Shop Specializes in Boards and Gear for Females Who Want In on Action
Girls rule here, in this gothic-grunge-hippie surf shop, all daisy-dotted snowboards and shapely wetsuits and “Tomgirl” skateboard stickers with lipstick-red hearts.
Here, every couple days, 12-year-old Chanelle Sladics throws off her skateboard helmet and flops on the leopard skin couch to talk jumps and dives with the other girls at On Edge, a new surf-skateboard-snowboard shop for females.
On Edge is one of a handful of board sport shops in the world that cater to women and girls, with skinnier surfboards, shorter snowboards and skateboards with hot pink wheels, said owner Stacie Genchi, 30, of Newport Beach. Sometimes, Chanelle and other girls drop by just to zip off the quarter moon-shaped skateboard ramp when it’s set up in the parking lot.
“It’s killer,” said surfer Carol Kuznitsky, 21, who was fixing the dings in her board at On Edge recently. “I’m so stoked. You feel like you belong instead of being an outcast” in other surf shops.
“[Here], you’re not the babe in a bikini on the wall.”
Genchi opened On Edge six months ago, partly to get more females into the clubby boys’ world of board sports, she said. Industry statistics show that males still dominate water and snow sports. But in snowboarding, for instance, the number of female participants is edging up--in 1992, 20% of all snowboarders were female; three years later, the number had jumped to 30%, according to the SnowSports Industries of America, a trade group.
“Shops like [On Edge] are definitely taking the lead” on the female sports scene, said Ali Zacaroli, a spokeswoman for the trade group.
Last year, On Edge won one of the trade group’s 50 nationwide grants for its proposal to organize all-female snowboarding classes. With the $7,000 grant, On Edge took 100 students by bus to Big Bear and taught them everything from safety to slope tricks in a three-day course.
“It was a holistic thing--rather than just ‘Wednesday is Lady’s Day,’ they actively went out and recruited new [female] participants in the sport. . . . We had never seen anything like this,” Zacaroli said.
On Edge is marked by an old surfboard on Genchi’s jeep that says “Girls’ Board Shop” and brightened outside by star jasmine and hibiscus flowers that are tended by her mother. Inside, Genchi painted the walls violet, mango and watermelon, and hung posters of buff female snowboarders in black. She sells everything from surfing halter tops to silver glitter nail polish.
On a recent afternoon, she put all-girl band the Go-Go’s on the stereo and beamed when a barefoot young woman with dripping hair walked in, straight from the ocean across the street on West Coast Highway.
“It was like, ‘I want to open a hub, a place girls can meet,’ ” said Genchi, who runs the store with her boyfriend, Sean Flinn, 31.
“I wanted to make it so you don’t need a boyfriend to get into snowboarding. . . . There are a lot of girls out there who want to do it but don’t know how to get started.”
Genchi, who grew up in Newport Beach, started skateboarding when she was 7. Later, she picked up surfing and snowboarding.
Six years ago, when she started snowboarding, Genchi had to ride a huge board because there were none made for her 5-foot-2-inch frame. She had to triple up on socks to fit into a men’s size 6 boot. She had to hope that her oversized men’s jacket would not snag on the chair lift and trip her as she got off.
And she wore lipstick so other snowboarders would not mistake her for a guy, as someone once did.
It seemed natural, she said, to open up a sports store for females.
“It was like, ‘This is your life, do it,’ ” Genchi said.
She scraped together $40,000 in savings and family loans to open the 1,200-foot-square store, although she had no business experience. On the store’s first day, she had to apologize to her first customer because she had forgotten to put cash in the register to make change.
She still works as a full-time computer technician to make ends meet and then spends her evenings and weekends at the store; she says it’ll take more than a year for her to turn a profit.
“It’s so much out of my heart and soul. It’s just day by day,” Genchi said.
Snowboarder Kelly Kraus, 14, said she instantly felt at home when she walked into On Edge.
“When you go in,” she said, “there are posters of girls on the wall! It’s all girls! You feel like you’re with it too.”
