[ FLOATING ]

This appeared in Surfing World a few years ago, 2002 I think, after Billabong went public. Quite an idealistic little rant. Not sure how many friends it made me, but some of it still rings true today, I think.

FLOATING

Okay, so "float" is not just what you do to get over a section or ride a close-out any more. It's also what you do when you list your surf company on the stock exchange and generate enough wealth to knock off the national debt. But as surf labels go public and bankers and beancounters grab their share of the great wave of surfwear riches, what does it mean for surfing's future?

By Tim Baker

So, here's a topic you probably won't read about anywhere else. What does the public float of the big surf companies mean to surfing, to the average surfer? Anything? Nothing? Who cares?

And why won't you read about it anywhere else? Because, in the main, the surf media can't afford to offend the big boys. Surf mags generally are deafening in their silence on any matters relating to the conduct or social responsibilities of the major companies. The fact that Quiksilver went public in the US years ago, that Billabong floated on the Australian Stock Exchange with such spectacular success last year, and that Rip Curl looks set to in the near future, all this has attracted less analysis or discussion than you might expect from a surfing media that finds space to examine every skerrick of surf star trivia.

The big buzz in corporate circles these days is the so-called "Triple Bottomline." Companies who want to be seen as good corporate citizens have to consider the social, environmental, as well as economic effects of what they do. Newspapers produce weighty reports on the performance of the top corporations according to the triple bottom line, and social and environmental responsibility is becoming increasingly important to discerning investors looking for stock that makes ethical as well as economic sense.

As the major surfwear companies go public and take their place on the stock exchange listings alongside every other major, mainstream corporation, isn't it reasonable that they might be submitted to the same scrutiny? Surely, these issues are worthy of our consideration and discussion. Surfing is our thing, we all do it, share in a common joy and thrill and, for many, a whole lifestyle. We have all contributed in one way or another to the growth of the big surf companies - we have tolerated their contests and promo trips at our surf breaks, we have embraced their heroes, swallowed their marketing campaigns, believed that, yes, only a surfer knows the feeling, walked around in t-shirts proudly promoting their logos and slogans, handed over our hard-earned to feed their coffers. And we are all a part of the great surfing lifestyle that the mainstream masses now seem to find so alluring that they are prepared to pay $80 for a t-shirt or a pair of boardshorts to catch the vaguest whiff of the freedom and adventure the surfing dream is based upon.

Everywhere I go, long-time surfers seem to express a similar air of sadness or regret about the way surfing's heading. It's lost its innocence and magic, its sense of adventure, its purity, they say. It's become a scene, a business like any other, where the bottom line prevails. Groms grow up chasing the riches, the sponsor's loot and trophies and the lure of fat contracts, rather than the simple thrill of the ride. Team riders are picked up young, promoted for all they're worth, then dropped as soon as their use by date approches. Companies scratch and fight for the biggest piece of the pie and magazines become mere extensions of their advertisers' marketing campaigns, hyping the same highly paid surf stars and providing fluff-filled buyer's guides for every conceivable surf consumer good.

I am just old enough to remember some of the youthful, anti-establishment idealism of the hippied-out early '70s, when surfers believed they just might be able to help change the world. Like the rock and roll pioneers, surfers were part of a global youth revolution that swept aside the austerity and conservatism of the post-war era and the false God of materialism and lifetime servitude working in some mind numbing job just to pay off a mortgage and retire - too old and broken in spirit and body to do much with your twilight years. We weren't going to become our parents. Surfers aspired to something more, to follow their bliss, for life to be a grand adventure, to suck the marrow from every day, to sniff the wind and tune into the natural elements that would lead us to the planet's greatest natural energy centres and that magical blossoming of nature's glory in the form of perfect waves.

The surf industry was born on the back of a generation of larger than life characters who were prepared to risk everything in the pursuit of their youthful, idealistic dreams. The first generation of pro surfers, guys like Rabbit, MR, Simon, dared to dream that a living could be made doing what you love. And before them, generations of quiet, unsung pioneers pursued the surfing dream with no thought of any material reward but the meagre existence possible from building boards. Know what Simon Anderson, inventor of the thruster and original power surfer, has made out of surfing? The biggest contract he ever had from any one sponsor was $10,000, and he only ever saw half of it, got stiffed for the other half. And he's still slogging it out in the shaping bay. Now, name me another surfer who has contributed as much to our enjoyment of wave riding?

