Pop Magazine Closed

Started in 2005, Pop Magazine published a free quarterly magazine focusing on Australian snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing. Pop grew to produce a feature length snowboard movie, an industry leading website for daily news, web-casts and digital versions of the magazines as well as premiere events and consultancy. Ten years later, …

by Rick

How To Start A Magazine: Lessons from 10 Years of Pop Magazine

In 2005 Dave Keating and I, Rick Baker, set out to create a free press surf, skate and snowboarding magazine. 10 years later, we’re closing the ‘doors’. The whole endeavor was always about capturing the creativity and excitement that surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding gave us and from that, building a …

by Rick

Quiksilver: Bankruptcy Or Restructuring Within 9 Months?

Investor Jeremy Raper: Raper Capital has written an indepth piece on the likely outcomes for Quiksilver based on the most recent earnings call. Gazing through his well-researched-crystal-ball, things aren’t looking so good. If you’re interested, you really need to read the whole thing. This is the first analysis I’ve read …

by Dave

Quiksilver Pulls Guidance, Shares Tank

One of the first earnings calls for new Quiksilver CEO, Pierre Agnes, has been a tough one. “Logistics issues” have caused a drop in earnings, a larger loss per share than anticipated and a move to pull their outlook for the year. Agnes said that they are “still working on execution …

by Dave

Surfstitch Buys Stab Magazine

Surfstitch completed a deal over the last week which sees it purchase a business called Magicseaweed along with none-other-than Sydney based surf mag, Stab. All up the acquisitions cost the company AU$13.8 million plus 4.8 million shares but no split was gives on who got what from the deal. In …

by Dave

Fun With Fraud In Surf Clothing

Image from Simon Birch On Monday it was reported that Conan Hayes, founder of RVCA, was arrested for fraud relating to the sale of his house just after the sale of RVCA to Billabong for $7.5 million. He is accused of taking advantage of a program offered by mortgage lenders to assist homeowners …

by Dave

Surfstitch Smashing Their Guidance

Surfstitch are riding high after needing to issue a note to correct their guidance from their prospects… In the right direction. They’re 37% up on earnings and on track to beat market expectations into 2016. Founders Lex Pederson and Justin Cameron have smoothly integrated operations from their two acquisitions (Swell and …

by Dave

Investment Fund CIO Backing Billabong

The Chief Investment Officer of Sydney based NAOS Investment Fund, Sebastian Evans, has backed Billabong for a comeback. There’s not much reasoning given for his confidence in the Bloomberg article, but they do talk about the cost cutting program specifically citing the move from China to Vietnam, Bangladesh and India for manufacturing. …

by Dave

Changes And Lawsuits At Quiksilver

It hasn’t been long since Andy Mooney was moved on and the new-old team are clearing house. Two of the top sales execs that Mooney brought in have left the company and the sales departments are being restructured to have brand specific reps rather than single reps selling across the three titles. In addition, …

by Dave

Billabong Owners Creeping Up And New Legal Troubles

There have been two little interesting pieces of news come out of Billabong over the last week – Centerbridge and Oaktree have increased their holding in Billabong for two months running with the investors now in control of 38.5% of the company. They’re only small increases but this might be to …

by Dave

Andy Mooney Removed As CEO Of Quiksilver

In an otherwise regular morning, this big bit of news dropped – Quiksilver have ousted CEO Andy Mooney and replaced him with Quik vet, Pierre Agnes. Shares are down on the news. This comes after last weeks earning report that showed some good signs for the company. However they were …

by Dave

Quik Reports Good Signs – Makes A Loss

Quiksilver have reported a first quarter loss of US$10.8 million but have beat analysts expectations on a loss per share basis and total revenue. The market expected around $336 million and CEO Andy Mooney delivered $340 million which was on guidance (this was in constant currency terms – taking into account the current …

by Dave

Rip Curl Now Worth $310 Million

A few years ago, Rip Curl was looking at listing the business or selling it off for a valuation around the $400 million mark. Time has not been kind to the surfwear companies but if you compare the damage to the two main rivals, Rip Curl has remained fairly stable and …

by Dave

Surfstitch Has Got Billion Dollar Dreams

Surfstitch has reported a pretty awesome first half of the year putting them on target to reach (and possibly exceed) the full year guidance in their IPO prospectus. Sales were up 23% year on year to the end of December, this may be partially down to the addition of Swell …

by Dave

Billabong Hits Profit And Lays Out New Horizon

Billabong has hit profit and CEO Neil Fiske is talking about the next phase of his turn around plans. According to his statements, the focus has been on the simple and easy gains (low hanging fruit) that could be enacted to stabilise the business. Now they’re into structural reforms like …

by Dave

Mambo Sold To Saban Brands

It’s hard to classify this as surf news anymore but as someone who remembers the brightly coloured shirts flying out the door of the shop in the late 90’s, I felt it was worth a mention.  Saban Brand, the owners of Paul Frank and Macbeth have picked up Mambo. They …

by Dave

Aaron Draplin On Logo Design

You may not have heard of Aaron Draplin before but you sure has hell will have seen his work. Draplin is the guy (genius?) behind some of snowboardings most iconic logos working for the likes of Forum, Ride, Coal, Union, Grenade, Gnu and more. He has done a really rad …

