Manufacturers selling product direct online to consumers is a touchy subject. If you don’t agree, check out the 40-something comments that were posted in regards to the article I did on Quiksilver launching its E-Commerce site in just over a week. The comments—for the most part—are not simply short-sighted shit talking. There are valid arguments both for and against manufacturers (in this case Quiksilver) selling products direct to their customer. In fact, the feedback led me to post a list—and by no means do I believe it to be complete—of actionsports companies selling direct online. So here it is. As always, feedback is welcome.

For the sixth year, the Father’s Day Council in Orange County hosted the Father of the Year Awards Dinner at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine, California. The dinner benefits the American Diabetes Association. Each year, honorees raise approximately $200,000 to help support advocacy, research, and education initiatives of the A.D.A. This year SIMA President Emeritus Dick Baker was among the honorees. Transworld’s Liam Ferguson was on hand, along with other top industry executives, to help honor Baker’s achievement. Here’s a look at the events of the evening.

Quiksilver Inc. (ZQK) experienced an unusually high trading volume today. It’s average daily volume is 861,000 shares. Trading volume today (May 29, 2008) was about 1.87-million shares. Here’s a quik look (pun intended) at the company’s stock performance.

Insight won Breakthrough Brand Of The Year and secured its second consecutive Men’s Marketing Campaign Of The Year at the SIMA Image Awards this year. If that’s not enough to have the brand on your radar, retailers—especially on the West Coast—are reporting strong sell-through with Insight’s product, which tends to be fashion forward with designs driven by its roots in Australia, where it makes both apparel and surfboards. In the U.S. the brand is strictly softgoods, and President Jesse Faen runs Insight’s headquarters in Venice Beach, California. Transworld Business caught up with Faen for a quick Q&A session. Here’s what he had to say.

When Transworld Business broke the story that Roxy was launching a direct-to-consumer e-commerce site back in December ’07 with an exclusive interview with Quiksilver Americas President Marty Samuels, the issue of manufacturers selling product direct to the consumer online became a hot topic on our site’s message boards. TWBIZ asked Samuels when Quiksilver’s site would go live, and he said it wouldn’t happen until the marketing, product, retail, and affiliate components were totally dialed in.

Well, the wait is over. Quiksilver launched the new site at 5 A.M. on May 22.

May 14–17, 2008 marked the 11th Annual SIMA Surf Summit in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. This year’s event was full of thought-provoking lectures, interesting presentations, and of course, the SIMA Image Awards Party. The Summit acts as an annual meeting of the surf industry tribe, and brings people together for a few days of educational seminars and network opportunities.

Here’s a photo gallery with nearly 50 photos from this year’s event.

And The 2008 SIMA Image Award Goes To ….

The Third Annual Slosh-A-Bout was held this week in a remote location on the East Cape of Baja Mexico. While the underground event has no official sponsors—you’ll understand why when you see these photos—a diverse crew of the surf industry’s finest show up every year for a chance at the title. This year the stakes [...]

On May 8, Hawaii/ Sun Valley-based entrepreneur and principal owner of C4 Waterman, Mike Fox acquired Boardworks International for an undisclosed sum. Boardworks is an Oceanside, California based manufacturing and distribution company that currently produces sandwich construction board models from 15 prominent shapers including Ben Aipa, Bill Stewart, Mike Hynson, as well as SUP boards from C4 Waterman, which are designed by Dave Parmenter and Brian Keaulana.

Zumiez Inc. bounced back from a negative comp in March to post a 4.1% increase in same-store sales for April 2008. Net sales increased 20%, to 24.2 million-dollars. So far for the year the company’s comps are pretty much flat, which might not sound good, but it is. If they can end up flat for the first half of the year, it’ll be better than the company’s guidance of a negative low single-digit comp for the period.