Board Retailers Association Summit: Day 1

josh hunter

• April 23 2009
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The sixth annual Board Retailers Association Retail Summit is officially underway at the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, California. Check out photos and a brief synopsis from the first day’s events below.

After a brief welcome by BRA’s Mike Duncan and Todd Roberts, former SIMA President and Co-founder of Honolua Surf Company, Tommy Knapp, took the stage.

Knapp’s presentation walked attendees through 1986—his senior year of college—when he started Club Sportswear and groosed $840 K to 1990 when the company did more than nine million dollars in sales, and into 1991, when grunge hit, neon went out, and Club saw a deep dive it would never fully recover from.

He instilled not only words of wisdom, but an inspirational take on how to to tackle what life and business throw at you.

“You have no control over the retail environment,” Knapp told retailers in the crowd. He drew examples from his experience launching Honolua Surf Company in Hawaii in June 1996, the struggles involved in making the business profitable, and how he eventually sold it to Billabong in 2004.

As many speakers do these days, Knapp gave a list of take away points from the presentation. His version was dubbed Five Simple Suggestions For Your Not-So-Simple Life. So here they are:

1.) Routine: Knapp says routine behaviors breed success.

2.) Research: “You always have to be willing to learn,” Knapp says.

3.) Repeat: Repition will eventually get you the skill set needed to succeed according to Knapp.

4.) Reward: Knapp says setting goals is only beneficial if you reward yourself when you reach them.

5.) Return: “GIve back, it’s so much better than taking,” Knapp says.

Next up was Glen Brumage with a look at the general state of the skate market. Brumage presented statistics from both Board-Trac and Actionwatch on current consumer trends in the skate hardgoods market.

Here are some take away figures from the presentation:

-Size of Skate Market: 11.08 Million Participants (75.1% male/ 24.9 % female)

-According to the presentation, the skate industry represents $4,785,240,000. That’s down 2% from 2007.

-”It’s an aging market and those falling off the back end aren’t skating as much,” Brumage says.

Breakdown Of Participants By Age (according to presentation): 6-11: 37% // 12-17: 45% // 18-24: 10% // 25+: 8% (see chart below)

After some lively Q&A following Brumage’s presentation, IASC’s John Berbards came up to moderate a panel discussion featuring Brumage, Per Welinder from Blitz Distribution, George Ortiz from Random X Skate Shop, Mike Duncan from skatewarehouse.com,and and George Leichtweis from Modern Skate & Surf.

The panel discussion ranged from ways to improve gross margin to whether skate hardgoods manufacturers should set MSRP and/ or minimum advertised prices (MAPs). The discussion got heated. Topics like Zappos.com selling branded skate hardgoods, online discounters, product segmentation, and the pros and cons of distributors raised some significant contributions from both retailers and manufacturers in the crowd. When it was all said and done, everyone was able to take away something from the panel, and the general consensus was that manufacturers and retailers need to continue to find ways to work together.

After the panel Paul Schmitt gave his presentation about Create-A-Skate. If you haven’t heard of Schmitt or what he is doing, check out createaskate.org. It’s pretty interesting stuff. You’ll never look at a skateboard the same again!

When the seminars were all done the crew headed across the street for a surfboard demo with Global Surf Industries, FCS, Firewire, Rusty, …Lost, and Volcom before having dinner, a few rounds of drinks, and calling it a night. Make sure to check back into transworldbusiness.com for daily updates from the event.