Quiksilver’s Truly Endless Summer

You’re on a boat in the South Pacific. Waterfalls cascade down hillsides and into the warm, clear sea. Your goal is to find a perfect wave and surf it.

If you don’t find one, no problem. You can go fishing instead. Or diving. Or snorkeling.

This business trip from heaven is part of a two-year boating expedition by surf-wear designer QuiksilverInternational to find “unsurfed waves” while shooting marketing photographs and promotional videos featuring some of the world’s top surfers in Quiksilver board shorts and bikinis. The trip will result in a new line of clothing and an adventure vacation business.

The journey, which will cost $3 million for the first year, indicates the intensity of competition in the surf-wear business, where even Quiksilver, as the market leader, needs to continually buff its image to remain relevant to the fickle teens who buy its clothes.

The company’s leased boat is stopping in exotic locales such as Tahiti and Fiji, regularly rotating new groups of passengers on board. Participating at various times are Quiksilver executives, photographers, marine biologists and--of course--surfers, including six-time world champion Kelly Slater and four-time women’s world champ Lisa Anderson.

“The Quiksilver Crossing,” as the journey is called, is notable for its duration and its varied mission. Crew members also are gathering environmental data and mingling with island natives, sometimes discussing whether areas should be set aside for surfing.

“The best way for us to grow is by having more areas available for surfing,” said Bruce Raymond, managing director of the Australia-based Quiksilver International.

The journey, which began in March, has yielded a bonanza of marketing opportunities, allowing photographers to shoot Quiksilver-clad surfers in “tropical dreamscapes,” said Robert B. McKnight Jr., chief executive of Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc., a trip sponsor that owns the Quiksilver name and trademarks in the United States and Mexico.

“It’s perfect for product profiling, it’s great for action shots, it’s great for everything,” he said.

The new line of products linked to the boat trip will include board shorts, jackets and travel bags. “The Quiksilver Crossing” collection will be in stores next spring.

By next summer, Quiksilver plans to launch its own outdoor adventure travel agency.

“We want to be in the travel business, to put people in these places,” McKnight said.

Business aside--if that’s possible--the trip has an almost mythic quality about it. It’s about the search for that perfect wave, that never-surfed slice of the ocean. And it’s enough to make any self-respecting surfer’s mouth water.

“Everybody dreams about doing stuff like that,” said Richard Allred, owner of the surf-wear company Toes On The Nose in Costa Mesa. “It’s a dream Quiksilver can share with the whole industry.”

But perfection is elusive. During Slater’s stints on board, the surf was wimpy. “We kind of got skunked,” the young surf pro said.

On the 75-foot Indies Trader, as the boat is called, most days begin early--about 6:30 if the surf’s up--and revolve around surfing, picture-taking and video-shooting. Surfers wearing Quiksilver board shorts or Roxy bikinis--the company’s juniors line--ride waves and wander beaches while photographers snap pictures for magazine ads.

“They bring all the product and you do pretty much all the ad shots for the year,” Slater said.

The trip also has an environmental component. Quiksilver invited aboard marine biologists who are gathering data for Reef Check, a coral reef monitoring program that funnels information about pollution and fish to scientists and governments worldwide. The biologists, in turn, are training surfers to help examine the reefs.

“It’s a teaching assignment, even though it’s a pretty plushy one,” said former surfing champ Richard Grigg, a University of Hawaii professor of oceanography who is directing the scientific work. Information about the Quiksilver/Reef Check connection will appear on the hang tags of some Quiksilver clothing.

“It’s a new, innovative approach to both marketing and education,” Grigg said, “the marriage of two things that would otherwise be separate.”

In the process, student surfers gain a deeper understanding about their playground, he said.

“I take them underwater and teach them the names of things,” Grigg said. “It’s literally putting your head under water and saying, ‘What’s going on under here?’ Pretty soon, they stop thinking about, ‘Well, I’m here to get my picture taken,’ and a whole world opens up.”

But the environmental work is a relatively small part of Quiksilver’s adventure, which McKnight said is meant to promote products and create new business opportunities.

McKnight said he and boat captain Martin Daly came up with the idea about three years ago, as they sat on board Daly’s boat off the coast of Sumatra, sipping rum and trying to distinguish satellites from stars. They were thinking: “This is so great, being out here,” McKnight remembers. And the wheels started turning.

At first, they envisioned a one-year voyage. But the company recently decided to extend it another year, McKnight said. It could become a perpetual journey.

The boat launched from Cannes, passed the Great Barrier Reef and on to New Guinea and Tahiti. It is currently in French Polynesia.

While the trip has idyllic qualities, the 27-year-old Indies Trader is a well-used diving boat, not a luxury liner. And when the wind kicks up--as it did off Fiji--the ride can get rough. “We felt like the Polynesians, getting bounced and tossed around in our bunks,” Grigg said.

It is not quite bare bones, however, with air conditioning, a cellular phone, television, fax machine and a stereo.

So far, the crew has found more than 18 remote locations with perfect surf breaks and receptive islanders, McKnight said. With the demand for exotic surf trips growing, Quiksilver could use the Indies Trader over the next 10 years to identify more exceptional surf areas. Then, the company’s travel agency could book surfing tours for its customers and sell them clothes for the journey, he said.

To keep these dream locales from being overrun with tourists, and to maintain an edge on the competition, Quiksilver is keeping mum about precisely where the boat stops.

“This is like the equivalent of helicopter snowboarding, but it’s surfing,” McKnight said. “Billabong doesn’t know where it is, Rip Curl doesn’t know where it is. . . . We do.”