Those of you who follow the industry news will know that Quiksilver has announced a complete restructure of it's strategy, dropping all but the 'marque' riders and focusing on just a few key names in Surf, Snow, Skate and BMX.
Why is all of this happening?
Well, to put it simply, surfing is going through somewhat of a transition. Are you sitting comfortably?
Here's a story about a surfing teddy bear:
One day there was a teddy bear, and he quite liked surfing. He liked surfing so much he realised that no one was really making shorts specifically for surfers, so he made some, and he called the shorts 'Quikbear', made a little logo, and sold them to some of his surfing friends.
More and more people started asking for shorts, so they made some more. The Quikbear logo became quite a hit amongst the surfers, so they put it on T shirts. The T shirts sold quite well, and the whole zoo started to pay attention to the Quikbear movement.
Now the zebras and the giraffes all wanted to be as cool as the teddy bear, they wanted the whole animal kingdom to know that they liked riding surfboards too, and the best way to do that was to buy some Quikbear gear, that way everyone would know how awesome and into surfing they all were.
As more and more people discovered how cool surfing was, more and more people were buying into the Quikbear movement to show that they were involved.
Now if you wanted to wear Quikbear clothing to show that you were a cool surfer, back then you had to go to a surf shop, the surf shop was the epitome of cool, radical places that only sold the coolest new surfer brands, brands that surfers really felt were theirs.
This was great, and for a while, things went really well, surfing was everywhere, more and more people were getting into the sport and Quikbear just kept growing!
As Quikbear grew, so did it's corporate structure, and in order to expand world wide it needed investment, so it brought in shareholders and a board of directors as it floated on the stock market, and suddenly the company was more bothered about paying dividends than making shorts.
In order to pay big dividends, you need to make big sales, so suddenly Quikbear became available in mainstream stores around the world, Quikbear shops popped up in towns nowhere near any surf, and after a little while, the real surfers realised that Quikbear wasn't just about surfing, and that any old customer could walk into a generic high street store and buy a Quikbear T shirt for £12... Quikbear had sold out to the fashion world so surfers stopped buying Quikbear.
Not only had the real surfers stopped buying Quikbear, but then Tiger Tim, Larry Lion, Panther Paul and Larry Lynx, who all owned surf shops said 'hey, if Joe Public can buy this Quikbear shirt at the huge fashion outlet down the road for 30% less, or go on an internet and buy it online for 40% less, then why do I need to sell Quikbear stuff? That's not what surfers want! We're off to sniff out some cool brands that are making clothes that surfers want to wear, then people will know that if they come into my shop they'll find the latest, coolest brands, that'll give them a reason to come and buy from us!' and so they cancelled all their orders from Quikbear.
That was fine for Quikbear, because there's plenty of money in fashion, but the problem ***spam*** fashion is it's very fickle... One minute surfing is cool and everyone wants in, and the next minute customers realise that they don't need a £40 Quikbear T Shirt to look like a surfer, they can do that ***spam*** a plain T shirt, a three quid pair of plastic sunglasses and some cool accessories from that shop that sells plain T shirts for four quid - and as soon as the fashion world shifted, Quikbear's strategy suddenly looked a bit dated.
Now at this point, Quikbear was still heavily involved in surfing and was supporting the most successful surfer of all time, he liked competing and winning and beating everybody else at surfing. The whole world knew his name, so he was a great person to support! They were also supporting another chap, who happened to be the second most popular surfer at the time - he liked writing blogs and drawing pictures and didn't always like competing in the big surf competitions, and the customers loved him for his floppy hair and skinny jeans.
The Quikbear customers that we're still left adopted the floppy haired blogger as their new hero!
This new hero taught customers that you didn't need to follow the crowd, and ride the same boards, and wear the same T shirts, he told people to go out and explore, and wear what you want, and ride what you want, and put the fun back into surfing... but that didn't work very well for paying dividends because paying dividends is a polar opposite to having fun.
Everyone wanted to be like the blogger so they all started making thier own T shirts, or buying T shirts from brands that the rest of the zoo hadn't heard of, because it's cool, and individuality is so in right now.
So Quikbear was in an odd situation, the surfers weren't buying it because it was available on the high street, the surf shops weren't buying it because the surfers didn't want it, and the high street wasn't buying it because the high street had moved on.
And what happened to Quikbear next?
Well keep an eye on your internet, the rest is still to come. And the best bit is, it's the same story for BingyBongy and Ripe Cool.