If it feels like the surf industry has abandoned New Zealand then you’re kind of right. We look into the state of play of the industry and where the rubber meets the road here In New Zealand.
I first started writing and photographing surf around 1993 – guys like Munga Barry and Occy were legendary and films like Bunyip Dreaming (1990), Green Iguana (1992) and Searching for Tom Curren (1996) were dazzling me and my mates. They were also driving unprecedented growth in the sport – but not just in financial terms – more importantly it was growth in the buzz surrounding the sport. And magazines added momentum to that. Surfing, as a counter-culture, was thriving.
In New Zealand surfing took place in many different pockets around the coast. Brands cared about connection and being right there at the grassroots – the very coal face of the sport and lifestyle.
By the end of the ’90s, everyone wanted to be a surfer. Maz Quinn was getting in excess of $20,000 a year just from his sunglass sponsor alone and banking six figures easily. Kids in surfing hotspots throughout New Zealand were being looked after – some were paid money to represent brands. Competitive surfers were earning very good money through ASP events – what was to become the World Qualifying Series and Championship Tour under WSL.
“Maz grew up in a golden time for the surf industry,” says Geoff Hutchison, owner of Backdoor. “At that time, surf fashion was booming. There were so many surf stores and everybody wanted to wear Quiksilver, Billabong and Rip Curl.”
“I don’t think the surf industry has managed itself very well,” he continues. “Whether it was private equity plays or the public company thing – listing on the stock market, many of those moves did not play out well.”
Hutch points us to a book written by Phil Jarratt called, Salts and Suits. “That book explains it really well,” he offers. “Basically, when the suits got involved in what the salts were running, everything started to fall apart and the numbers meant everything. And so the glory days of Maz’s era are probably well behind us.”
Today there are even surfers on the World Championship Tour – the very pinnacle of the sport – who currently who don’t have sponsors.
“Look at someone like Billy Stairmand who’s now a two-time Olympian for New Zealand, and he’s doing it pretty tough,” Hutch reveals. “Finding sponsorships and support is not that easy. There isn’t that much money around and I don’t actually know what the answers are there. There’s clearly money at a global brand level, but it’s flowing to the biggest names. And if you’re at number 20 in the world, well many of those guys have got nothing, or just a whole bunch of little ragtag sponsors. It’s tough.”
“When the suits got involved in what the salts were running, everything started to fall apart and the numbers meant everything. The glory days of Maz’s era are probably well behind us.”
In terms of Billy’s career – he’s been through the wringer financially. He’s potted plants at Whale Bay to get by, and has been lucky to garner support to continue. Some of that has been from local individuals, fans and family, but a lot of it has come from Hutch himself. Hutch first backed Billy back in 2018.
“I actually can’t remember who approached who,” Hutch explains. “I mean we talked quite a bit – I surfed with him all the time. I think we chatted about it and figured out how we can support him.”
Billy was riding Hughes Surfboards at the time. They were shaped by his good friend Luke Hughes. “We didn’t stock Hughesy’s boards,” Hutch recalls. “Luke’s a good mate as well. I rang Luke and said, ‘Hey, will this work if Backdoor sponsored Billy?’”
Around that time Billy switched to Sharp Eye boards which Backdoor were stocking. “It all ended up falling into place,” Hutch recalls. “We came up with a deal to financially support him. Then, just over a year ago, we bought RPM.”
Billy had always left the nose of his board blank, looking for a key clothing sponsor, but there were none coming out of the woodwork. Hutch even pushed a couple of the big brands he sold through Backdoor – even offering to buy more product from them to clinch a deal for Billy. But it went nowhere.
“In the end, we chipped in some more money with RPM and so we’ve been able to help him that way,” Hutch shares. “I think in reality, it doesn’t sort of matter much for them what’s happening in New Zealand because they’re all Australian or internationally based, and they kind of look at New Zealand and go, ‘ah, it’s just a little place’. And I guess whether we like it or not I reckon there’s an ageism thing there. Like once you hit 30, they’re kind of looking at you on the downside of things. Yet you look at Kelly and he’s 52 and he still gets the biggest eyeballs on screen for his heats … out of everyone. So, I don’t think the age thing should come into it. It has to be around what you bring to a brand.”
Hutch said the international brands probably had no idea of the profile that surfers like Billy and Paige Hareb had in New Zealand. “They’re giants here – totally giants,” he offers. “When we did the deal with RPM, I said to Billy, ‘hey, look, if something better comes along, we’ll jump out. It’s all good. We are there as a backstop. RPM’s pretty little for us, but we are there to help while we can. And if something bigger came up and you want to take a better deal, then that’s all good by us’.”
“International brands probably have no idea of the profile that surfers like Billy Stairmand and Paige Hareb have in New Zealand – they’re giants here – totally giants.”
In essence, that support got Billy to the Olympics and with a fighting chance. Ironically, Billy was unable to offer any sponsor recognition at the Olympics and surfed a blank board. “It’s kind of weird like that – even in your own social media posts you’ve got to be pretty careful with everything,” Hutch explains. “You can do a little bit, but once the event starts you’re pretty much on the low down.”
