Ferdy and the Five Ring Circus
Yesterday Fernando Aguerre, President of the International Surfing Association, gave a speech to America's Surf Industry Manufacturers Association (SIMA). Ol' Ferdy was the recipient of an honorary award and he took the opportunity to both warn and advise the surf industry. It's a sound read although it does trouble me somewhat. Take a peruse and I'll meet you at the last quote mark...
"I think we are at an industry crossroads. We've had a really nice time for fifteen years. It was a gravy train, guys. ...Then when the world was hit really hard, we were also hit really hard."
"It's challenging. A lot of surf industry members are now part of large corporate companies with the problem [of dealing with] the bean counters deciding what is good and what is cool. It's a challenge for people that work for the bigger companies. But coming up we have a lot of smaller companies and emerging brands and SIMA is now looking to support the emerging brands."
"For the big guys, one advice - act like you are small or otherwise you are going to die big."
"For the small guys, smile and be happy because you are small. Play the contrarian please. If you do that, it's okay. If we don't do that, we are going to eat shit and nobody wants to eat shit. Nobody wants to work in a bank or a corporation or somewhere else. We've got to defend this. This is the best thing – we are the minority of the minority of the minority of the world that we are here guys."
"We must focus - the guys that made it - we need to focus on facilitating the success of the smaller companies. Because we know if we don't do that, we are going to risk extinction. We don't want to kill this. I don't want to sound too grave, but it's a crossroads and it's up to us. There's nobody else who is going to do that for us."
Well Ferdy, thanks for the offer to play the contrarian. I'm sensing a bit of conflict, so pass me the soapbox and can I get a bit of silence up the back...
You speak a lot of sense, Ferdy, with your dire economic prophecy and what it will mean to the surf industry. Tough times do lie ahead. The big guys had better buckle down. The small guys are relatively well positioned. Bang on, I'd say. I'm with you all the way.
But let's not forget that you are the President of the International Surfing Association, Ferdy. You have led an ongoing campaign to get surfing introduced as an Olympic Sport. This troubles me, for is there anything bigger than the Olympic Games? Yeah OK, the World Cup, I hear you say. And the Tour de France, too. But let's not be silly, Ferdy, soccer and bikes aren't cool. You know that.
Yet you know that surfing is cool. And you know that surfing is good. You say so in the speech above as you openly deride the bean counters for trying to steer our sport toward a bland, economically rational future. This also troubles me, Ferdy, for is there anything more bland than the Olympic Games?
It's simple: big and cool don't go together. They're as ill-fitting as a surfer in a coloured tracksuit. They're as ridiculous as a surfer shedding tears on the dais while hugging a stuffed koala and humming the anthem.
You seem to take some pride in surfing being 'the minority of the minority of the minority'. That's great, I do too. So why this relentless push to get surfing into the Olympics? Why project surfing onto an even larger stage where it will be subject to forces it can't control, where surfers will be placed under scrutiny they won't like, and the whole context of our sport will be trusted to the large corporations that you cast suspicion on in the speech above.
Why?
Surfing doesn't need to be in the Olympics. Surfers as a whole - in fact, surfing as a culture - won't benefit from it. The only parties that will benefit are the companies involved, and it sure as hell won't be the small companies you champion in your speech.
Comments
Considering Fernando's home country isn't competing in the London Olympics for soccer it's no wonder he's banging on like he is. Would surfing be considered as a Summer or Winter Olympics event?
Aw come on Stu, you fellow Aussies started it.
Carirns. Pink Townend. Warren. Horan. Jim Banks...
Were not they all sporting the matching gaylord tracksuits well before this Ferdy nozzle's mention?
Cairns and Townend are honorary Seppos now, Roller. Banks and Warren are forever ashamed.
Stu brah, with Warren building a profitable wax company, and one of the main critics going on to edit Tracks mag, and executing for Quiksilver,.... i call bollocks on your whole lot....
http://www.ocregister.com/news/townend-45982-cairns-says.html
"America, says Cairns, was more receptive. "Americans love a party. And they want people to come in a costume."
all of those old capitalists, as well as the new 2.0 version,..
are sexy.
and you know it!
&feature=relmfuNah Roller, gimme Marx & Engels over Cairns & Townend.
Communism 2.0, that's what I'm trumpeting and we've got no need for big business, the Olympics, or coloured tracksuits, either.
I use the term 'we' because we Communist 2.0's are many. In fact, we are legion.
