Burton Snowboards has announced today that they have signed a licensing agreement with Korea’s “leading fashion company” LG Fashion to not only distribute Burton products but to license the brand to design streetwear in Korea.
To celebrate the new partnership, LG Fashion invited Burton Snowboards’ Co-Owner Donna Carpenter to a ceremony in Seoul this week where executives from the two companies officially signed the agreement. . . “It is a true honor for me to be in Korea to personally sign our new partnership agreement with LG Fashion,” said Donna. “With dozens of winter resorts and a snowy climate, Korea is a very important market for us, and we’ve always wanted to enhance Burton’s presence here. Now that we have such a reputable and established partner as LG Fashion, we can take Burton to a whole new level in the Korean marketplace.”
Not a bad way to go big in Korea quickly, but is this licensing deal the beginning of the end of Burton as we know it? [click to continue…]
To celebrate the planting of the first 150 etnies “buy a shoe, plant a tree project” trees owner Peirre-André Senizergues flew team members Ryan Sheckler, Kyle Leeper, Chris Del Moro, CJ Kanuha and Benji Weatherly, to Costa Rica to plant trees in the etnies Rainforest on the Maleku reserve.
With the worldwide support of the Buy a Shoe, Plant a Tree project, etnies is on track to continue planting 35,000 trees in the forest beyond Friday’s ceremony. Through this project and with the help from La Reserva Forest Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the recovery and preservation of indigenous tropical rainforests in Costa Rica, the new forest will help the Maleku to replenish their reserve with the trees that once maintained their community before their land was destroyed by cattle farmers and a violent rubber-tree war that massacred many of their people.
A photographer who wanted to get a shot of Johnathan Washburn’s updo on the streets of Austin, Texas got a skateboard to the head, according to a story on The Smoking Gun.
According to cops, Washburn clobbered the shutterbug in the head with his skateboard after the man refused to delete the image from his camera.
Washburn is now facing felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges and is in jail with a $12,000 bail set. Not only that, but now everyone gets to see a photo of Johnathan and his lovely hair
For the three months ended January 31, 2011, Quik reported a loss of $16.3 million compared to a loss of $5.4 million during the same quarter the prior year. Sales fell 1.45% from $432.7 million to $426.5 million. Sales in Asia/Pacific were essentially the same from one quarter to the other and rose $6.8 million in the Americas. But European sales fell 7.1% from $177.8 million to $165.2 million.
I’m very pleased to report solid first quarter results that were in all aspects better than we expected when the quarter began. Revenues of $426 million in the first quarter exceeded our plan, and were up in constant currency when compared to the first quarter of 2010. This marks the first time in the last nine quarters that we’ve grown revenues and constant currency and demonstrates that previous revenue declines are abating.
Guess the best way to feel good about losing $16.3 million is to plan on losing much more. For Mr. Harbaugh’s analysis on these numbers (including thoughts on Quik’s aggressive DC growth strategy) click the link.
Canadian retailer Below The Belt is apparently planning to open a 3,300 square foot Volcom retail store in the West Edmonton Mall in April, according to the Edmonton Journal.
“The new store will be one of the largest Volcom stores in the world at 3,300 square feet and will offer the complete assortment of Volcom and Electric apparel for men, women and boys,” spokesman Rob Whetstone said.
Below The Belt owns 30 retail locations in Western Canada, according to the story. This will be VeeCo’s second Canadian mall store.
No, we did not get up at 6:30 this morning to listen in on VF Corporation’s The Next Five Years conference call (we were a little distracted by the tsunami), but we did read their most recent press release in which Chairman and CDO Eric Wiseman explained his plans for Vans and The North Face to carry the company into the future, yet, oddly, he made no mention of Reef.
Over the next five years VF plans to grown their business by $5 billon dollars. And $3 billion of that is projected to come from the Outdoor & Action Sports division (aka Vans and The North Face):
Building on well-established and highly profitable domestic, international and direct-to-consumer platforms, The North Face(R) and Vans(R) brands, which account for 75 percent of total coalition revenues, are targeting annual growth of 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively. By 2015, Outdoor & Action Sports should account for at least half of VF’s total revenues.
How are they going to do that? One of the ways is by serving more “consumers directly:”
Growing direct-to-consumer revenues to 22% of total revenues by adding branded retail stores and building stronger consumer relationships through brand websites and social media.
Ah, social media. The cure for all that ails. Follow the jump for the rest of VF’s plans for world domination. [click to continue…]
Abercrombie (NYSE:ANF), which declined to comment on the lawsuit, is seeking monetary relief and undisclosed damages and asking that Surf Style be barred from using the gull. . . This isn’t the first run-in between the two businesses over the gull design. Abercrombie said in the lawsuit it sent a cease-and-desist letter to Surf Style last May and that the chain agreed to quit selling the allegedly offending merchandise by September – but didn’t.
From now on designers will have to think twice before they put a bird on it.
There is no doubt that many male surfing fans have been finding themselves paying more attention to the 2011 Roxy Pro Gold Coast and as much as we’d like to think it is due to the massive advances in women’s performance surfing, there is a chance that at least some of this new focus has more do with all that rocket ass bobbing in the lineup at Snapper.
This seems to have gotten the Courier Mail wondering if the whole “sexy surfer girl” thing isn’t going too far.
At the Roxy Pro, at Snapper Rocks, many of the young males interviewed by The Sunday Mail admitted they were watching the heats for the women, rather than for the surfing tips. . . Manu Maier, 20, said he believed it was impossible for beauty not to be a factor in judging the heats. . . “They look great, don’t they? I heard about this surfing competition. I said to myself that I had to get here,” Maier said, as a female competitor turned her back on the right-hand break, her small bikini shrinking to a G-string.
Follow the jump to see what wisdom Rabbit Bartholomew had to add to the discussion.
Burton Snowboards has announced today that they have signed a licensing agreement with Korea’s “leading fashion company” LG Fashion to not only distribute Burton products but to license the brand to design streetwear in Korea.
