‘Kneebusters’ : New Wave of Surf Wear Floods U.S.

Mark Anadio was just joshing when he said he’d sell the shirts off his employees’ backs.

But when his stock of below-the-knee, young men’s swim trunks--known in the trade as “kneebusters”--recently ran dry, the Ft. Lauderdale surf shop owner found himself selling some customers the duds off his workers’ derrieres.

“Over spring break, it got so crowded in here, I had girls stripping naked in the aisles trying on these trunks--and they’re not even made for women,” Anadio said. Besides, kneebusters, the long trunks--which often sport an over-sized drawstring--are also known as clamdiggers, baggies and jammies.

Most manufacturers also call them moneymakers. The popularity of kneebusters, at $20 to $30 a crack, could help push U.S. surfwear sales to a record $1 billion this year, according to industry estimates.

Selling Fast

No matter what they’re called, kneebusters are selling like eggs at Easter.

In Dallas, about 400 miles from the Gulf Coast, customers have been snapping up 1,000 pairs of these items every week for the last year at Pat MaGees Surf Shops Inc.

Bruce Johnston, a member of the Beach Boys rock band, recently waltzed into Pete Smith’s Surf Shop in Virginia Beach, Va., and browsed through the rack of kneebusters before renting some surfboards, owner Chuck Conklin said.

And at Jack’s Surf Boards in Huntington Beach, in the center of the city sometimes recognized as the nation’s surfing capital, 60% of the store’s sales are now men’s swim trunks, compared to less than half that just a few years ago.

Not Really New

If this sounds like a newfangled fad, it’s not. Actually, it’s a 20-plus-year-old fad that is going through the recycler. The chief salvagers are a handful of Orange County recreation-wear manufacturers--and another based in Honolulu--who are fast producing tens of millions of dollars worth of these swim trunks that nibble the kneecaps and are bringing the rest of the fashion industry to its knees.

About 30 years ago, it was superb surf conditions that attracted surfers to Orange County. In search of more durable surfing apparel, some of these surfers took interest in the manufacturing end of the business. Today, more than 70 surfing-related manufacturers are headquartered in Orange County--many of them manufacturers of men’s and boy’s surf trunks. But the trunks have taken a clear turn away from function and toward fashion.

“The surfing look isn’t even for the surfer anymore,” said Jim Bowman, co-owner of Pat MaGees. Few die-hard surfers, after all, would spend big bucks on swim trunks--even if they had the money. Most prefer to use their money for surfing jaunts to Mexico, Hawaii and Australia. Besides surfers, it is the I-want-to-look-like-a-surfer crowd from Riverside, Calif., to Scottsdale, Ariz., that is filling its Volkswagens with fashion-forward surf wear.

What’s more, young women are snapping them up just as quickly as young men. Recently, members of a sorority at Southern Methodist University in Dallas walked into Bowman’s store and completely cleaned him out of kneebusters. “Because they’re so big and baggy, women wear them like skirts,” Bowman said.

What is happening in the men’s swimwear market is as old a yarn as the changing hem line on women’s dresses. The look is creeping downward. Inevitably, fashion experts say, it will go back up. Then, of course, it will go down again.

But in the meantime, surf shops nationwide are making room for kneebusters by knocking other products off their shelves. The South Shore Surf Shop in Fort Lauderdale, for example, used to be a T-shirt shop. But now, says Anadio, “70% of our business is bottoms.” And Beachcombers, a Huntington Beach surf shop, has unloaded thousands of its T-shirts in order to stock four tiers of 35-foot-long shelves with kneebusters, said owner Gary Hatch.

Surprised by Success

Even fashion experts are baffled by the success of kneebusters. “These things are not all tangible,” said Steve Lewis, publisher of Action Sports, a trade magazine for the beachwear industry. “The thing to remember is, in the fashion world there’s always another wave behind the one you’re riding.”

Before the next wave takes shape, however, a number of manufacturers will cash in on this one. Some industry experts consider kneebusters to be one of the biggest men’s fashion crazes since guys started wearing smiling alligators on their shirts.

But it won’t be all smooth sailing for kneebusters. Not when the typical customer is a 13-year-old whose buying habits are dictated almost exclusively by peer pressure. “It’s the easiest market to reach, but the hardest market to please,” said Bob McKnight, president of Quiksilver U.S.A, a $20-million, Newport Beach-based surf wear maker.

Ironically, the popularity of kneebusters comes at a time when the nation’s combined women’s and men’s swimwear industry is seeing a slight downturn--off nearly 8% in 1984 from 1983, according to the National Sporting Goods Assn. Sales of swimwear fell to $704 million last year, compared to $765 million the year before. But the association now projects that sales of men’s swim suits, which historically have accounted for about 15% of the market, could jump to 25% of the market share--or more--within the next few years.

“Quite simply, surf wear has taken on the MTV (music videotape) look,” said Steve Pezman, publisher of Surfer magazine. “The Melrose chic has come to grips with surfing.”