Aguerre sounds like a really good guy. He gives plenty of dosh to charities and causes. I think his Olympics hobby horse is simply a way for the ISA to differentiate itself from the ASP. I doubt he really believes the greater good rhetoric.
yup Stu.... damn Commies back in the day had a lock on the matching "tracksuits".
http://www.soviet-power.com/uniforms/Gallery001.htm
too bad. now-a-days everyone's a capitalist.... as someone clearly has a lock on capitalizing on the current demand.
no worries Comrade Stu, there's plenty of commies and dictators still rolling with the matching togs.
Don't mistake us for Communist 1.0s, Roller. We are the new breed, each with our own unique colour and flavour.
http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n245/stunet/muahahaha.png
SIMA supporting up and coming brands....??
looks like to me the whole Olympic deal is about creating big bureaucracies,jobs for life etc...like Surfing Australia and the silly high performance center
..the whole olympic model is a scam,like the world cup,when bureaucats become more important than the athletes.....expense accounts,travell allowances,bribes etc.....
for 15 years the brands have had it easy,so lets see a bit of creativity and innovation from the Surf industry and actually work there way out of the current malaise ...or is it too late and the future is smaller privately owned co's????
My thoughts exactly Brutus. Is Fernando just playing lip service here? Or, after 15 years of encouraging growth and promoting a 'bigger is better' motto, is he truly espousing an opposite view? Either way it's a bit rich. For one, the big companies cannot just become small companies, not even by thinking like small companies. That's just a ludicrous thing to say.
This topic resonates at a particularly deep level and is worth studying if you are one of the so-called 'smaller companies'. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Will you make the same mistake as Billabong and Quiksilver? Will you listen to SIMA when the economy recovers?
ha ha...on brutus's comment, I recall the last time the surf industry hit a massive speed bump in 1990/91, talking with Danny Kwock, VP marketing at Quiksilver.
Danny was very humble in the face of the thrashing his and other surf companies were taking, as American Youth decided surfing wasn't too cool any more and dashed off to consume Grunge.
Did he think the companies would carry a new caution into future eras of prosperity? I asked. Would they Remember Their Roots, etc?
There was a chance that's how it would go, Danny conceded. "But, y'know, realistically, we'll all probably just go haywire again and chase the bucks!" he half chortled. "That's what people do!"
A decade or so later, Dan was kind of gently encouraged to move on from Quiksilver, toting a couple of hundred mill from the IPO of Volcom, that upstart lil competitor co that he'd quietly helped his Newport Beach mate Richard Woolcott get going in the wake of Surf Recession Mark 1.
Whatever you might reckon of it, there's no doubting Dan understood human nature.
Re Fernando's embrace of the Olympic rings, I wonder if it might have something to do with his South American/European background.
When he began his enthusiastic pursuit of the rings back in 1996, Fernando must have known it would be a bit of a leg up for the many outlier surf nations who had bugger all chance of making an impact at ASP Tour or core surf cultural level.
Being from a relatively small surf zone, his urge was toward inclusion, not exclusion. Fernando talks about cool, but his instincts are warm.
In principle I'm not opposed to surfing being in the olympics. What I am opposed to is Bruce Fucking-McAvaney calling a surfing heat.
Get Occy to call the Olympics and we'll never get a return invite. Problem solved! Although Occy trying to play it straight while reading out medal tallies and crossing to Norman May would be pretty hilarious.
Stu brah,
Since the big surf companies started off long ago as small surf companies and are now in the bind of chugging along as slow to no growth mega companies, do not these bigs need the smalls even more so these days?
How else can the biggies post up some growth unless they acquire the small time companies?
On a second note, the amount of serous crumbs Danny pulled from the initial VLCM IPO was minor, compared to the serious pile he made on the VLCM/PPR buyout bid....
As old Danny boy held fully 9.4% of the company, or 2,328,862 Volcom shares!
BOOYAH!
Then again, maybe Ferdy, (animal print blazer and all), know that of which he's speaking of...
Capitalism for one and all!
Get 'ya some.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iTrKAySmrasPUfuCjdv2C_...
@Roller,
If you're gunna comment please talk about something else other than capitalism. It is boring and you are a serious drain on my dopamine levels.
Thanking yew in advance.
Yew brah,
Competition is global.
And so is capitalism.
&feature=g-all-uFUCK OFF!
all the way back to Bend, Oregon or wherever the fuck you come from.
Little bit harsh, mate. Maybe leave out the personal attacks.
no worries Stu. there's no darkness like ignorance!
besides, this is one more example...
never trust the teller. trust the tale.
@things;
why the hate for capitalism? everything we have stems from it!
