. We still have a family beach house there, and I was back last week on vacation. We left, naturally, on Friday, the More…
Here’s a Chart Worth Seeing
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009After my post on SIMA’s 2008 retail study yesterday, I got curious about the percentage changes quarter over quarter it implied. The Media Highlights gave me total core sales for the year and the percentage of sales in each quarter. SIMA gave me the same information for 2006. The rest of the calculations are mine and I used them to create the table below. The numbers don’t exactly add because of rounding, but that More…
Blowback From the 4th Quarter; The SIMA Study and Snowboard Retailers
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009I received The 2008 SIMA Retail Distribution Study (highlights only) about the same time I got yet another phone call from another snowboard focused, core retailer that had been around a long time and was in trouble. I hate those calls because these are shops that I would like to see do well. My little accidental, informal, snowboard shop survey can’t hold a candle to SIMA’s study. But I thought there was More…
Self Help for Core Retailers; The Coastline Model
Tuesday, November 9th, 2004Hi, I’m back. This was just too interesting not to inflict myself on. And I imagine O’Brien couldn’t find anybody else willing to touch it. From the last issue of TransWorld Biz, you may remember that our hero, Sean Kennedy of New Zealand, had started a company called Coastline owned by, so far, 42 core surf shops in New Zealand. The purpose of Coastline, as reported earlier, was to provide small retailers with More…
Death By Purple Wrist Band; Reflections on The Surf Industry Conference
Monday, June 3rd, 2002I’m glad, I guess, that I’ve gotten to the age where I don’t feel completely compelled to take too much advantage of these “all inclusive, drink at much as you want of anything for free” conference packages. Because if I were so inclined, I suspect all the worrying going on at the conference might have driven me to strong drink. I mean, here’s all these people who have been lucky enough More…
Well, I Guess It’s a Recession; Perspective on an Economic Downturn.
Thursday, October 25th, 2001It has been a while—ten years actually—since we endured the lastr ecession back in ’90/91. But business cycles are pretty much immutable. What goes up must come down. “Regression to the mean” they call it in statistics. Two things have me especially concerned about our current situation. First, the economic rubber band is stretched tight after ten years of prosperity and growth. Second, this might be the first global More…
Swell Raises $2 Million
Monday, May 14th, 2001Almost as soon as my article on surf industry internet models was finished, Swell shut down its Crossrocket site and then, on May 3rd, announced it had raised $2 million in bridge financing. I hate it when that happens. Rather than just throw up a press release that created more questions than it answered (see it below) Surf Biz asked me to track down new Swell Chairman and CEO Bob Allison More…
After the Gold Rush; The Internet’s Role in the Surf Industry, One Year Later
Sunday, April 1st, 2001Just about a year ago, I asked here in Surf Biz what it took to make money on the internet in the surf business. I said that if you were exclusively an etailer, and had to be both a merchant and journalist, it cost a lot of money just to operate, and you had the added expense of building a brand. I saw no financial advantage, and perhaps a disadvantage. Existing brands and More…