Yet the modern pro surfers who have inherited the legacy of this daring and frontier forging spirit seem to have turned the dream into just another work-a-day drudgery, bored with their ever-expanding wealth and global travel and earnest heat-by-heat toil. Surfing, like rock and roll, never really managed to change the world - the world changed it, packaging, marketing and selling off that rebel spirit and absorbing it back into the mainstream as just another consumer line. Now Mick Jagger is knighted and Ossie Osbourne performs for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, and surf companies are on the financial report on the evening news alongside BHP and Newscorp and on the cover of the Bulletin magazine and dominating BRW's rich list.

Now, let me state categorically, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the generation of wealth in itself. Hell, all that money may as well end up in old surfers' hands instead of insurance company swindlers or foreign exchange traders. If a whole lot of people can make a livelihood out of surfing, how can that be such a bad thing? The surfing industry has been remarkably resistant to outside forces up until now. By and large, it is in the hands of long time surfers who had the vision and energy to found their empires back in the late '60s and early '70s and steer their once humble cottage businesses to positions of global prominence. Did you catch Bussiness Review Weekly's top 200 list of the richest people in Australia? Nine of them are from the surfing industry. Pretty amazing - nearly 5% of the wealthiest people in the country have made their fortunes from surfing related businesses. That could potentially make surfing quite an economic force for good - for the environment, for the protection of surf spots, the defence of clean oceans, the support of disadvantaged youth, the whole political and social direction of the country. We have clout. And literally thousands of surfers who might otherwise have found it difficult to secure gainful employment in the mainstream job market now have viable careers doing something close to their hearts. All great stuff.

Except now the insurance companies and For-ex traders snap up as much surf company stock as they can get their hands and so people with no interest in surfing, with no concern for its ongoing health and the good of the wider surfing community, have an increasing say on how the surf businesses are run.

When a company goes public, what does that mean for any kind of surfing-based philosophy that may have once guided these businesses? For example, would Billabong as a public company have stood by Mark Occhilupo during his down times? As a private company, Billabong boss Gordon Merchant was able to exercise his personal judgement and continue to support Occy while he took the time out he needed to re-group after a spectacular rise and fall as a teenage surf star. And so we were all able to marvel at his miraculous resurrection and feel good about the resilience of the human spirit, the healing powers of the ocean and the humanity of a surf industry that was prepared to treat its surf stars decently and compassionately. As a public company, with shareholders and stock prices to consider and a board of directors that includes only one surfer, would they have been so patient? Or would the bottom line have won out, as the accountants queried why they continued to pay an overweight, washed up ex-surf star who hadn't even been in the water for the best part of a year?

Ever study that George Orwell book "Animal Farm" at school? Based on the Russian Revolution, it used the simple metaphor of a farm full of animals overthrowing the cruel farmer to illustrate a powerful lesson. The animals were sick of being exploited, of working for the man, and so took matters into their own hands. As the canniest of the animals, the pigs led the revolution, only to turn into exploiters of the rest of the animal world themselves. Power corrupts, was Orwell's simple message. What's the point? It seems to me surfers managed to stage their own mini-revolution back in the late '60s and early '70s. Sick and tired of working for the man and craving a better deal in life, they forged their own businesses and livelihoods that allowed keen surfers to make a living while staying close to the lifestyle they loved. But as business grew, those pioneering surf companies ran the risk of turning into the very things they set out to topple.