I ask Hutch what the future holds for our young surfers coming through the ranks in New Zealand right now.
“I don’t know,” he shakes his head. “The sponsorship and all of the industry money that’s flowed into surfing that has just been shrunken and shrunken and shrunken over the past few years – I would like to think that we’re at a low point right now. Ideally the various brands that are up and coming will look at investment and go, ‘right, what can we get? What bang for our buck can we get?’”
Cian Sullivan is a co-owner in C-Skins here in New Zealand. His role is to manage the C-Skins wetsuit brand and distribution. They run a small team of supported surfers.
“We expect our team to be spreading the good word about the brand, wearing our products and showing off their stickers,” Cian explains. “Content is always great, but sometimes hard – not all surfers have parents willing to film and photograph every wave that they’re on. Someone like Jay Quinn is great to have in a suit, but I don’t expect Jay to be getting his wife to film his every wave for us. Having him authentically spreading the word is enough for us most of the time.”
There are around 10 surfers repping C-Skins gear in New Zealand.
“We don’t have the budget to pay any of our team, we just try to shout them to occasional freebies and really discounted wetsuits,” Cian smiles.
With its head office in Christchurch, Exit Surf Products, which distributes brands like Xcel, Aloha, JS Industries, Ocean & Earth and Captain Fin, has been sponsoring surfers and contests in New Zealand since the ’80s.
Long-time employee turned co-owner, Hugh Ritchie, said that over that time things had changed a lot – particularly with social media, but their ethos remained the same.
“We sponsor people we like who have a good attitude,” Hugh reveals. “Generally most of our team have been Canterbury based, but we now have riders around the country.”
Hugh runs the team at Exit Surf and has held that role for 10 years. There are more than 20 surfers on his team.
“What I expect from our team riders is a good attitude both towards us and in the surf,” Hugh explains. “I don’t get bogged down with competition results, but obviously when our team riders do well – like Jack Tyro competing on the WSL – we can use that to our advantage on socials etc.”
“We don’t want to sponsor anyone who’s a dick and will bring our brands into a bad light,” he adds. “Mainly we want people riding our gear in their local lineups getting people stoked on surfing.”
“We don’t want to sponsor anyone who’s a dick and will bring our brands into a bad light.”
Hugh said that it was hard to nail down the actual number of people on the team as they ranged from a handful of high profile surfers who really got looked after right down to some local groms who were hooked up with wholesale deals.
“We also try to look after floor staff in a lot of different shops around the country,” Hugh explains. “In my experience the people selling the gear end up promoting your products more than the crew with stickers on their boards.”
“We haven’t had any “paid” surfers for the past 2 years.”
What is sponsorship?
Sponsorships vary from the multi-million-dollar deals of the 2000s right across the spectrum to a small discount off purchases at your local shop.
“A lot of people probably don’t realise, but essentially sponsorship is about helping a brand or company sell more product to other people,” explains Hutch. “If there isn’t a bang for your buck return then it just doesn’t work.”
Sponsors are looking for a return on investment, also called an ROI. Hutch admitted the actual ROI was difficult to capture. “You’d like to get back what you put in, but it’s impossible to measure,” he explains. “Literally, how do you measure that? There are various ways of trying, but you’re just relying on what you think the return is. At the end of the day, you’re just trying to put something back in and realising that this may or may not work, but it is doing good for the sport.”
“Having said that, the days of someone being a real dick out in the surf and representing a brand are well gone,” Hutch adds. “No one wants to associate with that guy that’s burning everyone and dropping in on everybody.”
“If you go back to the CT some years ago, some of the guys on the CT had such bad reputations, whether it was Tom Carroll or Occy – just burning everyone,” Hutch continues. “And yet some of the nicest guys to surf with now are CT guys. I think they recognise that your reputation is also really important for sponsorship. It’s about selling product.”
“The days of someone being a real dick out in the surf and representing a brand are well gone. No one wants to associate with that guy that’s burning everyone and dropping in on everybody.”
Hutch said that when a brand backed a young grommet, they were essentially backing them for the long term.
“The reality is that no hot 14-year-old tends to sell product,” Hutch admits. “They need to be older before they become a bit more of a product salesman. So if a brand does get behind someone young, they’re looking for the long term. A good example of that is Kehu Butler.”
Kehu was picked up by Quiksilver at about 12 and has stayed with the brand ever since.
“We sponsor Kehu as well,” Hutch explains. “So we have a fair bit to do with him. He’s stayed incredibly loyal to the point where he has now got his own side clothing line of Quiksilver.” Hutch pulls his sweater to show me what Kehu’s clothing line looks like. “I’m wearing it now and that launch of that particular subcategory of Quiksilver, the Tai Kehu Collection has gone incredibly well for us. I was quite skeptical. I thought, ‘mmm, I dunno if this is gonna work’. And it’s actually sold really well to the point where we’ve had to reorder it.”
Hutch points to that success to illustrate that there are pockets of good stuff still happening.
“There are definitely pockets of investment happening, but we’re at a really low point right now,” he admits. “The days of Maz, and Ricardo, and Billy, and Paige on good money, that’s well behind us at the moment.”
