Tearing Down The Walls

josh hunter

• June 01 2007
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It’s 1982, Helsinki’s Vantaa International Airport. A crowded flight from LAX has just liberated its passengers from the confines of the protracted trans-Atlantic passage, and a Finnish customs officer is taking a second glance up from behind the glass of his podium. Puzzled, he goes back to the documents in front of him. “Kuinka vanha sinå olet?” he queries the passenger in front of him curiously. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” replies the young man.

“Who are you traveling with?” asks the officer.

“I’m alone,” responds the shy youngster.

Half-joking, the officer continues without concealing his smirk, “Is this trip for business or pleasure?”

“Business,” answers Pete Fox.

At fifteen, Pete Fox didn’t have a paper route. While most of his peers were busing tables or bagging groceries, he was busy flying to Finland to develop motocross pants, designing ad campaigns, and negotiating athlete contracts for his family’s business, Fox Racing. In fact, a few weeks after his trip to Finland, Pete signed a deal with a promising eighteen-year-old motocross rider named Ricky Johnson. Two years later Johnson won his first of seven American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) Supercross Championships. In 1999, Johnson was inducted into the Motocross Hall Of Fame.

You could say Pete was mature for his age.

Flash-forward 25 years to the present and Pete Fox is the creative director at his family’s business. He works alongside his brothers Greg and John, and sister Anna, but the business is much different than it was when he was growing up.

The off-road motorcycle parts catalog their father, Geoff Fox, launched in ’73 evolved quickly. In February 1974, he opened a mail-order company called Moto-X Fox, and within a few years sponsored a strong team of riders. Outfitting the Moto-X Fox team in brightly colored yellow, orange, and red outfits created consumer demand for the apparel and from there the business took off. “That {original mail-order business} was just the spark that got us into apparel,” explains Pete.

Since then the brand has grown from a simple mail-order business with less than a dozen employees into what it says is one of the top five privately held action-sports brands in existence. Fox now employs more than 600 people worldwide. The company’s 115,000-square-foot headquarters in Morgan Hill, California is a motocross monument in itself, complete with memorabilia stretching back more than 30 years. Fox also operates a 100,000-square-foot distribution center in nearby Gilroy, California; has a flagship retail store in a neighboring Santa Clara shopping mall; and runs three outlet stores. In order to bridge the physical gap between its NorCal offices and the heart of the action-sports industry, Fox also occupies two offices in Newport Beach, California, and is quickly outgrowing them. Internationally, the brand has offices in Hong Kong and Europe. According to TransWorld Motocross magazine’s 2006 readers’ poll, Fox is the best-selling brand of motocross pants, jerseys, gloves, and helmets.

It’s big, get the picture?

Branching Out

While racewear still makes up the bulk of the brand’s sales, another segment of the business has been gaining momentum for nearly a decade. In 1997 Fox launched a sportswear program to supplement the motocross division hoping to distribute the line in traditionally surf-driven retail channels. “The line—small enough that both men’s and juniors’ could both fit in one garment bag—consisted of ten T-shirts, eight Flexfit hats, a few mock-jerseys, and some basic polos,” remembers National Sales Manager James “Jimmy O” Onstott, who at the time had just started repping the line in Orange County, California.

Onstott refers to his early memories of rolling into Southern California surf shops with Fox apparel as character builders. “We had been making performance apparel for 25 years, but we were new to lifestyle clothing,” he remembers. “There was a steep learning curve during the early years. Pioneering the line was the biggest challenge of my life.”

But even early on, Onstott was able to leverage his strong retail relationships to get the wholesale sportswear business off the ground. “In SoCal there were guys who already knew what Fox was all about,” explains Onstott. “Guys like Milo Meyers at Hangar 94, Steve Wright at The Outhouse in San Diego, and Mark Bayerle at Beyond Image in Texas and Arizona were all into motocross as a lifestyle and dug what it was all about. Even though all they carried was surf, skate, and snow brands, they were going to Supercross events and riding their bikes on the weekends.”

The majority of the opposition comes from surf retailers who aren’t familiar with motocross and don’t see the category as relevant to their customers. Fox looks at the action-sports industry as a collective movement, not incongruent sports. “We feel like the lines in action sports are blurring,” says Pete Fox. “It wasn’t a plan of ours to ever branch out, but the walls started getting knocked down between sports. We were already involved in all of them, and we realized that one customer had all these different hobbies and passions. We just branched out naturally.” It would appear that some retailers are beginning to see the industry in a similar light. In 2006 Fox opened 125 ’core accounts and expects 100 more to open in ’07. So how did a motocross brand gain interest in the surf industry?