A lot of older surfers decry the commercialism of surfing, the loss of soul in the big buck modern era of professionalism and mainstream marketing of the great surfing dream. But I fear we may not have seen anything yet. We might look back one day at this point in history as a time of relative innocence and purity, compared to what's coming. When companies go public they have one guiding motivation underpinning all their operations - to increase their share price. Been following all the corporate collapses in the US? Man, those cats will do anything to get the share price to move up. And dodgy accountants will happily assist them to cook the books. If you think surfing has sold out already, hang on. The worst may be yet to come. Sure, the surfwear business is going through a boom now, and it may well continue, but worldwide economic trends suggest that a plateau, if not a downturn, at some point is inevitable. What happens then? How do you keep the share price going ever upwards if people have got less money and aren't inclined to splash out $80 on a pair of boardshorts or a t-shirt? When big companies bring in the hot shot execs to tidy up the balance sheet in preparation for a public float, or to get that share price nudging up, they usually look for one very simple thing. How to cut costs. Banks will close branches. Car companies will down-size, shut plants or go offshore where labor is cheaper. The surfwear labels are already doing it. Maybe it's inevitable. By going public, you submit your business to an endless need for ever-increasing growth and expansion - selling more to bigger markets. It is not enough to merely sail along making a healthy profit - you are locked into an insatiable appetite for more, more, more - more profits, bigger market share, new markets, new products, greater revenue and lower costs. Watch the surf labels product lines and operations expand - watches, sunnies, shoes, bags, women's wear, socks, undies, travel agencies, TV production, anything that will turn a buck.

Until now, the surf companies' senior management have been able to indulge their personal views on what might be considered "good for surfing" - sponsoring huge teams of riders, from groms all the way through to legends, generous promotional budgets and a vast array of contests at all levels. From a hard-nosed business perspective, sponsoring a bunch of junior contests might not make economic sense, but someone at the surf companies believes the Australian junior series is a good thing for the groms of Australia - providing a competitive platform from which to launch their careers, drilling them in competition and travel before they hit the rigours of the WQS. Every aspiring international surf star marvels at the competitive blooding our groms receive here in Oz. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. How long would it last in tough economic times when the accountants are called in to clean up the bottom line?

How long until the teams are pruned down to a mere handful of elite surf stars who earn vast fortunes while the lower rungs on the ladder go without? We are witnessing a major shift in the direction of the big surf labels as they metamorphis into public companies. Serious business players are climbing on board, banks and insurance companies and financial institutions and mining interests are snapping up shareholdings in surf labels in the hope of snaring a slice of the kind of astronomic riches generated by the Billabong float. Ex-Qantas chairmen Gary Pemberton and James Strong have joined the boards of Billabong and Rip Curl respectively. "You've got to have a grey hair on board to get the big end of town," one industry insider confided to me recently. The surf companies may be producing the kind of profits that are the envy of an increasingly competitive business world, but it seems the bankers and accountants and major investors still don't quite trust a bunch of drug smoking surfies to oversee their own empires, and a few respectable suits have to be recruited to bring credibility to their act. And as bottom lines are cleaned up to keep the accountants happy we are witnessing a few interesting trends. Surfboards from China turn up in major surf shops. Operations are moved offshore. Local machinists who've toiled loyally for 20 years are laid off as the inalienable laws of globalisation dictate that third world labor forces make better economic sense. "Made by surfers for surfers," quietly disappears as a guiding ethos. "Only a shareholder knows the feeling," becomes the catchcry.

Large parts of the surf industry are currently up in arms about the emergence of surfboards from China and Thailand and Slovakia on the market. But should anyone really be surprised? Everything else in surf shops these days is made in Thailand, or China or Vietnam or Taiwan - boardshorts, t-shirts, wetsuits, backpacks, sandals, hats, towels. Have a look at the labels. Why is it a shock when surfboards succumb to the same economic forces as every other surf product line? In the US, there is widespread panic in the surf industry because major retail chain Abercrombie and Finch are preparing to open 800 specialty surf retail outlets across the country in the most well-financed, concerted plunge into the surf market by any mainstream company. Nike has bought out Hurley. Chinese surfboards turn up in Costco. And the surf industry is shocked and outraged by these cynical efforts to exploit the surf consumer.

