According to a story in the Sydney Morning Herald, Rip Curl made at least some of their 2015 snowboard outerwear in North Korea, a country known for using slave labor in manufacturing. Of course Rip Curl didn’t mention it until after it was pointed out to them by Fairfax Media. Now the surf wear company is doing everything they can to blame it on their China based contractors.
After Fairfax Media sent Rip Curl photos of its garments being made in North Korea, the company’s chief financial officer Tony Roberts released a statement that said the firm “takes its social compliance obligations seriously. . .We were aware of this issue, which related to our Winter 2015 Mountain-wear range, but only became aware of it after the production was complete and had been shipped to our retail customers. . . This was a case of a supplier diverting part of their production order to an unauthorised subcontractor, with the production done from an unauthorised factory, in an unauthorised country, without our knowledge or consent, in clear breach of our supplier terms and policies.”
Hey, you can’t keep those margins in check without cutting production costs, right? In other news, Kim Jong-un may be getting the boot from his own country for a failing economy.
After one false alarm, The Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau is back on yellow alert for a possible start on Thursday, February 25, 2016.
“We are looking very closely at this swell,” said event director Glen Moncata. “These systems are very hard to predict so we will set up for the event, but we will not make the final call until Thursday morning. We don’t want to disappoint anybody and we will leave it up to the Bay to call the day on Thursday.”
Plan your work and travel days accordingly. For the official word from Quik, please follow the jump.
We join the rest of the surfing world in mourning the loss of big wave legend Brock Little. He died of cancer on Thursday, February 18, 2016. He was 48 years old.
Born in 1967 in Napa, California, Little’s family moved to Haleiwa when he was three years old and he began surfing at age seven. As a teenager, Little was considered to be one of the most talented and hardest-charging surfers of his era and was a stalwart figure at Waimea and Mavericks. In 1986, at only 19 years old, he finished fourth in the Eddie event, solidifying his reputation as being utterly fearless. Just a few years later, in 1990, he finished second in the prestigious contest, amid some of the most harrowing conditions ever seen in the competition.
He was surrounded by family and friends and kept charging till the end. Our thoughts are with Brock’s family and friends. Below is his final post in Instagram from yesterday.
One of our favorite action sporting GPS smart watches, the Garmin Vivoactive, is getting a nice upgrade this spring with the addition heart-rate monitoring, a completely redesigned case, and built-in snowboard activity tracking. The new watch is called the Garmin Vivoactive HR.
The snowboarding app measures 3-D speed by calculating the speed and distance on an incline versus latitude and longitude. It also provides splits automatically and features Auto Pause, which freezes the timer automatically when users stop or ride the lift.
We like it for the snowboarding app, but not only that, the Vivoactive HR does smart notifications better than most. It allows you to get texts and emails (and even answer your phone) on your wrist without having to dig for your phone and it will run for up to eight days on a single charge. For the official word from Garmin, please follow the jump.
The Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau is a strange surf contest beast. We never really like to get too excited about it because it so rarely happens. When it was announced that it was on this week, we let ourselves get amped. Shame on us as this morning Quik event director Glen Moncata called it off.
“Unfortunately, the Bay is not going to call the day today. The surf is not what we expected,” Glen Moncata, Quiksilver Event Director, said. “What we need is need eight hours of solid 20 foot surf, 40 foot faces, and unfortunately this storm got pushed way up North of us, so we are just not going to be able to run today.”
Waiting for a monster swell is a tough game and the window is open until February 29, 2016. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. For the official word from Quik, please follow the jump.
Update at 10:48 AM February 10, 2016: Due to a swell that did not materialize the Eddie has been called OFF by organizers. Whoops!
What a week for Quiksilver. They slip out from under hundreds of millions in debt (where did all that money go?) and they’re calling The Eddie on for Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at the world famous Waimea Bay.
This will be the ninth time the event has been run in 31 years. Yes, it’s momentous.
Organizers anticipate a solid day of surf that will meet the event’s strict wave face height requirement of 40 feet, with favorable light winds in the morning, turning light trades by afternoon. . . “It has taken us six years to pull the trigger, but this is the first swell we have seen that is truly lining up as an Eddie swell,” said Event Director Glen Moncata.
For the official word from Quik (including complete heat line-ups), please follow the jump.
We didn’t watch much of the 2016 Volcom Pipe Pro held January 27 – February 2, 2016, but we were lucky enough to catch the most stacked finals we think we’ve ever seen at Pipeline yesterday (February 2, 2016): Kelly Slater, JOB, Bruce Irons, and Makai McNamara.
At first we were wondering why 2 John Florence wasn’t in the mix, too, but Makai’s first wave (and his complete commitment to the task) made us realize we could get by without Mr. Blue Moon in a Pipeline final. Oh, and Kelly Slater’s surfing was pretty near perfect, which is always good to see.
For the official word from Volcom (including results) please follow the jump.
As part of their 50th Anniversary celebration Vans is kicking down 50 different colorways on the Sk8-Hi (our favorite shoe of all time).
The Sk8-Hi serves as a canvas for new color offerings, vibrant prints and premium material upgrades, while its timeless form provides a framework for design enhancements including deconstructed uppers, zip back detailing and slim sole construction. Each new enhancement stands alongside the original Sk8-Hi colorways that were first introduced almost 40 years ago.
What a great way to celebrate. For the official word from Vans, please follow the jump.
We always thought of Larry Gordon as a skateboard manufacturer. Gordon’s Fibreflex skateboards were some of the first quality boards we ever rolled, but his roots in surfing are what made him a household name. Gordon died in his San Diego, California home on Friday, January 1, 2016, according to story in the San Diego Union Tribune. He was 76.
“He was about quality and performance,” said his daughter Debbie Gordon, who now manages Gordon & Smith Surfboards and Skateboards with her brother. “You get the best surfers out there on the board. They’ll give you feedback. . . He was an incredible surfer as well,” she said of her father, who in his latter years suffered from Parkinson’s disease. . . Before he’d ask you anything else, he’d say, ‘Did you surf today?’”
Gordon will be missed, but all the work he did to help the business and creative side of skateboarding and surfing and the brand he created will never be forgotten.
We know this is late, but now that the backwash has settled and all the details have been leaked on Kelly Slater’s epically perfect Lemoore, California wave pool (thanks, Swellnet and Reddit) the big question becomes: would you surf in Kelly’s foamy, brown water?
We’d definitely stop each time we made a run up I-5 and get thrown over the falls a couple times even if it was in a pond filled with industrial farming run off because the wave is just that beautiful.
Update at 10:48 AM February 10, 2016: Due to a swell that did not materialize the Eddie has been called OFF by organizers. Whoops! 
