It's 1990 and Bruce Raymond is enraged. The licensing boss of Quiksilver – then the world's largest surf company – is planning a statement of fiery intent.

For years, Quiksilver had been at the vanguard of surf fashion. Echo Beach, Ghetto Dog, War Paint, Surfers of Fortune. When homegrown labels ran Aldi-style knock-offs, stealing their aesthetic and diluting their brand, Quik printed a manifesto to originality and slipped it between the pages of the following month's surf magazines. The message was clear: creativity matters, authenticity counts.

Yet the moral high ground meant little to counterfeiters looking to cash in. When Quiksilver rip-offs began appearing on the streets of Kuta, Bruce was compelled to act. This wasn't just about lost revenue, he saw something more meaningful also being lost.

Bruce enlisted the help of John Will, an Australian expat and martial arts expert specialising in Bhakti Negara. Together, they became brand vigilantes.

Bruce and John traced the forgeries to a Denpasar warehouse. Inside, they discovered rooms full of counterfeit print fabric – bolts of material bearing bastardised versions of Quik’s distinctive patterns. Will and his team of locals - also trained in Bhakti Negara - seized the goods in what must have felt like a scene from an action movie.

At one point during the raid, as the fake merchandise was being hauled out, Bruce reportedly jumped up on a table and declared to the stunned counterfeiters: "You are stealing our spirit!" 

A touch melodramatic, perhaps, but an indication Bruce believed the knockoffs weren't just stealing profits but essence and authenticity.

And he wasn’t finished yet.

Bruce hauled the entire stash out to Uluwatu, where low tide had exposed the coral reef and its biota. With cameras rolling, he tossed the counterfeit goods in a heap on the exposed reef. Then he doused it with petrol and lit a match.

With a satisfying whoosh the pile of fabric went up in flames, sending acrid black smoke spiraling skyward. For Bruce, it was a moment of triumph – a dramatic declaration that Quiksilver would not be compromised.

Bruce Raymond torches the counterfeit fabric plus the odd crustacean (John Will)

A visitor burning synthetic fabrics on a live reef in a developing country? The same stunt performed in 2025 might result in a different outcome to what was intended. Nevertheless, Bruce's theatrical message was delivered. Although, the story goes that after the bonfire was extinguished and the smoke cleared, Quiksilver quietly offered their Indonesian license to the very counterfeiters they’d just shut down. It was a brilliant bit of realpolitik – if you can't beat them, legitimise them and profit from their distribution networks.

More recently, however, the internet has unleashed a new wave of counterfeiters that makes the Bali warehouse operation look quaint in comparison. 

Unlike the physical goods that Bruce burnt, digital counterfeiting exists in a virtual realm that's beyond the reach of traditional enforcement, beyond even the reach of martial arts experts. Today’s counterfeiters use websites and social media to potentially reach millions of customers, and they game the search engines to sit alongside real brands.

Over a number of articles, The Guardian recently reported on the rise of internet ‘ghost stores’ and digital impersonators. They found up to 140 ghost stores, often masquerading as well-known businesses, with websites designed to look like the original.

Possibly because I read those articles, my own social media feed was suddenly full of ads for classic surf clothing: Quiksilver, Rip Curl, Billabong, even Hot Tuna. The prices were awfully tempting in this cost of living crisis - certainly cheap enough to overlook questions of origin.

Against my better judgement I clicked on an ad, knowing full well what that’d mean. Suddenly I matched a profile:

• surfer
• shopper
• tightwad 

So the algorithm promptly did its thing presenting me with a bonanza of surfwear all at hard-to-argue discounts.

Many of these websites are elaborate operations with professional photography, brand stories, and customer service systems that rival legitimate retailers. One example: SurfinCurse, who appear LA-based as they have a photo of Malibu Pier on their homepage and claim all net proceeds go to LA Wildfire Fund.

“Our design team is a collective of passionate designers who are deeply inspired by the retro surf scene and the bohemian flair of the hippie era," reads their brand story. "They are the visionaries who blend vintage patterns with modern silhouettes, ensuring that each piece is not just clothing, but a statement of individuality and timeless style.”

It goes on but you’ve all read AI guff before, though this passage is worth cutting and pasting:

“We’re more than just a clothing line, we’re a community shared by love for the ocean, a penchant for peace, and a desire to dress the world in the colours of freedom.”

The SurfinCurse design team dressed in the colours of freedom.

When you're designing a website all the eye-catching stuff goes right up at the top - like photos of people wearing pirated surf clothes, for instance - yet I find all the revealing info sits down at the bottom. Like the company address.

Not surprisingly, SurfinCurse aren't from Los Angeles, but they're not from China either. The address leads to a building in Singapore that, when I type the address into my search engine, is also home to a brand called Surfers Paradise Clothing Company, and run by Mr Kelvyn Chee.

