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Roxy using girl power to ride the crest of surf apparel wave

Los Angeles Business Journal, Sept 30, 2002 by Jennifer Bellantonio

IT'S an image held in awe by young girls from the beach to the bayou.

A young, athletic "Roxy" girl in a cute bikini laughing with friends or riding waves in crystal blue surf.

Magazine ads for Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc.'s juniors brand prompts teenage girls nationwide to flood the company with e-mails wanting in on the big secret: How can they, too, become a Roxy girl?

That golden image all started in the design pit. On any given day the female-dominated section of Quiksilver's Surf City headquarters is buzzing with babes.

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A trim 20-something models a bright floral-print bathing suit, pulling here and tucking there to fine-tune the fit. Designers, m frilly peasant-style tops and weathered jeans, sit at a long table and critique bikinis, along with two girl-team riders against a backdrop of sportswear. Above them a yellow canopy with daisies hangs from the ceiling.

"I try and trash my suits," says Kassia Meador, a Roxy-sponsored professional surfer. She's wearing a Roxy cap backwards to hide her new Mohawk haircut. "I play hard in them and see how they last when you surf in them three times a day, wash them and then dry them in the sun."

The feedback from Meador and other team riders is harsh at times, but that's just fine for the designers. They want to get it right. "We constantly feel the pressure," says Leslie Tobia, vice president of design for swim. "We need to feel that pressure to make sure we're doing the best job that we can."

It's one of the reasons Roxy keeps building momentum in a category it created single-handedly: women's surf apparel.

Prior to Roxy, "that category didn't exist," says Mitch Kummetz, an analyst at Los Angeles-based Wedbush Morgan Securities. "If you look at a surf shop, a good part of that business is now women's," Kummetz said. "Fifteen years ago that wasn't the case."

Since Quiksilver, a pioneer in men's surf apparel, introduced women's apparel a decade ago a number of local names -- Billabong USA, O'Neill and Rusty, all of Irvine -- have launched and grown their own women's lines.

Strong competition

"We want to grow this whole category," says Randy Hild, senior vice president of marketing. "The competition has been welcome. At the same time, we've got to keep on our toes."

What started as a few junior swimsuits and boardshorts has blossomed into a multi-tiered division with swimsuits, accessories, sportswear, footwear for a variety of age groups.

There's Roxy (ages 14 to 25), Roxy Girl (ages 8 to 13) and Teenie Wahine (ages 4 to 7). The product is supported by a slew of women-only surf events and camps and even an all-girl instructional surf video.

Sales went from $1.1 million in 1991, Roxy's first season, to a projected $210 million this year. The men's category, which includes Quiksilver young men's and boy's, saw sales of $389 million in 2001 -- the largest segment of the company's total revenue of $615 million.

"Roxy will surpass (men's) sales within two years," Hild says. "We pinch ourselves and say, 'Oh, gosh really? Is this thing still going off?"'

When Quiksilver launched Roxy in 1991, it was a rescue strategy of sorts.

The boom of the late-1980s surfwear scene had gone bust, and as a result Quiksilver's men's brand, the only thing the company was doing at the time, saw its volume cut in half in one year. "The company was in turmoil. The industry was in a soft point," says Hild.

To take pressure off the men's business, a lifestyle brand was created for women. "We needed to diversify from being this one-trick pony because we were at risk," says Hild.

Various names were bandied about at a brainstorming session that included the company's founder and chief executive, Bob McKnight, and Danny Kwock, who now heads Quiksilver's new entertainment unit, brainstormed names.

"They clearly did not want to call it Quiksilver for fear it would damage the men's brand," Hild says. "Roxy was the name of choice. It sounded right, it looked good. It was the name of punk bands and clubs. It was also Bob McKnight's daughter's name. All things added up."

So in 1991 they launched the brand -- and stumbled.

Hild says Quiksilver's problem was it used hard-core surfers to sell bikinis. Guys who made board shorts and T-shirts designed them. "It didn't work," he says. "The company was a men's brand."

Quiksilver brought in some expertise in 1992 by buying Raisins, a women's swimwear company. Hild moved over and so did Tobia, who still designs for Raisins.

Trial and error

Quiksilver kept Raisins and began developing its own Roxy brand. The next few seasons were trial and error, Hild says, with the company experimenting with looks and fabrications.

Then, in 1993, came a break. The crew was in Hawaii at a men's surf contest and noticed women wearing men's or boy's boardshorts. They pitched the idea to Lisa Anderson, the 1994 Surfing World Title Champion. "She said she'd love them," Hild says.

Business Services Industry

Roxy using girl power to ride the crest of surf apparel wave

Los Angeles Business Journal, Sept 30, 2002 by Jennifer Bellantonio

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