Zumiez announced this morning (June 19, 2012) that they have “signed a definitive purchase agreement” to acquire Austria based action sports click and mortar retailer Blue Tomato for EUR %9.5 million. Founder Gerfried Schuller should be stoked.
“Joining forces with Blue Tomato represents the next step in our strategic plan to build the leading global action sports retail business. Europe has a large, vibrant and growing action sports community, which Gerfried and his team have skillfully tapped into through a broad offering of authentic brands and products, a differentiated retail experience, and superior customer service. The similarities between each organization’s culture and operating philosophies give us great confidence we can successfully leverage our combined expertise to selectively expand Blue Tomato’s European footprint and strengthen our foundation to support future international development.”
Blue Tomato has five stores and does sales of approximately EUR 29.4 million per year (75 percent of that through ecommerce). Not a bad way to jump into European online sales. Follow the jump for the rest of the story. [click to continue…]
Dylan Rieder joined a partnership with Jake Lamagno and Steven Ditchkus on a new hipster antique/furniture/art store on New York City’s Lower East Side. It’s called The Hunt. No, it’s not a skateboard shop, and yes, it is a conceptual retail piece.
Pacific Sunwear CEO Gary Schoenfeld isn’t backing down on his company’s stock. In fact, beginning May 29, 2012 he bought 150,000 more shares “on behalf of his children,” according to a story in the Orange County Business Journal.
The shares—bought starting May 29—were priced between $1.45 and $1.55 each.
All together Schoenfeld and other company directors bought up 300,000 shares and pushed the stock up 10 percent in trading on Monday, June 4, 2012. It’s up to $1.71 now. Just think if they bought a couple million shares? Kids might start actually start shopping at PacSun again. Or maybe that isn’t the way to stock price is tied in. . .
This Friday, June 1, 2012, Grant Brittain and Chris Miller present Six/Six, an art show collection of phone photos at the Encinitas, California style shop UNIV. The opening party begins at 7 PM. UNIV is located at 1053 S. Coast Highway in Encinitas, California.
The Snow Industries of America today confirmed what any snowboard retailer knows by heart–this last snowboard season was hard no matter how you look at it. No snow early season got everyone off to a dismal start, Christmas roared in as a valiant savior, but then things fell apart again. For retailers, the only consolation seems to be shared misery.
Snow sports unit sales declined 12% overall this season, including a 17% decrease in units sold through chain stores and a 14% decrease in specialty shops. However, Internet sales did rather well, and increased 10% this year driven by late season equipment and accessories sales. This may indicate that many retailers are using commerce enabled websites to move product when in-shop sales have slowed. Excluding carryover, online unit sales increased 15% through February and March this season, compared to February and March 2010/2011.
Lil Wayne is diving in on skateboarding just like one would expect a rap mogul to; through collabs, partnerships, and hanging out with all the right people. He recently worked on a shoot for the May edition of the CCS catalog with Torey Pudwill, Theotis Beasley, Shane O’Neill and Paul Rodriguez.
It ended up being much more than just a photo shoot as Weezy and the crew literally skated deep into the early morning hours at P-Rod’s private park. If there’s one thing for sure it’s that Lil Wayne is definitely down for the ride—the man hardly ever put his board down.
Zumiez announces the 2012 12-stop Couch Tour including Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, SLC, Denver, San Antonio, Houston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, West Nyack, Chicago, and the finals June 26 in Minneapolis.
Joining Zumiez Couch Tour for the 6th year in a row is the Zumiez Best Foot Forward Am Contest Series 2012 Presented by Bones Bearings. Best Foot Forward is a jam format contest for up and coming skaters looking for their own share. Each event includes a local open qualifier for the first 20 skaters to pre-register online at www.zumiezbestfootforward.com. The top am skater from each of the Best Foot Forward contest stops will get an all expense paid trip to the Zumiez Couch Tour’s final stop in Bloomington, MN, to compete in the Best Foot Forward Finals on June 26th, 2012.
Saturdays, NYC’s hipster surf boutique, worked with Shut NYC to create the Saturdays x Shut Skateboard Deck. The board is 29.6 x 7.75 and features 7-ply hardwood maple, Ace Trucks, Shut Wheels, Bones Abec 7 Bearings, and it’s all made in the USA. Completes are $180 and are currently available on the Saturdays website.
We’ll don’t even need a reason to run one of our favorite C.R. Stecyk III skate photos of all time, but this time it is to remind everyone of the Santa Monica Vans Store Grand Re-Opening on April 15, 2012.
Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, and Wes Humpston will all be there to sign autographs, hang out, and tell stories at 1 PM. The Santa Monica Vans Store is located at400 Broadway. For more info call (301) 394-1413.
Zumiez announced this morning (June 19, 2012) that they have “signed a definitive purchase agreement” to acquire Austria based action sports click and mortar retailer Blue Tomato for EUR %9.5 million. Founder Gerfried Schuller should be stoked. 
