Jack’s 13,000 square-foot flagship store on Main Street in Huntington Beach

A wise man once said that the world is a dangerous place to look at from behind a computer. I couldn’t agree more. Nothing is better than getting out of the office for a few hours and catching up with key players in the industry. That’s what this new feature on Transworldbusiness.com is all about.

Jack’s Surfboards has been in business for more than fifty years, and is without question one of the most influential stores in the surf market. Co-owner Bobby Abdel has been involved with the store for 38 years. He’s seen every major trend that has ever happened in surf come and go through the doors of his iconic shops. In fact, as the head buyer for all of Jack’s stores, he has directly influenced many of them.

Jack’s 13,000 square-foot flagship store on Main Street in Huntington Beach brings in customers from around the globe, and carries one of the widest assortments of brands ever represented in a surf shop. Its Corona Del Mar store draws from a concentration of affluent Orange County clientèle in the area, allowing it to stock higher-end merchandise like Quiksilver’s Limited Edition line. Locations in both Newport Beach and Dana Point have a healthy local following as well as plenty of tourist traffic, and Jack’s plans to open two new stores within twelve months.

Aside from brick-and-mortar, Jack’s is also expanding its 17,000 square-foot warehouse facility in part to make room for a growing e-commerce business by purchasing another warehouse across the street.

Ronnie and Bobby Abdel at Jack’s Offices In Huntington Beach

So I think it’s safe to say they’re growing, and at a time where terms like “economic downturn” and “discretionary recession” are becoming part of our everyday lexicon.

I spent a couple of hours with Bobby Abdel. We talked about everything from the changing retail landscape to upcoming trends to tips on making smart retail buys. Here’s Abdel’s take on things

Holiday Line Trends

When I visited, the crew at Jack’s was hard at work planning its inventory for holiday, so I asked Abdel which lines he has seen so far, and from what he has seen what he thinks will do well at retail. He says flannel is a big part of most manufacturers’ Holiday lines, and that bright colors continue to drive sales. He also says that the faux-fur-lined jackets and hoodies look finished last year, and he isn’t bringing much of that back into the stores.

Flannel Coming On Strong

“Flannel is big this year! [We’ve seen] a lot of flannels, a lot of hooded flannels, some bright colors, some not. Our best selling flannel last year was the plaid one Insight made with the neon colors. Man, that one was money in the bank! We couldn’t keep it in. They took it out of the line, but they’re bringing it back. I couldn’t believe they took it out of the line, so I told them that, and they said they’re going to be bringing it back. That sold more than any other flannel shirt we ever had.”

Bright Colors Still Performing

“Neon, in fact anything with bright colors is hot right now. That will be going through next spring too. Seriously, anything with bright colors is doing very well. A lot of people have added things with neon ink to their lines in response.”

Faux Fur Accents Dead

“One thing I noticed about this year is that there’s a lot less fur-lined or trimmed hoods. There are a few people that still have it, but that’s kind of faded out from last year.”

Abdel says it performed very well the year before last, but last year it slowed down a lot. “We notified a lot of our suppliers to stay away from that. It was good two years ago, but last year it was no good.”

Trends By Product Category

Considering the wide assortment that Jack’s carries across all categories, I asked Abdel what’s moving right now in his stores, and which categories are kind of stale.

Strong Catagories: Boardshorts, Walkshorts, T-shirts, Denim, Sandals, Accessories

“We’ve been doing very well with boardshorts, walkshorts, T-shirts, jeans we’re still doing pretty good with. But we’ve slowed down with knits. Knits has been a very tough category for us.

“Woven shirts are coming back though, especially for holiday. Everybody buys them as a gift for the holidays you know. Quiksilver always has good wovens, and 7 Diamonds. We do very, very good with their wovens. They are very high-fashion brand and are big in certain markets. For us, as a fashion woven they are one of our top brands. They have wovens and denim for men and women, but we only carry their men’s division. We tried their women’s, but we weren’t very successful with it.”