With the big brands having mostly left New Zealand in terms of athlete, culture and event support, we ask Hutch if New Zealand surfers should be spending their hard-earned cash on New Zealand-owned, and run, surf brands. They are, after all, the ones that actually support the sport and culture here.
“I would think so,” Hutch considers. “I would like to think there’s a return from that.”
Backdoor itself runs two to three big events each year, but Hutch admitted that it was incredibly hard to gauge whether you got any return out of that.
“To do a Surfing New Zealand event costs the best part of $20,000 these days,” he explains. “And it’s hard to gauge whether you make more sales because of that.”
But for Backdoor, that direct return is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. “Events are part of our DNA – it’s what we do,” Hutch smiles. “We are always going to put energy and money back into surfing. It’s where we came from. I started my journey as a competitive surfer. I fell into surf retail by accident and I’ve always enjoyed the contest scene and the camaraderie of it. So, we’ll always be there – regardless of whether it works or not.”
Backdoor currently has the biggest surf and skate team in the country, supporting around 20 athletes.
“There is quite a lot of complication and work that goes behind that,” Hutch reveals. “We’ve got about eight skaters and we’re looking pretty closely at that because some of our team riders are not giving that value back. They’re meant to post on social media. They’re meant to tag us in, and they’re meant to put the stickers on the board. If they don’t want to put the sticker on, then, laters. We’ve got to get a return, too. It’s a pretty simple ask – it’s not much.”
Backdoor operates on one-year contracts, which makes it easier to tidy up when things don’t work out. Every year in January they renew their contracts.
“To do a Surfing New Zealand event costs the best part of $20,000 these days. And it’s hard to gauge whether you make more sales because of that.”
Backdoor takes its community seriously and contributes wherever it can.
“There are numerous little events that we put prizes into, whether it’s a school surfing comp in Raglan, or all sorts of Christian Surfers events or, the Auckland Scholastics,” he offers. “All sorts of people make contact and if we have a store in the area then we try to help where we can.”
Similarly, Exit Surf backs events of varying shapes and sizes. “We’ve always been relatively small scale, we’re a small team of staff and obviously can’t compete with the likes of ‘the big three’ brands,” Hugh admits. “Our main focus now is where we put our money. I can only speak for the past 10 years, but we’ve probably downsized our team by half. We say ‘no’ a lot more than we used to so that we can say ‘yes’ when we find the right fit.”
Want to get sponsored? Check out this story with advice from team managers.
What the future holds …
Crystal ball gazing is an inherently defective way to predict the future, but when it comes to sponsorship a few sports are already exploring new models around content production.
Many high-performing athletes are now securing content budgets directly as part of their sponsorship package. This gives them the opportunity to hire photographers and filmers and become the creative lead on their own stories and adventures. It has taken off in snowsports and seems a good fit for surfing. Nathan Florence, among others, is well down this track already. It still requires a sponsor to buy in to the concepts and most are thinking globally, which is a challenge to overcome for New Zealand surfers.
Cian believes this is a big part of the challenge, but also an opportunity. “Athletes are going to have to have a really unique selling point.”
C-Skins has grown its own New Zealand business through collaborative models with surf shops, shapers and surf media.
Hugh said Exit Surf would always support grass roots surfers and events.
“The surf market has grown, but so have the players involved in selling, so everything has been pretty diluted,“ he offers. “When there are guys and girls who are competing on the WSL Championship Tour with no stickers on their board – well, that has got to spell doom for all the lower level surfers. As long as people understand that sponsorship is a two-way street – you get stuff from a brand in return for promoting their products – then you might still get a few shekels here and there.”
“But really,” Hugh pauses. “Nobody is getting rich from surfing.”
“Nobody is getting rich from surfing.”
Hutch said the surf industry seemed to overlook an important part of the equation when it came to our top surfers.
“Look at what surfers like Billy and Paige do for competitive surfing in New Zealand,” He offers. “I think we can credit a lot of the surge in the young contest surfers to those guys.”
“Billy’s a dream to sponsor in terms of how he gets around grommets at the beach and how he loves hanging out with people,” Hutch added. “He’s put so much effort into some of the young grommets at Raglan, too. That’s awesome to see – a lot of giving back and recognising that he’s a figurehead and a role model. His actions have benefits that reach across the whole surf industry.”
The surf industry collapse is global. New Zealand just bears the scars a little deeper because, on a global scale, we are also tiny and insignificant … especially if your lens is a pecuniary one … which is the only lens this new corporate surf world uses. We were privy to documents last year from when Authentic Brands Group swallowed Boardriders, which oversees Billabong, Quiksilver, Von Zipper, DC Shoes, Roxy, Element and RVCA. Nearly 100 surfers were dumped out of the business in California alone as it “restructured” its books and forecasts to drive a shareholder-friendly bottom line. Authentic Brands Group is the world’s largest sports and entertainment licensing company.
My father used to always talk about seasons and cycles of corporate expansion, followed by collapse. I hope he’s right and I hope when the first shoots appear this time there are smart Kiwis at the helms with intentions to bring that buzz and integrity back to the sport and lifestyle of surfing.