It's all so simple really. This is a bit of ASP Machiavellian magic, lo and behold:
ISA runs the next Olympics in Brazil and the following in Russia, from sth American summer slop to a wave pool only Rick Caine's mother could love. Surfers worldwide are disgusted and turn it off in droves, or never turned it on. Teams consist of the most Dunn of athletes, well, those drones and the party boys who want their last shot at some Kazakhstani poonani. Surfing Australia high performances the shit out of them, we are victorious, but we aren't watching three to the beach was un-cool for us a long time ago. Bigger markets are, elsewhere, places where cool has never even thought about daddy-o-ing. Places where the banality that makes up an Olympic sport thrives.
Concurrently, or perhaps a little before (like 4 - 3.5 years before) the big 3 as we knew them, 'core' surf brands, collapse. What's the prognosis doctor? A serious lack of cool. But they can make a garment, and they can sell a garment, and their new CEOs can pimp Maui AND her sons more effectively than Don 'Magic' Juan. Welcome to the big racks, to the malls, welcome to a future of being draped across shoulders-like-brown-snakes (as opposed to the broad cutlets you were accustomed to accompany).
Welcome to the biggest financial favour that could have ever occurred, welcome to the mainstream. Weren't you sick of being held to ransom by an abstract fucking concept? One that was long decided as to not exist once it was spoken about? You'd be fucking stoked, wrapped even, to shake the 'cool' parasite from your uncovered ankle..
(Did I mention this was going to take place during a brave new economic climate where trainee hairdressers are faux hawking the fuck out of any sprig unfortunate enough to have not convinced the bureaucrats down at the 'link that their independent of the padres? Well it is, and $70 teeshirts just aint practical).
So the Big 3 welcome the games. It's now their demographic, and rash vests are the new Ed Hardy from the Steppes to the (old) Zealand lowlands. Merchant's got himself a new yacht, and the guys that we've tired for oh-so long with our ides of un-cool are glad that that moustached monkey is off their back and they can settle down to the serious business of making real money.
**Meanwhile the only true arbiter of excellence in surfing, the ASP, openly weeps at the loss of the BIg 3's sponsorship, whilst quietly reclaiming the broadcasting rights for themselves. They put together a multimedia package the likes of which we've never before seen, and consistent too. With the new media package they can afford to get off the beach breaks and back into the dream, the world will be able to watch what is undeniably fucking rad - the world's best surfers in the world's best waves.
I double fucking dare anyone to deny that. James' Labrador is 110 over 6'5" and not afraid to throw them.
Brands that have already undergone the transformation the Big 3 are making are now in a position of financial stability to throw money at intangible concepts such as cool and core, and they do so. What differentiates Pepsi from Coke? It sure aint the taste, but an image of not-so little Jacky Robinson throwing himself at a P-Pass screamer sure will, or old man Florence 540-ing his way down the line at Uluwatu, with a Turpel in arms length of a microphone.
High performance competitive surfing isn't going anywhere, and as far as spectacles are concerned it's about the fucking coolest of them all.
Postscript:
If a comment falls in a forest 5 days after the previous, does it really exist? How long has it been since my last surf?
The comment above is why I'd never make a good crook. I can't scheme or connive. I know there's an evil scheme buried in there but even after I've read it through twice I still don't fully follow it. James Labrador, you're two conspiracies and twenty cheeseburgers ahead of me. Back to lifting heavy things I go.
Received yet another press release from the ISA this morning, with Fernando Aguerre "offering our sincere congratulations to new IOC President Bach", "on behalf of the 35 million surfers on five continents".
A couple of photos were included, one with the caption: "Aguerre worked with the IOC on behalf of 35 million surfers around the world to bring the sport of surfing as a way to strengthen the Olympic Movement."
Interesting to revisit this piece from a few years back.
The lovely Matt Warshaw also recently highlighted a "bit of perspective on surfing and the Olympic Games" (all quotes below from his Twitter account, highly recommended):
“It shouldn’t be too long before surfing is entered on the Olympic calendar.” - SURFER, 1964
“We believe surfing can be an Olympic sport by 1984.” - Surf Magazine, 1977
“There is a big chance that surfing might soon be recognized by the IOC.” - Surfing, 1984
Aguerre is “confident that surfing will be included in the [2000] Sydney Olympics.” -Surfing, 1995
Many are “optimistic [about the Olympics], especially with the surge of women [surfers].” - SURFER, 2004
Shout out to Steve Pezman of the Surfer's Journal, for his take on surfing and Olympics, in 1995: The IOC is "rife with crap, [and] surfing can’t be shrink-wrapped and taken to market without losing its character, spontaneity and appeal.”
Follow Matt on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/mattwarshaw
I'd love if surfing went back to being "not cool" again. The less people that like to surf, the better!
"Tokyo 2020 has recommended to the IOC that Surfing take place on natural ocean waves if it is included on the Sports Programme for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games"
Press release from the ISA: