Local Surf Shops See Chains Compete
by Paul Costales

The local surf shop is a long standing tradition in surf culture, a place to get your gear, tell tall tales, and feel a sense of community.

IV Surf Shop

Surf shops have long been run by dedicated surfers and are a passion rather than cash cows. However a new shift has happened lately in Santa Barbara that is endangering locally run surfs shops. It seems many of the long standing shops have been experiencing a slow down in recent months. This could be attributed to the slowing economy, or to the foam crisis of a few years ago, but more than likely it's that the surf shop market has been flooded by many new chain stores over the last year.

Defining a true local surf shop is open for debate, but for our purposes it is a shop started and owned by a local figure (or figures), who's first focus is to provide core surf products to surfers such as boards, wetsuits, etc. As a fact of life, non-core sales (shoes, board shorts, etc) will dwarf the core sales, but those keep the shops alive and able to stock low profit margin boards and other gear.

Beach House

Chances are if you walk into a shop and the first thing you see is locally shaped boards and someone behind the counter you can BS with about the waves, you've found a local surf shop.

In the South County, from West to East, the locally owned surf shops that have been in business for the last decade are: IV Surf Shop (Isla Vista), Surf Country (Goleta), Beach House (Santa Barbara), Channel Islands (Santa Barbara), A-Frame (Carpinteria), and Rincon Designs (Carpinteria). This list is open for debate, for instance although CI is based in Santa Barbara, their global presence and recent ownership by Burton makes them feel a lot less small town local shop. One new entry into the locally owned surf shop list is J7 Surfboards. This is the kind of story you root for, a guy named Jason Feist shaping boards in his garage, who gained enough following to open his own shop.

A Frame

However it's location just off of State St. means high rents which can equal some eye popping prices.

Then comes the chain stores or out of town stores, which have seen a surge in the last few years. Rip Curl, Volcom, and Billabong have all added stores to State St. recently. These store's business models are completely different than the local surf shop's. Their goal is to get their name and marketing material splashed onto a high foot traffic area. It doesn't seem their main goal is to maintain a profitable location, but rather maintain a flagship marketing location. The reason these hurt our local surf shops is that the local shops rely on selling Rip Curl, Volcom, or Billabong clothing to pay the rent so they can stock surfboards and other core products. Another new addition to the surf shop landscape is Esteem Surf,

Rincon Designs

which was started by a few young guys in Pismo Beach, but are now spreading faster than The Hamburger Habit.

One store that has been affected by the new stores opening up is Surf Country, which has recently had to give up some of their space when their lease went up this Spring. The addition of new flagship stores like Rip Curl and Billabong has left Surf Country with more competitors to go up against. It is a shame to see the little owner operated places like this takea hit. Our favorite surf shop owners are Doug Yartz of Surf County and the brothers who run A Frame. If you've ever headed into Surf Country, you've probably been helped by Doug, who you'll hear sharing surf story with seasoned old salts just as easily as helping a Mom understand what to get her kids for Christmas (which BTW we've often seen Doug point beginners away from high priced stuff an to the entry level stuff), all in a very non-pretentious manner rare among surf shops. So if you like having your local surf shop around, so you can stop in and talk story about where you were on the last swell,

Surf Country

you ought to make sure to help keep them alive during the slow months. If not, it's possible one of these stores will bite the dust in the new few years and you'll be forced to buy your surf wax in some State St. chain store that feels like Pottery Barn.

There is a good chance we missed some details on the who/what/where of local surf shops, which you're free to correct in the comments.

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