Holiday cash registers closed last week with a mix of fear and hope for sellers and makers of clothes inspired by surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding.
“Every retailer is concerned about holiday shopping,” said Sean Smith, executive director of the Aliso Viejo-based Surf Industry Manufactur-ers Association, an industry group that represents makers of clothes and other products. “The good thing is that expectations are not what they were last year.”
Makers of clothes inspired by surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding—dubbed actions sports by those in the industry—are hoping to see a slow rise into the New Year.
But expectations are realistic, according to Smith.
“No one is expecting the economy and consumer spending to go back to what it was,” he said.
November was “another down month” for action sports boutiques, according to a survey by Milwaukee-based investment bank Robert W. Baird & Co.
Even so, November was “essentially in line with (October), but not nearly down as much as a year ago,” analyst Mitch Kummetz wrote in a report.
At Torrance-based Becker Surfboards, which runs three Orange County stores and is opening a fourth, online sales are hitting last year’s numbers and then some, according to President Dave Hollander.
In January, the retailer is opening Becker Paddle Surf in Mission Viejo. The 7,000-square-foot shop is set to sell everything for standup paddle surfing, a sport Hollander said is all the craze these days.
But the industry’s dominant retailer, Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., isn’t faring so well.