Ryan Scanlon: The Reluctant Captain

Ryan Scanlon spent ten years at Quiksilver when it was the biggest and most influential surf company in the world. The work was creative and demanding, and his coping method was to tap out every few years and “live the lifestyle Quiksilver were selling.”

When the company fell into a heap, Ryan started his own one-man operation to pay the bills while maintaining his freedom. Despite distancing himself from the industry he knew, needessentials inadvertently became the prototype for regeneration in the surf industry.

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The pre-dawn air bites as Ryan Scanlon trudges across the frost-covered paddock, gumboots crushing grass beneath his feet.

While the surf might be pumping at Bells and Winki, just seven kilometres to the south-west, he's got farm work before school. 

The Scanlon's Connewarre family farm is shrouded in fog but he can just make out a glow emanating from Torquay –  home to surf industry titans Rip Curl and Quiksilver. The same distance that takes fifteen minutes to drive is a distant world to the then-teenage farm boy, hands raw from manual labour. 

The contrast between the neighbouring towns couldn't be more stark. Sure, farmers greet the day as early as any eager dawn patroller, but there the similarities end. Where one town throbs with the energy of Australia's surf industry, the other moves to rhythms unchanged since his grandfather's time. 

"I saw the surf industry as a great alternative," Ryan says today, a wry smile across his face. "Much better than the endless muddy grind of farm work." 

What Ryan didn’t know then, watching Torquay's radiant light from the family farm, was that he'd not only break into that world, witnessing first-hand its many successes and failures, but ultimately he’d help reshape it too.

Ryan pilots a 7'6" single fin through a Winkipop bottom turn. His penchant for longer equipment pre-dates surfers' recent fascination with mid-lengths.

The surf industry, for its part, was on somewhat of a tear as Ryan gravitated towards it. Ten years earlier it was all fluoro and checker print, but the eighties surf boom imploded in a neon heap, taking with it Gotcha, the world’s biggest and loudest surf company. Investors waved red flags - ‘lightning can’t strike twice’, they said - and yet the air was once again crackling with electricity. 

Billabong rebranded behind Jack McCoy's groundbreaking films. Rip Curl launched The Search, tapping into surfers' inexhaustible wanderlust. While Quiksilver signed Kelly Slater and watched their fortunes soar with each world title. When they added Lisa Anderson and launched Roxy, the Torquay start-up doubled their market and redefined what a surf company could be.

The surf industry was again marvelled as an unsinkable economic wonder. The founders of each company feted in the financial pages as the captains of a billion dollar industry: Alan Green and John Law from Quiksilver, Doug Warbrick and Brian Singer at Rip Curl, Rena and Gordon Merchant at Billabong. Their origin stories written into Australia’s wider surf history. 

That said, Ryan’s path into the industry was slightly more mundane: manning the till at the local surf shop one day a week. For Ryan, time behind the counter at Strapper Surfboards did at least provide enlightening conversation. One afternoon in 1994, Peter Troy, the legendary surfer-explorer who'd discovered Nias almost two decades earlier, wandered in and began chatting with the young shop assistant. 

Troy spoke of exotic waves on unexplored costs and no-one was better qualified to know. The world was immeasurably large; whole island chains were yet to be explored by surfers. 

The teenage Ryan filed that information away, and we’ll do likewise with it for now. 

The customer may not always be right, but when that customer is Peter Troy you listen to what he says and you take notes for future reference. At left, the pre-digital payoff for listening to your elders, and right, Ryan on a food run to the nearest village.

The farmer's son had always been good with his hands. He thought in pictures yet had the ability to make his imagination material. Design school at Warnambool was the next logical step, and it was there that he caught the eye of Quiksilver's Peter Webb, the artistic force behind the ‘Ghetto Dog’ and ‘Warpaint’ campaigns that saw surfing transition from beach culture to street fashion. 

“The whole world was changing visually, getting more street oriented,” wrote Webb in ‘The Mountain And The Wave’. 