"Established in 1975 by Mr. Kelvyn Chee, Surfers Paradise started out as a seemingly insignificant and ordinary hut shop across Burleigh Heads, selling hand-crafted surfboards."

It sounds plausible enough, Kelvyn Chee is a real person, though if his LinkedIn profile is to be believed he began high school in 1988. In 1975 he wouldn't have been tall enough to see over his own front counter which makes the Surfers Paradise origin story part Rip Curl, part Hollister. Or part Public Enemy, part Milli Vanilli. Believe the part you want to believe.

Surfing has always sold a fantasy lifestyle yet the new world has morphed it into something unexpected and faintly ridiculolus - with hibiscus scent in the air a pre-teen Mr Miyagi shapes alongside Dick van Straalen before they session Burleigh on their hand-crafted shooters.

Still fumbling around at the bottom of the webpage I also noticed a copyright link. Thinking it may have been a mea culpa for their brazen piracy I found instead a statement that Bruce Raymond would've been proud of:

"At SurfinCurse we take pride in our unique designs, creative content, and the vibrant culture we represent."

This hall of mirrors remark is followed by a quasi-legal statement that protects, improbably, their intellectual property. Say what you will about surf fashion, perhaps you don't even wear it anymore, yet there's something ludicrous about opportunists not just profiting off someone else's ideas and art, but also protecting it as if it's their own.

Can't decide which brand you want to buy?

Neil Ridgway is the Head of International Licensing at Rip Curl. He gives a knowing chuckle when I explain to him the article I'm working on. In the course of our conversation he describes the elaborate lengths people have gone to, even setting up entirely fake Rip Curl stores in some countries. Whole stores. Big photos of team riders out the front, bunch of Rip Curl wetties scored in a liquidation sale somewhere to give the impression of authenticity, and then rows and rows of pirated clothes.

Considering the concerted efforts made in the real world, Neil isn't the least surprised by the complex businesses now operating on the web.

"We get served ads on Instagram or whatever," says Neil, "and if it’s not one of ours, it just doesn't read right. Something's off about it so we'll look into it."

"We have a digital team here," continues Neil, "that protects our digital copyright. We have to keep vigilant about it because there are so many websites [counterfeiting designs].

The idea of copyright protection doesn't just protect Rip Curl, because, as Neil explains, sometimes people buy what they think are legitimate Rip Curl goods online and then take it into a real store for replacement if it's faulty.

"There's not much that we can do in those situations, but we'll work with the surfer to fix it as the legit brand if it’s possible," says Neil.

The Rip Curl team stay on the case of counterfeiters: "We observe what websites or companies are doing and then we'll quietly take the appropriate steps to have them removed."

The problem, as anyone who's taken even the smallest step into the internet knows, is that the person on the other side of the screen could be anywhere, in any jurisdiction. In 1990, Bruce Raymond cut the head off the snake, but the internet has created a many-headed Hydra that can only be slowed, never killed.

"It's never ending," says Neil of this online whack-a-mole. "Those websites that you've seen, they may disappear soon but they'll be replaced by others."

'Search and don't destroy' - a new twist on an old classic

Neil's last comment on websites disappearing got me thinking about them in a different way. About how some of the designs I'd seen, if soon to be made unvailable are as good as a limited edition - two words that get a shopper excited.

On a website called TovCanco - "a retro-inspired surf and hippie brand that celebrates individuality, self-expression, and the laid-back vibes of coastal living" - I'd seen a design that caught my eye.

The layout for the TovCanco website was similar to that of SurfinCurse yet the company location differed. They weren't based in Singapore, TovaCanco were American, from Wyoming apparently, while their terms of service were in compliance with the laws of the United Kingdom.

In the same vein, I saw a T-shirt that was described as 'vintage batik tie dye Teahupoo Tahiti gradient ombre,' and yet it was none of those things. It did, however, feature a one-of-a-kind design - the cover of Matt Warshaw's book 'History Of Surfing' on a T-shirt print with a Billabong logo.

Figuring my algo was already destroyed I upped the ante and typed in my credit card digits. Not all dodgy clothing sites are run by counterfeiters, some, as The Guardian uncovered, don't have any clothes at all. They'll take your money, sell your credit card details, then leave you waiting by the letterbox.

After waiting a few weeks, this is what I thought TovCanco had done to me. I tried to track the order but got nowhere, the tracking number didn't work, and it looked suspicious. I then hit up PayPal whose swift no-questions-asked refund appeared to indicate they knew TovCanco was a scam site. C'est la vie. The design was too good to be true.

That afternoon, however, a parcel arrived with a postage mark from Wuhan, now exporting something besides bat virus.

It's a postmodern mashup of motifs, an abstraction of Western surf culture, though I've got no idea how popular the design is in Asia. The quality is in keeping with expectations: thin cotton that'll no doubt shrink three sizes first wash, and a digital print that'll only last that long anyway.

Legacy brands needn't worry too much just yet.

// STU NETTLE