Footwear

“Footwear business is tough,” admits Abdel, “but we can not depend on that business in one area. At Jack’s we do not put our eggs in one basket. We go to the surf business as much as the skate, the lifestyle as much as the fashion. We probably have one of the biggest and most modern shoe walls in the business right now. We are doing really well with Nike, Vans, DVS, and Sole Tech right now.

“Skate has gone down a little bit, but we’re hoping it’ll go back up for winter,” he adds “We always see shoes go down in the summer time and then go up again in the winter because sandal business takes up a lot of that business.”

Accessories Sales

“We do very, very good with eyewear and watches. Eyewear is one of our top, top categories right now. We do well with Von Zipper, Electric, Spy, Smith. We’re doing good with everyone,” Abdel says. “We added Ray Ban this year and that’s doing really well with us too. Sabre is doing well for us too, but we don’t do the volume we do with some of the other guys, because you have you’re volume sales and your cool sales. Sabre is a good one.

“The Oakley Frogskins are bringing back memories too.”

Abdel says Nixon is still the leader in watches; Vestal and Quiksilver are also selling well.

Trends By Retail Customer Category

Abdel says that more than 50 percent of Jack’s business comes from men’s, and that they are building the store’s boy’s business to 15-20 percent in order to get some of the dollars lost in junior’s back. He agrees with the general consensus that junior’s business in general is tough right now.

Junior’s Business

“It is hard to tell why. But with Forever 21 and H&M there are so many different competitors. And with girls, the life is very short for any season. I don’t know how, but they change too quick. They don’t stay going in the same direction for long, so it’s hard to know what’s going to be next. Even with my daughters, they buy stuff and wear it once or twice and they say ‘Oh, I don’t like that anymore’ or ‘I’ve already worn that, everybody has seen me in it.’ But with guys, they buy a pair of shorts and they wear them for years.

Jack’s Girls is also located On Main Street in Huntington Beach, California

“To be honest with you we are one of the few shops that has a strictly girls shop separate from our other shops. We have been doing really well there with Volcom, Roxy, Billabong, O’Neill, Hurley, and brands like Ezekiel and …Lost are doing okay with us because girls like to go in and shop where girls shop. They don’t like it when it’s mixed up with the men’s stuff. But in general the women’s business in surf wear is down, and I don’t know why or what the problem is. Maybe they need to make another movie like Blue Crush to bring it back to life, or even take it to another level.

“We call that period of time the ‘Crush Era’ because it was such a good time for the women’s surf market!”

Boy’s Business

“In boys we’ve really started increasing business. We’re redoing all of our boys departments because we see that part of the business as a big opportunity. We have already re-done four of the boys departments in our shops to make it easier for the customer to find, and that department is doing really well right now.

“We’re trying to recover the business we lost from women’s with the boys.”

Online Sales Vs. Brick-And-Mortar

Jack’s has seen some solid growth in online sales, but Abdel says its focus in on brick-and-mortar. “We really like to separate our online business from our retail business. Online business is not a major thing for us. We’re respected for it and are increasing, but we don’t want that to affect our retail. We keep it separate so it won’t affect it. Jack’s is a retail operation, and we want to keep it that way.”

Expansion During Recession

The million-dollar question right now seems to be “How are you dealing with the recession?” I thought Abdel’s answer was interesting:

“I think the reason why we’ve been very successful in these kinds of times is because we did not cut our buying, we did not do anything different, and we kept everything running as if we didn’t know there was anything going on with the recession. A lot of people cut their buying to minimize their stock, but we kept everything going.

“We’re the only crazy people opening a shop in a recession! Our Irvine shop [9,500 square-feet] will open in the beginning of August, and we feel there is still room to work with that area over there in Irvine, and that space came up and we took advantage. We’ve done a lot of work with designers and architects. We’re taking the surf market one step higher in opening that shop. We’ve done a lot of really cool things there.

“As you know, we purchased another place over in San Clemente [10,000 square-feet]. So that will be opening in spring 2009. We bought the building and that includes about 30 parking spots. It’s on Del Mar across from El Ranchito, where the old Russell Stationary building was.

“We have plenty of time to figure out what we’re going to do to that shop and when we’re going to open. We’re not in any hurry. We’re going to take our time to decide what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.

“The surf market needs to be represented in the right way. We’ve been doing it for the last 35 years, and so we hope this will be a short recession, and we hope that the economy will turn around. So far everything is working for us. Our business is not down. We’ve been flat in some shops and up in others.”

But Abdel says that hasn’t been easy. “We’re working harder than we’ve ever worked to keep things going right now.”

A tour of Jack’s current 17,000 sq. foot warehouse reveals the need for the 7,000 sq. foot expansion across the street

Aside from opening new doors, the Jack’s crew has purchased a 7,000-square-foot warehouse space across the street from its existing Huntington Beach offices, and has been working with its major vendors to make its ordering system as efficient as possible. “All of our receiving is going to be over there [at the new warehouse],” Abdel explains. “We’re also working with all the companies—like O’Neill, Rusty, …LOST, and Volcom—that work with Retail Pro so that we can transfer our orders straight through our computer program.” He says this will simplify the ordering system and cuts down on duplicative work.

Role Of Trade Shows

With three major footwear brands recently announcing that they are pulling our of September’s ASR show, I thought it’d be interesting to get Bobby Abdel’s take.

“I still like to go to the trade shows and buy at the show, because at trade shows you can always see the lines you don’t see with a rep. I do a lot of my buying during that time, but we carry so many lines that there’s no way you can see all of them in that amount of time. From surfing, skateboarding, wetsuits, sunglasses, watches, mens, womens, boys, girls—you have so many different things to see. We spend most of our time doing buying and ordering because we carry so many lines from A to Z. And each line basically has its own shop within the shop as you see in our stores, so it takes a lot of time to do orders. We order separately for each shop; a separate PO for each shop.”

Bobby Abdel with the Rip Curl crew at Surf Expo in January

“When I used to look at a line it would take me an hour, now it takes me two or three because you have to buy differently for each shop. You have to think about what’s going to sell in all of our locations. It takes a lot of thought. Buying is not an easy thing! You have to predict where the market will go, and hope you are right in your prediction.”

Abdel says he respects the footwear brands that have pulled out of ASR’s decisions, but that reiterates that he is a trade show supporter. “I have always been a show supporter for many reasons. At shows you go and you see the lines and you meet the managers, you meet the owners, you meet the team riders, and everything. When you get your buyers to go to the show to see those things its always a good thing for them. I think we need to support the show just to keep the sports going too. Supporting the shows, the magazines, the surf contests, is all a plus for our sports and helps keep them strong.”

Buying Tips From Bobby Abdel

Abdel says previewing the major manufacturers lines helps him see where the market will go.

“What’s really worked for me is previewing the lines. I preview a lot of lines for different people, so that will give me a good direction of where the market is going to go. I give them some feedback about what they should keep and what they should take out [of the line] and that gives me an idea of where the market is going to go from different people. It helps me and it helps them.

Brands sticking with their identity:

I try to keep each brand within its own look. I don’t like for Quiksilver to look the same as Ezekiel looks, or Billabong look like O’Neill looks, or Volcom look like Hurley looks. Each brand has their own direction and their own look, so you have to keep it [your order] within each own look.

Keep each brand’s role in the store in mind:

“Billabong, Volcom, O’Neill, Hurley, and Quiksilver. They are the five big lines. The you have B lines, the C lines, the D lines. So you have to look at so many different directions, and think where you’re going to take the line.

“We have several good B lines right now, like Ezekiel, Split, …Lost, and Rusty. Of course we hope all the B’s will go to A’s and the A’s will go to super A’s!”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under FEATURES, PROFILES. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.