Apparel Retailers Catch New Girls’ Surfing Wave
Male surfers may still rule at the beach, but females are hijacking the surf wear industry, driving sales and influencing marketing at Southern California’s largest surf apparel firms.
Quiksilver Inc. in Huntington Beach recently predicted that revenue from girls’ products will eclipse sales to men and boys within two years, an amazing acknowledgment from the sales leader of an industry that once existed solely for males.
Irvine-based Billabong USA, which launched its girls’ line three years ago, says sales of those products have swelled more than 50% annually. That growth could explode after Aug. 16, when Universal Pictures releases “Blue Crush,” a movie about female surfers who will be outfitted in Billabong clothes.
Despite some skepticism about whether the movie accurately depicts the lives of surfers, many insiders predict it will pump sales for surf wear manufacturers and retailers, increase female attendance at surfing schools and boost circulation for girls’ surfing magazines. Surf Diva surf school in La Jolla said its attendance jumped as soon as the film’s trailers started showing a few weeks ago.
But it is Billabong that stands to be the big winner, insiders say, because its logos will be stretched across big screens from New York to California.
“It’s going to be huge for them,” said Sean Smith, a spokesman for the Surf Industry Manufacturing Assn. in San Clemente. “A pretty young girl runs on the screen and her rash guard (wetsuit-type shirt) has ‘Billabong’ on it. That product placement is worth a fortune in advertising dollars.”
“Blue Crush” is a testament to change taking place in the surf world, because its budget was the largest ever for a surf movie, and it’s about females.
“There’s never been a film that cost as much or one that’s been promoted as heavily, not even close,” said Matt Warshaw, a surf book author in San Francisco.
The $2.4-billion surf wear industry welcomes the movie’s opening, just as fall products start hitting stores. There have been signs that business is picking up this year after a rocky 2001. An upturn in this industry is particularly important to Southern California, where most of these companies are based.
Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., which sells clothes and other products for surfers and skateboarders, predicts that women’s products will account for 45% of its sales this year. To push its juniors business, PacSun will spend a record $10 million on marketing, which will include placing ads in mainstream magazines such as Seventeen, Teen People and YM, said Carol Apkarian, the company’s marketing director. Other than in-store advertising, virtually all of the company’s marketing this year will target females, she said.
“It needs to be a larger portion of our business since, let’s face it, girls are the shoppers,” Apkarian said.
Because Billabong is one of the three top-selling brands at PacSun stores--along with Quiksilver and Hurley--the retailer is helping with “Blue Crush” promotions. “It’s an action sports movie that appeals to teens, starring women, so it does just about everything we want it to do,” Apkarian said.
Although most girls who buy surf wear will never ride a wave, the number of female surfers is increasing. Of the 2.4 million people age 9 and older who surfed last year, 16% to 22% were female, said Angelo Ponzi, owner of Board-Trac, a market research firm in Trabuco Canyon. The number of females who surf every day jumped 120% from 1999 to 2001, he said.
The growth in women’s surfing prompted O’Neill Inc. to produce a line of wetsuits that will make it easier for females to bear cold waters, said Tom Brady, marketing director for the Santa Cruz firm.
“We’re doing more technical products for women because they’re demanding it,” he said.
In the women’s market, technology and frivolity meet. Surf Diva, for example, sells floral rash guards in pink and purple and “Daisy Mae” surfboards emblazoned with a hand-drawn daisy.
Making products for females gives companies much more latitude, because girls generally aren’t hung up on so-called “core” issues, such as whether a brand is rooted in surfing, or where it’s sold.
“With girls, there’s not so much worry about ‘selling out,’ ” said Kai Stearns, editor of Surfing Girl magazine in San Clemente. That probably made it easier for Billabong to tie its juniors brand to a movie about girls, she said.
“If that was the guys, they wouldn’t have done it because it’s like ‘Oh, we’re too cool for that,’ ” she said.
Surf wear companies have been forced to step up their marketing to keep pace with the growth of the girls’ market. That growth has increased the interest of so-called outsiders who now also sell surf apparel, including Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and Gap Inc.
Movie Deal Called ‘Uncharted Territory’
Most consider the “Blue Crush” deal a major coup for Billabong, although Quiksilver said it didn’t compete for the deal and Costa Mesa-based Hurley International said product placement deals are too “geeky” for its brand.
“Everything I’ve heard is that everybody wishes it was them,” Stearns said.