But they have brought it on themselves. As they grew their markets - taking the allure of the surfing dream to an increasingly mainstream audience, did they imagine that those mainstream retailers whose business they were taking would not want to strike back and fight for market share? The surf fashion industry made a decision long ago that it was not content merely selling to surfers. As surf fashion has captured the imagination of general consumers, active surfers have found themselves a minority within their own market. Walk into a surf shop or watch a surfing TV show or even pick up some alleged surfing magazines and its hard to escape the feeling that all this hype, loud music and logo based marketing is aimed at someone other than yourself - the keen, active surfer. We have become strangers in our own territory.

There are now the early signs of a "core backlash" afoot. Surf retailers are noting a shift back to hardware. Surfboards, once mere decoration in window displays of the surf fashiion boutiques, are once again taking pride of place as surf shops try to distinguish themselves as serious, core outlets. Surfers have always wanted to distinguish themselves from the herd. That is why we developed our own fashion, language, social eccentricities that the rest of society seems to have found so intriguing. The trouble is, once it was discovered there was a fortune to be made packaging this stuff for mainstream consumption, the freedom loving surfer has found him or herself surrounded by the herd, indistinguishable from the rest of society. Top surfers once dressed eccentrically and colourfully, expressing that spirit of freedom and rebellion in op shop fashion statements and bohemian clothing items picked up in their global wanderings. The top surfers now wear their contrived uniforms of sponsors' clothes which these days looks increasingly like golf fashion or what a bankteller might wear to a weekend barbecue. Surfers will inevitably seek to distinguish themselves from the herd anew, rejecting mainstream attempts to package so-called surf fashion. Surfing has become too cool for its own good and in the inevitable cycle of the fashion wheel, once too many people think something is cool, it ceases to be cool and the true individuals will seek to distinguish and marginalise themselves once again.

Notice how all the surf logos and artwork went all kind of techy and computer generated a while ago as art directors got their hands on the latest graphics software? Now, all of a sudden, it's all rough hand-drawn scrawls as the major labels try hard not to look like the massive corporations that they are. Shit, the kids want to be individuals again, scrawling crazy artwork all over the bottom of their boards. And our designers have completely run out of ideas for any cool new boardshort prints that the kids will want to wear. What do we do it? Brilliant - give them blank board shorts and spray cans and charge them good money to design their own boardshorts. Get them to pay to customise their own jeans. The ingenuity of the marketeers is not to be under-estimated but in the endless quest for what's new and hip they risk drifting further and further from any kind of core surf aesthetic.

Tag a trunk? That's got more to do with urban graffiti artists than surfers. And pity the poor surf stars who have to justify their fat contracts by touring the nation's surf shops convincing the kids that spray painting your boardies is the cool thing to do, and demonstrating how to become a true surf individual with the right combination of skulls and crosses and daggers daubed over your trunks, which until fairly recently were known as boardshorts or boardies in this country.

Don't we, the surfing community, have a right to at least consider and discuss how these changes effect us all? For better or worse, the surf companies are a part of our surfing landscape and how they evolve is likely to impact on our surfing lives in some ways down the track. If you've gotten in on the floats early, great. Stoked. It's unreal that a lot of long time, loyal employees can now share in the riches they have helped these companies generate. And, god knows, it's taken a lot of hard work and dedication and vision to guide these entities to their current positions of world domination and blue ribbon investment status. Now, surely, they can afford the luxury of good deeds. And by demonstrating that they have the greater good of the surfing community at heart, they can earn the loyalty of the core surf market and so ensure their continued prosperity.

For starters, wouldn't it be nice to see every sponsored team rider that's ever been on their books get a little share allocation, according to their length of service and career achievements, in recognition of the bricks they laid in their sponsor's empires? Wouldn't it be nice to see at least a tiny percentage of the loot make its way to worthy causes that have the broad support of the surfing community - Surfrider Foundation or Surf-Aid - to uphold surfing ideals we all value, give something back to the coastline and epic surf breaks and remote destinations that have fuelled the great surfing dream the punters buy in droves? Wouldn't it be great if the surf companies used some of their economic muscle to lobby governments on matters of coastal development and beach pollution?