There were other changes too. Ryan arrived at Quiksilver just as the art world was undergoing a seismic shift. Quiksilver's art rooms were transforming. Where celebrated artists such as Webb, Simon Buttonshaw, and Clayton Barr once stood at easels, hand-painting designs that defined surf culture, sleek computer monitors now hummed. The digital revolution had arrived and Ryan found himself straddling two worlds once again.

"When I got to Quiksilver in '97, the artists were still painting by hand," Ryan recalls, "but within a year, everything had gone digital.” Binary code in place of acrylics and oils. 

It was a tough adjustment for some yet Ryan's timing was impeccable. “There weren't many people that could think creatively like an artist and drive a computer as well - at that moment people with that skill set were rare.” Ryan quickly ingratiated himself in the company as an artist and designer who could also work in the digital space. 

Simon Buttonshaw, at left, surrounded by Quiksilver art (The Mountain And The Wave) 

Now, about that chat with Peter Troy… 

After making a mental map of Troy’s conversation, Ryan and friend Michael Cartwright, then both 18-years old, consulted an atlas and saw Nias sitting offshore from Western Sumatra. They also saw island chains to the north and south of Nias which were presumably exposed to the same south-westerly swells.

Though first surfed in 1983, the Mentawais were still a little-known prospect in the mid-nineties. The captain of the MV Indies Trader, Martin Daly, was running exploratory trips including a trickle of pro surfers and photographers. The subsequent photos made their way to a willing surf media. 

Between Nias and the Mentawais, however, sat many other islands and neither Ryan nor Michael had heard anything about them. There was no more to it: they bought tents, a water purifier, and enough rice for two months. 

“We got to Nias and then took a fishing boat south from there,” says Ryan, and they may as well have been sailing off the edge of the known world. “We had a magical time, just two naive young idiots fumbling our way through Western Sumatra, scoring incredible, untouched waves along the way.” 

Ryan and Michael did three more trips together, each time for a few months, and they also went alone or with other people too. “We ended up spending a lot of time up there in that period from the mid to late-nineties.” 

“It’s amazing to look back on now,” says Ryan wistfully, “just surfing without any people or any influence from Western civilization, in a really untouched part of the world with its own rich culture, and an environment devoid of plastics or pollution.” Devoid of surf resorts too.

There's melancholy in the re-telling. "We had absolutely no idea how quickly things would change. A part of me thinks, ‘Geez, I was lucky to experience that - to see the world before that global shift happened’."

Regardless, traveling and exploration became a recurring theme, interjected between bouts of bottom-line corporatism. A legacy of those early travels, if we’re to look for it, is that later films Ryan was involved in refrained from further sign-posting. No place names, even if they’re obvious, the only reference point being the ocean basin.

Ryan, at left, Batu Islands, 1995: "We would often stay in local's houses or in tents above the tide line. Long pants and tops had to be on by sunset and you had to douse yourself in toxic mozzie repellent to avoid malaria"; centre, island hopping courtesy of the local fishermen; right, Ryan's barrel sense captured by a first-gen disposable water camera.

“I think I had a good work ethic from my days on the farm,” says Ryan recalling his relentless early morning starts at Connewarre, “but mostly I was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.” 

“It wasn’t just that Ryan had a good worth ethic,” explains Simon Buttonshaw, “but he also has a unique level of self-confidence. He’s smart and he virtually created the role he fulfilled.” 

All of which meant that, despite leaving Quiksilver in 1998 on an indefinite break, the company still required his services. In late 2000, while again in the outer reaches of Indonesia he received an email from HQ offering him the position of Head of Design in Torquay. He was 23-years old and with his travel budget exhausted he accepted the position and bought a ticket home. 

In the first years of the new millennium, the surf industry began to transform. Most notably, Billabong went public, beginning a spree of acquisitions that would make a corporate raider blush. Not to be outdone, Quiksilver followed suit and the two Australian-born companies locked into a global arms race throwing Wall Street money at what was once just fun in the sun.

The company that had started in a Torquay garage was becoming a global powerhouse. Green and Law, the founders who used to walk the office floor and, says Ryan, “made Quiksilver feel like a family company,” were now rarely sighted. Meanwhile, the epicenter of power shifted to California, with increasing influence from Europe, as the Australian office became a satellite office in its own empire. 