Surf Births Sportswear

Even in the earliest sportswear lines, Pete Fox says his initial design cues came from living and surfing in San Diego in the early 90s. “Somehow I talked my dad into letting me move down to San Diego, go to an advertising school, and work out of my apartment,” remembers Fox. “In San Diego during the early 90s I was seeing surf culture firsthand. There were a lot of things happening with the surf industry and brands that really inspired me. It was right when Volcom first started taking off. Seeing that whole entrepreneurial, California-youth lifestyle and energy, I got super inspired.”

Pete says the two years he spent in San Diego ended up playing a major role in Fox’s current identity. “Just having that love of surfing and being around it made a big difference to the brand,” he says. “That’s when I started thinking about trying to make lifestyle clothing; back then all the surf guys were making crazy stuff, but nobody in moto was thinking about that young, cool lifestyle. You’d go to Supercross events and none of the fans were wearing moto brands. All the kids had on Quiksilver and Billabong because those guys were making that type of product in a big way.”

Youth Gone Wild

It was around the same time in the early 90s that Geoff Fox began to back away from the business and hand over more of the responsibility to his children. He kept a close eye on the company’s books, but handed over a lot of sales responsibilities to his oldest son, Greg. Greg had just returned from a two-year stint at UC Santa Barbara, where he admits to doing more surfing than studying. “My dorm room was right there on Campus Point, and that was where I was every day,” Greg says. “So eventually my schoolwork just went down the toilet, and I came back to the business. I naturally progressed into the sales side of the business. I was purchasing the products, dealing with vendors, and managing inventory and international sales.”

With Greg handling his new role and Pete steering the brand’s creative direction, Fox had a much younger perspective on the market than any of its competition. The influence surfing had on the brothers started to appear in several segments of the business, including product design, and as a result, Fox began reaching a younger demographic than had ever been targeted by a motocross brand.

“One of the first things that was affected was our advertising direction,” says Greg. “We went away from product-oriented ads to two page spreads of some bitchin’ jump on some bitchin’ track.”

At the time, motocross brands were run by middle-aged Midwesterners. No one in the industry saw what was coming. When Fox visited its first motocross trade show, it didn’t exactly fit in. “The theme for the booth was “Youth Gone Wild”—a Skid Row song!” recalls Pete. “We had the booth wrapped in barbed wire with neon color everywhere, and zebra prints. People would walk by completely freaked out.”

Greg says he and his brothers had walked the aisles of ASR shows in Long Beach, California, and that the shows made an impression. Coincidentally, ASR recently announced the creation of a moto section on the show floor for its September 2007 show. The Fox brothers say it’s something that substantiates their ideology that action sports are beginning to operate as a unified front.

Brand Ambassador

The youngest brother in any family plays an important role, and John “Scrap” Fox is no exception. To say he’s played an integral part in the development of the business would be an understatement.

While studying in Hawai‘i, John stumbled on to something while watching a local TV show that would inevitably change the direction of his family’s business. “I was watching H3O one night in my dorm and they had Sunny Garcia on the show riding moto,” remembers John. “So I decided we needed to get a hold of this guy and send him some gear. I remember going over to his house and being so nervous. Here I am, this little haole kid, there are all kinds of locals hanging on his porch, and I knock on the door and his cousin answers and is like, ‘Sup, brah?’ But we met and went surfing and went riding up on Kahuku Motocross Track a couple of days later. It was a rad experience. Kalani {Robb} was up there riding with Brock Little, and those guys were super psyched on Fox.”

Realizing the crossover appeal, John convinced his brothers to send the motocross team over to Hawai‘i for vacation at the end of the MX season. “We thought it’d be rad to take our whole motocross team to Hawai‘i to ride and surf,” explains John. “For Sunny {Garcia}, bringing {Jeremy} McGrath to Hawai‘i was like a dream. Sunny had everything dialed for us, from surfboards to ride to dinner reservations. It went so well that we ended up doing that for a few years. That created this bond with those surfers. They still talk about it on the North Shore when all the pros showed up and rode Kahuku.”

When Kalani Robb unexpectedly ended up on the cover of Surfer Magazine in 1999 wearing a Fox T-shirt, it seemed like the right time for Fox to start sponsoring surfers. “Kalani was sponsorless basically, and when he got the cover wearing a Fox tee, it wasn’t planned or anything,” says John. “Afterwards he called up and said, ‘Why don’t you guys sponsor me?’ So it was very organic, it wasn’t like this strategic plan.” Robb still rides for Fox, and for the past eight years has been the brand’s ambassador to the surf market.

