It’s a classic California skateboard success story: kid from Brighton, England moves to San Diego at 18 and freestyles his way into the position of skateboard industry titan. It’s the Don Brown true skateboarding story as told by Red Bull in their Red Bulletin.
“I was living in the moment,” he recalls. “I remember going to a contest in Huntington Beach one day, looking in my wallet and realising I only had a dollar to my name.” So, Brown took a warehouse job with Vision Skateboarding. After winning three consecutive amateur contests, Vision became his sponsor, eventually giving him what no other English skater before him had managed – a professional board model named after him.
That was only the beginning. In the early 90s Don joined Pierre Senizergues at Etnies and the skateboard footwear world was never the same again. Then again, neither was any industry event that Don attended, but we’ll keep those stories to ourselves.
Quiksilverreview their Q1 financials today, March 11, 2009 in a conference call that will be broadcast live over the Internet at 1:30 Pacific Time. The broadcast will be hosted at www.quiksilverinc.com and at www.viavid.net.
This maybe one of those calls we won’t want to miss.
We have to admit that when it comes to ASP WCT events we’re pretty bad fans. After Kelly Slater’sSlatercraft loss to Julian Wilson in round three of the Quiksilver Pro our interest in the entire event began to seriously wane. Sure, we pulled for the Hobgoods through the quarter finals, and cheered for Taj and Mick in the semis, but when it came down to the finals, honestly, we turned off the computer and just went surfing. And it was our loss.
According to a Form 8-K filing today with the SEC, Quiksilver’s big Euro lender paying has been pushed off until June 30, 2009.
On March 9, 2009, a French subsidiary of the Company, Pilot S.A.S. (“Pilot”), entered into an amendment to its € 55,000,000 Line of Credit Agreement (the “LC Agreement”) with Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Credit Lyonnais (collectively, the “Banks”) pursuant to which the Banks extended the LC Agreement from March 14, 2009 to June 30, 2009. This amendment will become effective March 13, 2009, subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions. The Company intends to conclude either a strategic or refinancing transaction within the period covered by this extension, in which case, the indebtedness subject to the LC Agreement would either be refinanced or repaid.
Interestingly, the lender has increased the interest on the loan to EURIBOR plus 2.8% from EURIBOR plus 1.6 and tacks on a .5% administration fee and “requires a mandatory prepayment of the LC Agreement upon the occurrence of certain events (e.g., sale of the Company’s Quiksilver, Roxy or DC Shoes trademarks or businesses, termination of the Company’s French tax consolidation, or the default under or cancellation of certain other debt arrangements).”
What does this all mean? Well, it looks like the lenders want to get paid straight away if Quiksilver decided to sell something. Maybe tomorrow’s conference call will help sort things out.
When Joel Parkinson and Mick Fanning face off in the semi-finals of the Quiksilver Pro later today it will be a battle between to Coolangatta Kids, according to a story on Goldcoast.com.au.
Me and Joel have been great friends since we were little kids and it is going to be a tough heat,” said Fanning. “We always push each other. Sometimes it is pretty, sometimes it is ugly. “I am lucky that I have got my best friends on tour but it is unlucky that we are going for the same thing.”
But they’re not alone. Taj Burrow and Adriano de Souza are also battling for the finals. Either way, it’s going to be a great day to sit in front of the computer and watch surfers fight some pretty ugly waves on the Goldie.
On Thursday March 12, The Copenhagen Skatepark will hold a fundraiser to help support Project Skateistan the organization that we mentioned back in June of 2008 that is spreading peace in Afghanistan through skateboarding.
Worldfamous Trentemöller and many more music acts are supporting the project by playing for free on this evening. A lot of very talented artists among them Olafsur Eliasson has donated art for our beneficiary art auction. Famous chefs from Gasthaus4Experiment in Germany are coming to cook extraordinary food, skaters are coming from all over Europe to participate in our skatecompetition, where Eastpack has already donated 4 x 1000€ for price money that will go directly to Skateistan!
What Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which has now generated $1 billion in sales across the course of the series, added was an extraordinary level of realism to the over-the-top antics that resonated with many players who were turned off by the overly competitive nature of the previous games. By making it about technique over style, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater expanded its audience to far more players than any other game of its type before.
Thanks Gamasutra, we won’t have to buy the book. Click the link for the rest of the five page story.
[Update 2:20 PM: According to a comment from Bill Loguidice the Tony Hawk Pro Skater history isn’t even in the book, it’s a bonus chapter run exclusively on Gamasutra.com Sorry for the mix up, Bill.]
More than results for the January quarter, “What matters much more than this is whether or not the company is able to restructure its uncommitted debt, and we would expect to get an update on this issue,” analyst Mitch Kummetz of Robert W. Baird & Co. said in a note to clients this week. . . . Kummetz and other company watchers have been eagerly awaiting word on Quiksilver’s efforts to rework its near-term debt.
All we keep thinking as we contemplate Quik’s upcoming $71 million debt payment to a European lender is: Beware the ides of March.
Aaron Lieber, the talented, young filmmaker behind the film The Pursuit is working on a new series of videos on Brett Simpson titled Simply Simpo. This is episode one.