“I'd sit in Quiksilver’s corporate boardroom in Los Angeles,” observes Ryan, “surrounded by people with material wealth and assets, yet some of them were really challenged in spirit and mind. Then after corporate burnout I'd leave that world for stints in remote areas - living the lifestyle we were selling - and I’d meet people with minimal material possessions but incredible knowledge and connection to nature and community."

"They had wealth of another kind," says Ryan, ”It was an amazing lesson." 

By 2008, the fault lines were showing. On one hand, surf fashion was increasingly on the nose and the shift in taste revealed an uncomfortable truth: the industry's extravagant wealth had largely been built on the backs of non-surfers, so when they stopped wearing the clothes, sales plummeted. Then came the Global Financial Crisis, catching companies over-extended and over-confident. 

Ryan didn't feel those early tremors as he was on yet another year-long hiatus, this time rambling through South America. When he returned, however, he watched it all from an unusual vantage point – a 34-foot sailboat moored in Newport Harbor, California. As Senior Vice President of Global Products, he was in the figurative engine room while the boardroom above him took on water. The company was still reeling from an ill-fated $700 million acquisition of French ski company Rossignol – sold three years later for just $37 million – in what would prove to be the beginning of a long, painful descent into bankruptcy.

His time in California was beneficial, however, as Ryan worked closely on wetsuit production and also with Kelly Slater on his short-lived label VSTR. The boardroom eventually drew a red line through VSTR, with Kelly promptly putting an end to he and Quiksilver’s 23-year relationship. Six months later Kelly struck out on his own with Outerknown. 

By that stage, Ryan had already left Quiksilver, although he didn’t quite know what he was going to do next. He sailed his boat home through New Caledonia and New Zealand, and thought about his future.  

“Sailing is slow,” says Ryan, “you only go at walking pace. You get a lot of time to think.”

"All I knew was that I'd left the surf industry," he says of his decision to cut ties with Quiksilver, "and this time I wasn't going back.”

"I was immensely grateful for the amazing journey Quiksilver had led me on," says Ryan of his departure, "and the people I had learnt from. It truly was a unique time to experience, but the climate had shifted."

When he finally dropped anchor in Yamba - a short stopover that’s lasted twelve years - he lent on his skill set and made a small run of  wetsuits. “I warehoused them in the back of my Hiace van, and if I got an order I'd take the dinghy to shore, grab the wetsuit and take it to the post office to send.” 

Not only did the wetsuits have no swing tags, no printing, and no packaging, they also had no name. “At the time I didn't want a brand," Ryan insists, "I didn't want to be a businessman. I just wanted to create a small sustainable income doing something real.” 

“I just made a supply chain that didn’t exist," continues Ryan, "something that was a culmination of my own needs, skills, and beliefs around consuming less. I had the knowledge to build the best wetsuits, I just didn’t want all the noise."

The concept was simple: Make the best products, cut out the retail and wholesale mark ups plus the branding and fads, so they cost half the price, then sell them directly to like-minded people. 

But sometimes, as the saying goes, the universe has other plans. Here he was, actively trying to avoid creating a brand, yet the digital world wasn’t having it. A website needs a name and www.plainblackwetsuits.com wasn't going to cut it. 

And so needessentials was born – albeit reluctantly. In a small act of defiance the word mark was written in Helvetica, the world's most common font. No logo. No flashy graphics. The antithesis of everything the corporate surf world stood for. 

"Even as a kid I was sceptical of branding, says Ryan. “I'm okay with people doing what appeals to them, but for me, obvious logos and branding isn’t something I wanted to promote."

"Instead," says Ryan, "I believe in investing in products. It’s important that the materials and workmanship are of the highest grade and it performs the task. Branding doesn’t contribute to that.”

Though it involves jumping ahead of the storyline it’s worth passing the talking stick back to Simon Buttonshaw for a moment. 