Room To Grow

Around the same time Kalani Robb signed with Fox, the sportswear program started coming together and Onstott was able to secure larger accounts. “Iconic stores like Zumiez, Ron Jon, and Pac Sun came on board around 1999,” says Onstott, “and for the first time the line sat next to all the established clothing brands nationwide.”

With the influx of larger accounts came more resources. Fox opened offices in Newport Beach and made two key hires. Jim Anfuso was brought on as marketing director, and Chris Drummy was named surf promotions manager. Over the last three years the Southern California design offices have grown from twelve employees to 100.

Taking lessons learned while at Burton, Anfuso says one of his top priorities was to increase support to existing Fox clothing retail partners. “We do the full fixture program, we do events with shops, and we do events with our team,” says Anfuso. “We’re one of the brands supporting retailers and partnering with them, not just sending them a box of clothes.”

Anfuso says because the company is privately held and there are no plans of going public, the growth of the surf program has never been forced. “It started with Kalani {Robb}, but there’s never been a deadline, or a gun to our heads to be this or that by a certain date,” he explains. “The fact is that we’ve committed to it; the marketing, the surf team manager, and the sales have all come together as a united front. We’re visiting shops together, which is a pretty unique thing.”

Surf Promotions Manager Chris Drummy says he’s taken a grassroots approach, building the surf team regionally. He believes signing key athletes and keeping the team tight is important. “We currently only have about 25 surfers on the team in the U.S.,” explains Drummy. “Most other major brands have a couple hundred ?surfers. With fewer surfers I can put more effort ?into the athletes we have and help them become more ?successful. Now that everything is firing on all cylinders in the U.S., I’m working with all our distributors worldwide on our global surf program.”

The Product Evolution

The product has evolved along with the team of designers and athletes. What began as a simple range has been developed into an elaborate offering. “We were primarily hats, tees, and fleece for the first three to four years,” says Onstott. “But our cut-and-sew business began to really take off two years ago.”

Retailers have noticed, and some say the brand’s background in technical riding apparel can be seen in several categories of its sportswear business. “We brought them in about a year and a half ago,” says Killer Dana Owner Steve “Lounge” Price. “They have good trunks, so as we expand our boardshort superstore we want to carry key styles from every possible vendor that makes good trunks. We have their top trunks and tees in all of our locations because they make solid stuff.”

Central Coast Surf Owner Steve Carlson stopped carrying Fox a few years ago when he felt his store lost some of the moto crowd, but he had his buyers stop by the Fox booth during ASR Holiday, and they wrote an order. “I’ve always felt that they make good quality product and have a faithful customer base,” says Carlson.

Fox’s Director Of Sales Kurt Schleicher says the sportswear business has tripled in the past three years. Aside from full lifestyle apparel lines for men, juniors, and kids, Fox also produces snow outerwear, footwear, and launched an eyewear line through a licensing agreement with Oakley. “Our partnership with Oakley started three years ago,” says Pete Fox. “I work with their team to create eyewear that follows Fox’s style language. The benefit to Fox is obvious—with Oakley’s innovation and patented technology, Fox Eyewear has the world’s best quality and optics.”

Direct Approach

Since the company began as a mail-order business, direct online sales have always been part of the company’s operations. Greg Fox says it’s a small part of the business, but an important one.

“One of the big advantages for us with it is that there are a lot of things we make that retailers might not stock,” he says. “Whether it be really expensive things or more edgy stuff that we know our customer wants but buyers tend to go safe. It enables our customers to get that stuff,” he explains. “We’ve been doing it for 30 years, so we don’t get the kind of heat that someone new would get for doing it.”

For Pete Fox it goes beyond that. He feels like direct online business gives the brand more control over what it manufactures. “I’ve always loved the fact that we’re able to go directly to our customers,” says Pete. “Rather than being shut down by buyers for whatever reason, if we believe in it, we’ll go straight to the customer and let them vote.”

Fox insists that the online business isn’t a threat to retail accounts, however. “We don’t do heavy promotions or shove it in their faces,” adds Anfuso. “It’s just quietly doing a great business. When we first started doing denim we didn’t have a huge denim business at the wholesale level, but catalog business is where you’d go to get Fox denim. That allowed us to keep investing and keep making better product, more SKUs, and more fashionable designs. Now that’s trickling out at the wholesale level.”

Walls Still Standing

The biggest obstacle for Fox is still gaining representation in shops that consider themselves purely surf, skate, and snow. Even with the progress the brand has made in the wholesale sportswear segment, there’s still opposition. But Fox is aiming to break down those walls as well.

“There’s no hard feelings,” says Anfuso of retailers who won’t bring the brand in. “The business is there waiting for them. We couldn’t be happier with the progress at this point. That’s really the bottom line. It’s happening, and we make sure to treat the guys who do bring us in right.”