by Dave

2014’s Top 10 Snow, Skate And Surf Articles

It’s coming up to the end of the year which is a great time to look back at what made news during the last 12 months. The Olympics in Sochi, the ups and downs for Billabong and Quiksilver, the great videos and the terrible ones. Looking at the article stats …

by Dave

2014 Top Songs In Videos

Image: Stale Sandbech Method via ESPN from For Me. There’s nothing that get’s me more hyped than a great song choice in a video. It’s not just the big budget, energy drink backed blockbusters that can get it really right either… Any kid with god taste has a chance to improve …

by Dave

SurfStitch To IPO Today

Today is the initial public offering of SurfStitch. The stock is due to list at 12pm (eastern) and begin trading at $1.00 a share – the expectation was that the list price would be closer to $1.40 to $1.80 so the first few hours might be interesting. We will track their movement over …

by Dave

Quiksilver Executing On Strategy

Quiksilver announced their Q4 results on December 11th and from a quick read through of the earnings call, there was one or two interesting nuggets released. Topline, the outlook is below analysts expectations, the revenue for last quarter was lower than expected and the loss was bigger than expected. Surprises …

by Dave

Kelly Slater’s Outerknown Gets Employees

Kelly Slater’s Outerknown has press released the team that will be leading the brand – and he’s managed some heavy hitters. Julie Gilhart from Barney’s, Stella Ishii who launched Alexander Wang, Phillip Lim 3.1 and The Row as well as Shelly Gottschamer who handles supply chain and comes from Levis and Patagonia. These people mean nothing …

by Dave

Billabong, You’re Drunk

You know what makes a great surfer, skater or snowboarder? The ability to overcome the scars of a bad slam and hit that spot/feature/wave again. However, should the slam have been a near death experience with an almost nil chance of success in pulling it off, then hitting it again doesn’t …

by Dave

Surfstitch Wraps IPO Road Show

Surfstitch is wrapping up their presentations to potential investors ahead of their public listing. Reports in The Australian are that they have a convincing argument valuing their shares at a lower multiple of earnings to that of competitors like ASOS and Boohoo. Founders Lex Pedersen and Justin Cameron are going to retain …

by Dave

Bob McKnight’s History In OC Register

Quiksilver’s main man and former CEO, Bob McKnight has given an interview to The OC Register about how the company came to be what it is, his own history and some details about the painful downs and the pains of the ups too. Definitely doesn’t sound like an easy time …

by Dave

Kelly Slater Repping Volcom, Electric And Cobra/Puma Golf

Kelly Slater has confirmed that he will represent a host of Kering Group brands as part of their support for his label, Outerknown. He made the announcement on Instagram and said that the deal includes, “… Volcom, Electric, Cobra/Puma Golf, and even Brioni, Balenciaga, Tretorn, Stella McCartney and others …” …

by Dave

Surfing Life, White Horses, Smith Journal and Frankie Sold

There was an ASX release yesterday announcing the sale of Morrison Media to radio and sports publisher, Pacific Star Network. Morrison was paid $10.8 million in cash for the titles including Surfing Life, White Horses, Smith Journal, Frankie and more. This represents a multiple of 4.9 times on earnings which in …

by Dave

Miss Reef 2015 Calendar

Apparently it’s time for Miss Reef again – the 2015 calendar has dropped now (only 58 days till the new year) and they have released the above clip for it. Which is available in 4K should you need that level of detail. If you can drag your eyes a little off …

by Dave

Burton’s #Whatipack Is Back

For the third year running Burton is making like the worlds most friendly airport security agent and getting you to unpack your bags. #Whatipack is back and you can win $200 worth of Burton goodness a week between now and the end of November. Part of the launch of the comp …

by Dave

Oakley Future Sport Party

Massive thanks to Little Red Jet for the shots. Oakley held a damn big party in Sydney last week with a host of big names and the theme was Disruptive by Design. All about the future of sport (or something – everyone is posting photos but there’s very little information about the actual event) …

by Dave

Bob McKnight Retires As Quiksilver’s Executive Chairman

Image via Transworld Business Bob McKnight is retiring from Quiksilver as Executive Chairman and will now just serve on the board. McKnight gained the rights to Quik in the U.S. back in 1975 and has grown the company over the last 39 years. It is the one and only job …

by Dave

GoPro Linked With Schumacher’s Brain Injury

French journalist, Jean-Louis Moncet, has claimed that the GoPro mounted on the helmet of F1 driver Michael Schumacher may have been the cause of his traumatic brain injury. There are claims that tests have shown that the solid camera structure mounted to the helmet changed how it absorbed the impact – adding the …

by Dave

Rip Curl IPO Back On The Cards

Rip Curl, a powerhouse in its own right but always looked on as ‘the little brand that could’ next to much larger stablemates, Quiksilver and Billabong, has lifted profits 60% after 24 months of restructuring. And despite the interesting experience of the bigger listed brands over the last few years with …

by Dave

Red Bull’s Deep Water Breath Holding Camp

Ages and ages ago, we posted about Guillaume Nery, a constant weight free dive world champ. People were pretty stoked on it and here we have Red Bull training some pretty big names in similar skills. The crew, including Travis Pastrana, Ben Ferguson a few skiiers and a video gamer (?), get …

by Dave

Outerknown By Kelly Slater Launches

Kelly Slater’s brand now has a name and a website – Outerknown. The site is nicely designed, simple but with some great photos. It’s missing a favicon, which drives me nuts… It’s the little details that matter. But you can register to receive updates from them as it gets closer …

by Dave