“It’s not quite true that he doesn’t have a logo,” explains Simon. “The word mark is his logo. That’s a literal take on it, but conceptually it’s more complex, and also more interesting. He’s created a brand where the act itself: the people who surf, the music, the boards, all of that stuff, that’s the art.” 

It’s worth keeping in mind that Simon is a visual artist, working mostly in static form, but he bears no grudge at those mediums being superseded and that the ‘story’ he once told via graphics in surf magazines is now being told via video on the internet.

“The surfers at needessentials are the creative artists,” says Simon expressively, “and it’s beautifully documented.” 

The art of needessentials. Torren Martyn (surfer), Ishka Folkwell (filmer), and Simon Jones (shaper) collaborating in a timeless moment from 'Calypte'.

Despite the lack of branding, Ryan’s suits spoke for themselves: quality materials, no frills, and at half the market price. His first range featured a 3/2 steamer for $180 in a market where $300 was standard, and premium higher again.

Rather than releasing new and improved lines each calendar year, the ranges continued until there was no more stock. Shunning the seasonal schedule meant suits weren't dumped on sale in rummage bins. They sold until they were sold out - and sold out they did. 

“Those first few years, it was just me,” says Ryan who stretched Michael Tomson’s maxim about 'size being the enemy of cool' to its singular limit. “I took it slow, though with the interest around I could’ve easily expanded quicker.” 

"I love the beginnings of things a lot more than later on, when they become huge," says Simon Buttonshaw, describing Ryan’s new venture. "There's nothing there at the beginning and you're bringing it into existence – that's really good fun. It takes a lot of guts though." 

Ryan started seeing a woman who lived at Byron Bay and began traveling north from Yamba to spend time with her. That storyline runs into a private chapter that continues to this day, but during the trips to Byron another relationship formed. 

“I’d go up to Byron Bay and occasionally watch this guy move through the lineups with effortless grace," says Ryan. "So effortless it was like most people hadn’t noticed him.” 

Torren Martyn was raised in Suffolk Park by a single mother and his grandmother. When he was noticed by Ryan, Torren was working as a swimming teacher and also working part-time in the warehouse of another surf company. Hearing that Torren and good mate and filmmaker Ishka Folkwell were about to document a trip around Australia, Ryan gave them some wetsuits and petrol money.  

Eight years and as many films later, that chance encounter has evolved into something unique in the surf industry. Not just another paid-for surfer in a sponsor-athlete relationship, but a self-sustaining ecosystem of creative characters: Torren's style and charm, and Ishka's cinematic eye, yet also in the mix are Murray Paterson's orchestral soundtracks, and of course Simon Jones shaping the boards. 

"A key difference in how we work together," explains Ryan about the company structure, "is that surfers and creatives are not just an afterthought for decoration. They are key players and full-time employees who are a central part of the company.”

By championing a surfer who doesn't compete, needessentials uphold the idea that surfing is more than being the best surfer in the water. Torren turns heads with moves you'd never see in a heat. (Gershkow) 

An illustration of their hermetic world is needessentials most recent film, Calypte, which is also their most objectively successful film: After a national not-for-profit tour it’s since had two million views on YouTube. A superbly crafted surf exploration film, Calypte combines all the elements of needessentials’ working ecosystem - if not in the film then in its backstory. Family. Self-sufficiency. Adventure. Board design. Music. Filmmaking. 

Torren had just started learning to sail when an opportunity to move a boat through Indonesia presented itself. The idea to fund the project, film it, and create Calypte followed the initial impulse for adventure, and not the other way around. A distinction that shifts it more toward documentary than company promo.

There are other examples. In 2018, Laurie Towner joined as an ambassador while working as a tiling apprentice. Two years later, Ryan took him under his wing - just as Jeff Sweeney had done for himself decades ago at Quiksilver.

Today, Laurie splits his time between raising his family, using CAD software to improve the needessentials range, and appearing in the odd film doing what he’s always done: surfing heavy waves with nonchalance. 

Sitting fifty metres deeper than the pack, Laurie Towner freefalls into a Third Ledge beast at Cloudbreak (Ted Grambeau)

However it’s Torren who, for better or worse, is the surfer most associated with the brand. Like Kelly and Quiksilver, Occy and Billabong, Mick and Rip Curl.

