Winter’s New Wave: Anti-Ski Wear
When the sun set on summer, Southern California surfwear makers traditionally hunkered down and hoped for an early spring. But not any more.
To fill in the seasonal gap, beachwear manufacturers have created what they like to call “the frozen surf”: a winter marketing wonder that capitalizes on an emerging new sport.
Snowboarding--a combination of skateboarding, surfing and skiing--has brought a new, young crowd to ski slopes across the country, to the occasional dismay of traditional skiers.
Earlier in the decade, sportswear companies such as Ocean Pacific in Tustin helped promote the sports of surfing and skateboarding and the life styles associated with them. In the process, they transformed the surfer and skateboarder into a national fashion statement. Today, they hope to do the same with snowboarders.
OP, Life’s A Beach and other surfwear makers already have introduced fashion lines based on snowboarding, and they are providing financial support for professional snowboard teams to help promote the sport and develop the image that surrounds it.
OP, a longtime sponsor of national surfing contests, sponsored the first OP Aspen Grand Prix of Snowboarding last weekend near Aspen Highlands, Colo., with 200 snowboarders competing for $5,000 in prize money.
The sport isn’t easy, and it typically attracts young, daredevil participants. The snowboard itself is an 11-inch-wide, 5-foot-long piece of laminated wood or fiberglass that you ride downhill standing up. It is equipped with ankle bindings, which strap around snow boots.
“Shredding” as fast as 50 m.p.h., a snowboarder must guide his board down mountainous slopes with the same agility and balance used in surfing and skateboarding. Ski poles are definitely passe.
Snowboarders, many of whom are adolescents, are considered “flying hell on snow” by the more traditional skiers who dominate the slopes. Their style sets them apart. And so do their clothes.
“We spent enough time on the slopes to know there was a hole. Snowboarders wanted their own clothes,” said Jeff Theodosakis, co-owner of Life’s A Beach surfwear maker in Carlsbad.
Although a consistent snowboarder look hasn’t yet emerged, the fashions already on the slopes and those recently introduced seek to project a rebellious image. The look is variously described by people in the industry as “rad,” “popping” and “avant-garde.”
The colors and designs are similar to those preferred by surfers and skateboarders. Snowboarders frequently wear hot pink and lime green fluorescents emblazoned with prints of everything from skulls and crossbones to the Three Stooges.
Traditional skiers often strive for a designer-label, one-look-fits-all style. The snowboarder is eclectic, and definitely not color-coordinated.
“Winter outerwear fashions may never be the same,” said Jerry Crosby, vice president of OP.
Other surf-side businesses are trying to capitalize on snowboarding, too. The publisher of Skateboarding magazine also publishes Snowboarding magazine. Some skateboard makers also manufacture snowboards. And Swatch Watch USA, which makes the preferred time piece of skateboarders and surfers, is sponsoring a $20,000 World Snowboarding Championship this weekend in Breckenridge, Colo.
“It’s straight from the beach. . . . It’s rad,” said Salina Sialega, an editorial assistant at Oceanside-based Transworld Snowboarding magazine, which published its first issue last fall.
History Disputed
Jake Carpenter, president of Burton Snowboards in Manchester Center, Vt., said more than 200,000 people used snowboards this year. Carpenter sold a record 35,000 boards worldwide, up from 22,000 last year. The boards cost $300 to $500.
“Snowboarding is a way for people in Vermont to live the California life style,” OP’s Crosby said.
Snowboarders debate the sport’s origins. Some trace it to slopes in the Western United States 20 years ago, and others say it goes back decades to Europe.
But the widespread popularity is a recent phenomenon attributable in large part to skateboarding and surfing, according to Debbie Hendrickson of Vision Sports Inc. in Costa Mesa. The firm distributes Sims skateboards and snowboards and Vision Street Wear clothing for enthusiasts of both sports.
The Vision Street Wear snowboard line includes pink, blue and neon-yellow pants, jackets and sweat shirts. “Our snowboard look is loose, and definitely fun,” said Hendrickson, manager of Sims snowboarding team, which sponsors 30 snowboarders.
Theodosakis of Life’s a Beach described his firm’s Bad Boy Club snowboard clothes as “popping, avant-garde and progressive.” The firm started selling snowboarder garb in 1986, and sales have increased since then, Theodosakis said.
The clothing line includes jackets, pants, a beret with ear flaps and a turtleneck pull-over.
OP, which reported sales of $300 million last year, began marketing a limited selection of winter wear in the fall of 1986, but its future winter fashions will be strongly influenced by its new snowboarder line, Crosby said.
Snow-Surf Synergy
OP’s snowboard fashions are less radical in design than some. The firm offers several styles of loose-fitting, multicolored clothes.
The company, which has sponsored the $70,000 OP Pro Surfing Championship each September since 1981 in Huntington Beach, has dressed its team of surfers in snowboard wear and taken them to the slopes.
OP said the surfers loved the snow, demonstrating the compatibility of the two sports. In fact, OP’s snowboard clothes include a design called “United Surfers,” which features a drawing of the surf and the slope.
Other sport wear makers have discovered that synergy, too.
“We get the snowboarder when he gets off the slopes,” said Michael Tomson, co-founder of Gotcha, a surf clothing maker that has been selling winter jackets, pants and other clothes in department stores and ski shops since the fall of 1985.
Tomson said he has visited ski resorts to study the popularity of snowboarding, and he is looking into a clothing line tailored exclusively for snowboarders.
Although sales of snowboard clothing aren’t expected to match those of summer surfwear, which top $1 billion a year, designers said snowboard styles already are being sold in ski shops, surf shops and a growing number of department stores.
And the clothes are expected to be worn both on and off the slopes, just as skateboarding and surfing styles.
“It’s not necessarily a snowboard look so much as it is a new look for winter,” said Steve Rechtschaffner, vice president of marketing for Swatch. Rechtschaffner said snowboard wear is worn on the streets of New York.
“It’s a nice look. It’s young and bright,” said Dusty Kidd, editor of Sportstyle, a bimonthly magazine in New York. “How big the market is, we don’t know. It’s going to take time.”
Added Dan McCue of OP: “God forbid there should be one snowboarder look. Then it wouldn’t be fashion.”