What I'd really like to see is a few of the captains of industry invest some of their expanding riches into buying up large tracts of unspoilt beachfront real estate and declaring them surfing reserves, to be protected for future generations to enjoy, and stem the tide of insensitive coastal development currently sweeping the nation and threatening many of our most beloved wildneress escapes. Got a tax problem? Don't worry. Recent legislation means if you own land and place covenants on it to protect it from future development, you can then claim the loss in the commercial value of the land as a tax deduction. Perfect. Reduce your tax bill and make yourself a hero of the surfing community at the same time. No one is going to begrudge the increasing riches of the surf industry elite if they can demonstrate that they have the best interests of the wider surfing community, the environment and our surfing way of life at heart. These surf sanctuaries are like pressure valves that allow many of us to maintain sanity and survive the urban ratrace - just by knowing that we have the option of a quick soul cleansing run down the coast, or an affordable family holiday in a beachside camping ground. As a tide of development threatens once remote coastlines, our pressure valve is lost, and what then? The madness of a California-style development strip right round the country, with no escape to be found anywhere? Beachfront property goes up in value and no young people can even afford to live close to the beach any more, and camping grounds turn into upmarket holiday resorts so that the old family holiday is even out of reach. Surf industry heavyweights have been among the first to jump in on exclusive beachfront developments springing up round the coast, aspiring to some rarified, private beach enclave - as if they might just shut the rest of the world out and enjoy their riches in peace without being subjected to any of the riff-raff or social problems of the outside world. Why not work to make the world a better place, rather than having to build bigger walls to keep the rest of the world out?

Surely, the riches of the great surf fashion boom could achieve more than just the sky rocketing wealth of a few individuals. Is it too much to wish that it might actually be a force for the greater good of the surfing community and the environment we all depend on? Afterall, it has all stemmed from the magnetic beauty of surfing and at least some of it should find its way back to defending that original source of wealth.

So, I'm an idealist and in this "money talks, bullshit walks," world we seem to have created for ourselves, this might all seem like pie in the sky nonsense, the rantings of a sentimental foolish dreamer. But I tell you what, I know this much. At the end of the day, when you draw your final breaths, I reckon what will really matter to you is the legacy you leave behind, the difference you made, how people will remember your life and the mark you made on the planet. What do you want that mark to be? A while back, I attended the wake for Billy Rachinger, the original beach hire guy at Greenmount, who evolved as simple and pure a surfing life as anyone. All the hot local surfers in Coolangatta got their start on Billy's hire boards back in the '60s. He never had two bob to rub together but he'd happily share whatever he had. If anyone was down on their luck, they could find a smile, a sympathetic ear and a couch for the night at Billy's place. He was as fit an old bloke as you could ever hope to see from a lifetime spent in and around the ocean. But his old place across the road from the beach got sold and pulled down to make way for another block of high rise units and Billy had to move. He was never going to last long after that. Hundreds of people attended his wake - forming a huge circle on boards out in the water off his beloved Greenmount, and hundreds more lining the point, as his sons scattered his ashes in the blue Pacific. A huge spontaneous roar went up as hundreds of surfers splashed the water and cheered, and the crowd on the point joined in. A wave of goose pimples swept through every person there as we all came together as one to help Billy on his passage to the next life. That is the measure of a life well lived. We are all passengers on spaceship earth, and these are strange, uncertain times. The only sane response is to live well and dream large, for the common good, unless you want to try and live closeted in your own high security fortress.

There is nothing wrong with the creation of wealth, but it is not what's going to make your life's journey worthwhile when you look back on it.

I was talking to Johnny Charlton the other day, the Gold Coast surf reporter and as souful a lifetime surfer as you could hope to meet, and he told me about a conversation he'd had with Bob McTavish recently. "What happened, Bob?" JC asked. "We turned on, tuned in and dropped out back in the '60s. And here we are still working our arses off."

Bob thought about this and answered, "We took our retirement from the ages of 18 through to 40, so now we have to work. And I reckon we got it the right way round. See all those guys at the surf auctions paying thousands of dollars for classic boards to hang on their walls. They're trying to buy back the last 30 years. And you know what? You can't buy it back."