Billabong won’t say how much it boosted its ad budget to snag the product placement agreement or discuss other financial details of the deal. Universal Pictures declined to be interviewed.
“This is uncharted territory,” said Jessica Trent Nichols, marketing manager for Billabong’s juniors division. “No one in the surf industry has ever done a deal like this. The amount of branding we have in the film is almost ridiculous.”
Although it’s a kick to see the Billabong brand blown up on the screen, attaching a surf wear company to a movie it can’t control is inherently risky, Trent Nichols said.
“That can be scary,” she said. “In the surf industry, we’re usually afraid it’s going to be some little beach bunnies running around--your ‘Baywatch’ deal. This was a little more raw and realistic.”
Some say the movie will feel authentic partly because it uses professional surfers, both as stunt doubles and playing themselves. But not everyone agrees.
Naysayers, who tend to be male, say “Blue Crush” is too “Hollywood” to accurately depict the life of surfers. Sam George, editor of Surfer magazine in Dana Point, scoffed at the fact that the female lead falls for a quarterback.
“As if any woman surfer would ever go out with a football player,” George said. “The movie is absurd, and like all absurd Hollywood movies, it will cause a little tiny blurp of interest.”
Still, George acknowledged that “Blue Crush” could “touch off a mini-trend in women’s surf fashion” because it is sure to expand awareness of surfing in land-locked areas.
“That’s been the backbone of the whole surf wear industry, getting people in Iowa to dress like surfers,” George said. “They don’t make those millions selling to girl surfers.”
Certainly it is youths who don’t surf--and many who’ll never see an ocean--who will fuel the growth of these companies.
Surf wear includes a wide array of products. Generally, the clothes are stylish, youthful and comfortable, and include shorts, T-shirts, jeans and sundresses. At the moment, a retro trend is sweeping the industry, producing clothes nearly identical to those sold in the 1970s.
The surf products are alluring to youths in middle America because of an image conjured up by marketers. Some companies emphasize a laid-back, stereotypically Southern California lifestyle. Others push edgier products, clothes that girls can wear in clubs and on dates.
Although this stretches the definition of surf wear beyond the snapping point, industry insiders say that if you trace the product back far enough, you’ll find the sand, and that’s part of the attraction.
“They’re born from the beach,” said Smith, the manufacturing association’s spokesman.
Staying ahead of the fashion curve has become increasingly important to surf wear companies, and fashion will become even more crucial as women gravitate to these brands.
“When you look at companies like Volcom and some of the other younger ones out here, it’s not just about functionality, it’s about style,” Smith said. “You’re designing a line that people in New York will look at and say, ‘That’s just really cool.’ ”
Roxy is at the root of the female surfer market, a brand launched--very gingerly--in the early 1990s.
Initially, Quiksilver placed Roxy labels on bathing suits; then it tried a few denim pieces. But when girls started showing up on beaches in their boyfriends’ trunks, “a lightbulb” flipped on, and the company started cranking out board shorts for girls, said Randy Hild, who helped build the Roxy brand.
“It was a pretty dull lightbulb, it wasn’t a brainstorm or anything,” Hild added. “No one really got it.”
Except female consumers, who began snapping up board shorts instead of bikinis.
Soon, Quiksilver was pouring money into advertising and changing the focus of surf wear marketing. Instead of ads centered on surfing, this marketing seized on a lifestyle.
“They took pretty surfer girls, cute little surfers and showed them having a great time together at the beach,” George said. “They were people endorsing a lifestyle, and that let other women go, ‘Hey, that could be me.’ ”
“Let’s face it, pro surfing is a blip on the American cultural scene,” George added. “But surf as a lifestyle is one of the most dominant, prevalent marketing genres in America.”
Roxy kept “blowing up,” as they say in the industry. Sales at least doubled each year through 1999, when revenue from the brand hit the “magical 100 million mark,” Hild said. Quiksilver also launched a Teenie Wahine brand to snag younger girls.
‘Gender-Biased’ Industry Changes Its Thinking
Meanwhile, other surf wear companies paddled like crazy to catch the same wave.
“Suddenly,” George said, “the incredibly gender-biased surf wear industry said, ‘Wait a minute. Women buy way more clothing and accessories than guys do. What were we thinking?’ ”
Today, the Roxy brand includes luggage, shoes, sheets, lamps, frames, jewelry boxes, license plate holders and steering wheel covers.
“Who would have thought a women’s surf brand would be bigger than the men’s brand?” Hild said. “No one could have predicted that.”
