Marchone Eyewear, Inc. (manufacturers nearly every fashion eyewear brand you can think of: Calvin Klein, Diane Von Furstenberg, Fendi, Jil Sander, etc. . . . ) today announced that they have purchased Dragon Alliance for an undisclosed amount.
Will Howard, founder and CEO of Dragon, started the brand in 1993 from his garage in Capo Beach and has seen it grow into an internationally recognized brand. “We are very excited about becoming part of the Marchon family,” said Howard. “With their support and shared vision for Dragon, we will become an even stronger company, while remaining true to our heritage.”
Seems to be the only way to make it in the eyewear business these days. . . For the official word follow the jump. [click to continue…]
Upon closing, Wolverine Worldwide will acquire Collective Brands’ Performance + Lifestyle Group (PLG), which will continue to operate out of Lexington, MA. PLG had revenue of more than $1 billion in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2012. . . Payless will be acquired by Blum Capital and Golden Gate and will continue to be headquartered in Topeka, KS and CLI in Englewood, CO. Payless and CLI had combined revenue of approximately $2.4 billion in the fiscal year ended January 31, 2012, operating over 4,300 Payless retail stores globally at year end.
Guess this means Airwalk, Vision Streetwear, and Sims, get to stay in the Payless family only now they’ll be owned by Blum and Golden Gate Capital. As one of our more astute commenters pointed out to us, this sounds like a great opportunity for Jamie Salter to jump back in and grab a couple more brands . . . again.
The Fred Water Legends Bowl Contest will have an ordered jam session format in the Shark Bowl. It is a black backyard style amoeba pool with a four-and-a-half foot deep shallow end, six foot deep pockets and a nine-and-a-half foot deep end. It’ll be amazing to see the legends dominate the bowl’s death boxes, shallow-end stairs and Tedderstone pool coping. . . All of the day’s events give skateboarders, sponsors and the community a chance to have fun while giving back to raise funds for A.skate. The A.skate Foundation is a non-profit that allows kids with autism to be a part of the social world through skateboarding. They hold clinics for kids with autism at no cost to the families, give grants to kids with autism for skateboard gear, as well as promote awareness and education.
For all the details and a full list of all the bowl skaters who will be ripping the coping out of Shark Bowl click the link. [click to continue…]
This is a view none of us would ever see if it weren’t for the Contour helmet camera Travis Rice has strapped to his head during his first run at the Super Natural at Baldface. Nothing else to say really.
After accidentally catching a thresher shark by the tail and having it drown while trying to bring it in to unhook it, two men in New Zealand decided to tow the shark back out to sea. On the way out one of guys decided to surf the shark while it was being towed behind the boat the other shot video and posted it on Facebook, according to a story in the Otago Daily Times. That’s when everyone got upset.
Mark Collins said he regretted his decision to make a video of his friend Eddie Bithell surfing on a dead thresher shark in the Western Bay of Plenty but said the story had been misrepresented. . . Mr Wright said they had taken the dead shark to shore and left it overnight before taking to back out to sea the next day. . . “The shark had been dead for around 30 hours. It was on a separate trip, we were taking the shark back out to feed it into the food chain,” he said.
Unfortunately, the video has been removed so none of us will ever get the chance to see it.
Angry, golf cart driving, skateboard grabbing, kid choking, smart ass Baltimore Police officer (and Internet Celebrity) Salvatore Rivieri is thankfully still fired even though the Baltimore Police Union thinks he is such an amazing officer that they are fighting his removal from the police force all the way to Maryland’s Court of Appeals (and maybe the Supreme Court), according to a story in the Baltimore Sun.
Maryland’s second highest court on Friday upheld the firing of a Baltimore police officer who was caught on video berating and pushing a 14-year-old skateboarder at the Inner Harbor in 2007. . . The Court of Special Appeals ruled that Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld III had the authority to terminate the 19-year veteran officer, Salvatore Rivieri, despite a recommendation from an administrative hearing board that he be suspended for six days and lose six days of leave.
For those following along this is the second time a high court has upheld Rivieri’s firing. The last time was in March of 2011. To anyone who watches this video (even five years later) it is almost laughable that Rivieri ever had a badge in the first place. He is a disgrace to anyone who wears a badge and the the Baltimore Police Union should be ashamed that it spent the last five years in court trying to keep him on the force.
Bob Smith, an orthodontist who just couldn’t stand goggles that fogged and went on to revolutionize the action eyewear industry with his double lens Smith goggles, died of complications from heart surgery on April 18, 2012 at his home in La Quinta, California, according to an obituary in the Washington Post. He was 78.
Using dental tools, foam and glue, Dr. Smith began building his first prototypes on his kitchen table. He traded his new goggles for lift tickets to ski mountains in Idaho or sold them to ski patrollers, who provided him with feedback to tweak his designs. . . As demand for his goggles spread, Dr. Smith formed his own company in Ketchum, Idaho. By the late 1970s, the company was selling 200,000 goggles a year. The firm also tinkered with goggles that included electrically heated lenses and small fans to cool the face.
Brands like Spy, Dragon, and Oakley would not exist without Dr. Smith’s game-changing product design and we will forever be grateful for the way Smith goggles allowed us to love riding on snowy days. Thanks, Bob. Our thoughts are with Smith’s family, friends, and everyone who has ever worn a pair of his goggles on a socked in white out day.
Santa Cruz, California became the fourth surfing reserve in the world in February 2011, but on April 28, 2012 the city’s Parks Department held a celebration of the reserve, according to a story in the Mercury News.
The title was bestowed upon the small town of Santa Cruz, whose cultural identity is largely wrapped around surfing, by the nonprofit Save the Waves Coalition. . . “It’s not only about protecting these good waves,” said five-time Mavericks surfer Ryan Seelbach, who is also a board member of Save the Waves. “It’s more about galvanizing the community to respect the area, ensure beach access and say ‘no’ to development.”
The surfing reserve extends seven miles along the Santa Cruz coast from Natural Bridges State beach to Opal Cliffs. Nice.
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.
Marchone Eyewear, Inc. (manufacturers nearly every fashion eyewear brand you can think of: Calvin Klein, Diane Von Furstenberg, Fendi, Jil Sander, etc. . . . ) today announced that they have purchased Dragon Alliance for an undisclosed amount.