Into Department Stores

This is especially true with men’s swim trunks. While the surfer is rarely spotted sporting a shirt, he’s always seen in a pair of trunks. “It’s ironic that the surfing life style, which was once the antithesis of business, has been wedded to the rag business and is now a multimillion dollar industry,” Pezman said.

Along the way, the surfing life style has caught the last wave out of the specialty surf shops and is now swooshing into department stores nationwide.

At Bullock’s for example, surf wear in the young men’s line is expected to account for 21% of total sales in the department over the next year, compared with about 1% two years ago, said Tina Flammer, divisional merchandise manager at the 22-store chain. Meanwhile, the Broadway is so high on kneebusters that more than half the trunks it has ordered this year for the young men’s departments at its 41 California department stores are knee-length or longer, said Pat Kelly, merchandise manager.

But popularity breeds problems.

Expansion into major retail stores is a very delicate matter. Most surfers have an avowed aversion for the likes of May Co., Broadway and Robinson’s.

“If we went into department stores, we could triple our business,” said Jeff Yokoyama, the 30-year-old president of Maui & Sons, a Costa Mesa surf wear manufacturer that posted sales of $7 million last year. “But then we’d stop being special.”

The big retailers are simply not perceived as being as hip as surf shops. “You’ve gotta be in the surf shops for the major department stores to want you, but once you’re in the majors, the surf shops don’t want you anymore,” said Surfer magazine’s Pezman.

So the items that manufacturers do sell to department stores are usually year-old lines. “We have to make sure we offer the kid in the surf shop something he can’t get in the department store,” said Marc Price, marketing manager at Gotcha, a $25-million Fountain Valley recreation wear manufacturer.

There are even more basic problems, however. Like how long to make boys’ swim trunks.

“This is a fickle market,” said Jerry Crosby, executive vice president of marketing at Ocean Pacific Sunwear Ltd., the Tustin manufacturer that leads the surf wear industry with annual sales exceeding $300 million. “Frankly, we have to do a lot of soul-searching before we decide what length to make our trunks.”

Matter of Timing

In trying to be a leader, however, some companies stumble. In 1982, Gotcha introduced a line of what then were wild paisley trunks. Almost no one bought them. “We were too early,” said Price. “Two seasons later, the same trunks were the industry’s biggest sellers.”

The battle is for customers like Scott Wenguer. The 16-year-old Santa Monica resident makes an annual mecca to Huntington Beach to buy about $200 worth of surf wear. The avid surfer and high school student says that all he wants is something that all the other kids aren’t wearing. “I could look at the surf clothing on just about anyone in my school and tell you exactly where they bought it,” boasted Wenguer.

Foreigners as Well

So confusing--and competitive--is the surf fashion industry that even within the Southland there are conflicting trends. Although kneebusters are very popular in Newport and Huntington Beach, the surfers in San Diego generally wear shorter, far more conservative trunks, while in Santa Barbara, it’s a mixed bag.

But whatever kids are wearing in California “they’ll be wearing here within a year,” said Sandy Hamilton, owner of Sidewalk Surfer, a surf shop in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Eventually, the fashions are also discovered by foreigners who vacation in beach towns, like the hordes of Canadians who flock to Ocean City, N.J. “You should see their eyes light up when they walk in and see these shorts,” said John Concannon, manager at Heritage Surf & Sport in Ocean City.

Southland surfers have become living laboratories for surf wear manufacturers, said Arnold Karr, editor of New York-based MAN magazine, a men’s fashion trade publication. “The kid’s gotta wear something that hasn’t been seen in a while to establish that he’s different,” he said. “But the minute he sees kids wearing it on the East Coast, he doesn’t want it any more. It’s like seeing his father wearing the same clothes that he’s got on.”

Dave Rochlen is generally credited with starting the kneebusters craze. “I feel like the guy who goes 20 years as a nobody in the movie business, then suddenly he’s a hero,” he said.

Rochlen is founder and president of Surf Line International, a Honolulu-based manufacturer of “baggie” surf trunks called “Jams”--named and modeled after pajama bottoms. Rochlen’s trunks graced the cover of Life magazine nearly 30 years ago.

Times Have Changed

Back then, there was no competition.

But since then, the specialty surf trunk market has evolved into a fine art in Orange County. Most industry observers say it all began about three decades ago, when the wife of a Newport Beach lifeguard hand-stitched the trunks from the couple’s home.

Soon it was the surfers themselves--looking for even more durable surf wear--who tested the water in a big way. They established shoestring companies like Hang Ten, Hobie and Ocean Pacific, which later grew into household names and industry giants.

Now, these surfers-turned-executives are all fumbling to follow the fashion whims of children young enough to be their own. Some industry observers predict that kneebusters will soon be replaced by solid, shorter trunks.

No surprise there.

“I sell so many long trunks,” said Keith Valentine, a fashion-conscious, 21-year-old salesmen at Jack’s Surfboards, “now, I’ll only wear the short ones.”