O.C. Original
Surfwear’s Mount Rushmore
Who: Hurley’s Bob Hurley, left, Quiksilver’s Bob McKnight, Billabong USA’s Paul Naude, Volcom’s Richard Woolcott
Home turf: The Orange coast, baby
Why You should care: Combined, their locally based surfwear companies generate more than $3.5 billion in annual revenue. Skeptical? Check your kids’ dresser drawers.
The original dons of the American surf industry, who came to power in the late ’50s and early ’60s, arose from the not-so-mean streets of south Orange County. They became known as the Dana Point Mafia and, like true mobsters, they had nicknames—not menacing monikers like Vinny the Chin, but sunny names like Hobie (Alter, surfboards), Grubby (Clarke, surfboard cores) and Flippy (Hoffman, fabric).
Those dons are mostly gone, as is the penchant for goofy names. But the industry itself has grown huge and legit, and Orange County remains its home turf. Quiksilver, the sport’s big kahuna, should surpass $2.5 billion in sales this year, and is about to outgrow its 500,000-square-foot Huntington Beach headquarters. Irvine’s Billabong USA, an arm of the publicly traded Australian company, is approaching the $500-million mark under the stewardship of South African transplant Paul Naude. Costa Mesa-based Volcom—founded by former Quik marketeer Richard Woolcott—last year exceeded $260 million in revenue. And the man who once ran Billabong in this country, Newport Beach homeboy Bob Hurley, has built his namesake brand—also now based in Irvine—into a $250- million powerhouse with help from parent company Nike.
“We picked Orange County [as the place to launch Quiksilver in 1976], because I’d grown up surfing here, and because having access to good surf was important,” says Quik founder and CEO Bob McKnight. Back then, he says, the area was also affordable, had quick airport access, and kept them close to their primary vendor, Hoffman Fabrics.
Hurley and Woolcott also evolved from respected local surfers to international surfwear moguls while keeping their feet firmly planted in local sands. “Our roots are here and the nucleus of the industry is here,” says Woolcott. Hurley elaborated in an e-mail sent while on a Bali surfing trip: “The O.C. is increasingly becoming a cultural center for art, music, and sports.”
Don’t be fooled by the laid-back, surf-first affectations of their chief executives: These public companies compete like elephant seals in rut. The bosses live to see their team riders win world titles, their boardshorts get prime retail display, their stocks praised by analysts.
At the same time, they like each other personally. “You put Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren in a room together, they’d probably have a friggin’ fistfight,” McKnight says. “You put me and Paul Naude in a room together, we’d have a drink and talk surf.”
They also sometimes join forces—usually under the auspices of the Aliso Viejo-based Surf Industry Manufacturers Association. Their common enemies are poser brands such as Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch, which seek to cash in on the massive “board sports” market that the surf industry helped create.
“The pond has grown,” McKnight says. “It’s huge; it’s global and connected. The bad news is that everyone else has figured that out. We need to be strong together or otherwise these other guys will eat us up.”
Could McKnight ever see a time when he or Quiksilver might move from Orange County? No way, he says. His current dream of building a million-square-foot, Nike-style campus is complicated by his overriding desire to keep it local, since parcels that size are neither abundant nor cheap in Orange County. There’s another potential complication as well: He’s thinking about adding a wave pool.—Steve Hawk