During those early online interviews, Ryan stated there’d be “no marketing” and at that stage there wasn’t - if there were any press photos they featured Ryan alone. It was true they’d never run marketing campaigns akin to the industry of old, but how else to see Torren and Ishka’s film work as anything other than marketing? 

“Well, for starters, Ishka’s passion for filmmaking is also my passion for filmmaking,” says Ryan, who indeed is listed as providing additional footage and producer on the films. “The creative things I like in this space are making adventure films, surfing, and designing products.” 

“At some point,” Ryan reflects, “when you have employees then you then have a duty to ensure that their jobs will be there into the future. You also have to create some form of economy that shares your story and reminds people that you exist.” 

“Anyway,” says Ryan as an afterthought, “if you’re in the market then you’re doing marketing. The point was we don’t create advertising material; the stuff that ends up in landfill."

It sounds like the last word and possibly should be, except as customers we all know the last word comes at the checkout. From a consumer’s point-of view, the ‘no marketing’ mantra resonated as it implied a cheaper end price. The 3/2 steamer that cost $180 in 2014 now costs $260 - despite a decade of inflation, innovation, and supply chain chaos.

Each year Ryan heads off to somewhere cold to go surf and test wetsuits. Snowshoeing high in the northern latutudes.

In his 2010 book ‘Salts and Suits’ Phil Jarratt charted the rise and fall of the surf industry, playing with the idea of creative young surfers - the salts - building surf companies whose boardrooms were gradually infiltrated by business people - the suits of course. The 'suits' had little knowledge of the culture the companies grew from and their ignorance sowed the seeds of the industry's collapse.

In the final chapter, Phil provides optimism about the surf industry. The sentiment is well-placed but at the same time incorrect. The industry now is unrecognisable to what it was. Quiksilver and Billabong, once rivals, now share the same corporate owner. Hurley, Volcom, and Rip Curl have all been absorbed by larger entities. The titans that once ruled from Torquay have been vanquished. Controlled by suits who've never waxed a board. 

Yet what Phil Jarratt couldn’t know was that as the old monopolies gave way, newer and smaller companies began to take their place.  Aside from needessentials, Dane Reynolds and Craig Anderson, who like Kelly and Ryan were Quiksilver alma mater, started Former, making clothes with zero overtures to the mainstream market. Alongside Former are a slew of rag traders, wetsuit makers, and apparel companies, all owned by surfers and all operating within the new confines of the surf industry. 

“There was a time when the surf industry had an ego bigger than the actual reality of the surf community,” says Ryan. Once the reckoning came it blew away all the fluff and non-essentials. And while the new order retains many of the old order’s ways - sponsored surfers, surf films, product drops – there's a crucial difference. The scale remains communal, meaning the connections remain real. 

At present, fifteen people are employed by needessentials, split between Yamba, Tasmania, and Torquay - which is no longer the surf capital it once was. “I’m really grateful for people like Greeny and Lawro, and even Brian Singer and Claw,” says Ryan thoughtfully. “I saw the opportunities and products they helped create for the surf community and they have every right to sell; to let someone else take it on.” 

“Right now though,” Ryan continues, comparing then to now, “the next generation of surf industry feels like what Quiksilver and Billabong once were. Just these little family and friends communities. I’d like to see the industry be a better representation of the community that they service; to be humble and real.” 

When he makes the comparison, however, it’s hard not to also wonder if, given the opportunity, the new surf industry will also shoot for the stars, go public on the sharemarket, the way Quiksilver and Billabong once did. Or if the owners, Ryan included, will be satisfied remaining at a communal scale, making real products, authentic films and art, and even activism, while surfing every day.

Perhaps the answer to that lies in the fact he’s been there before and he’s seen where that path leads. "Ryan knows exactly how big a thing can get before he can't live that life anymore," Simon Buttonshaw observes.

"If there's a guiding principle in needessentials, it's a clear recognition of what success really looks like."

//STU NETTLE