If you guys are interested come down to Surfworld on Thursday night to see some red hot debating regarding the future of the global surfing industry.
bleachfestival.com.au
Just gotta hunt up some old gsi tshirts so I got something appropriate to wear 
No problems with the GSI Shirts Bill.
Mark Kelly the CEO will be there talking also.
Time is 6:30pm. They sell beer, good beer also......
Count me in for sure - if you are coming mac I just may suprise you with my evening attire
Hey chris - are you gunna be there ? If so, looks like all my fave people in the world are gunna be in the one room all at the same time - wooo hooo - stoked
edit Lacey beat me to it,another great mind
Sounds good.
Hosted by "Bleach* surfing the fringe". We know what camp they will be supporting !! Quality pre loved boards !
Should be interesting. Wish I could be there.
Quality pre loved boards !
Quality pre loved boards ! bit tight on cash so i will have the flavoured water tomorrow night
cmc and your yuppie industry mates
care to give us a rundown cmc on how the evening went mate. just so us poor non connected types can know
I'm happy to say that the goals above were realized. Quite a few of the issues I would like to have seen go a little deeper but it could have went on for hours.
I'll write something up soon, I'm keen to hear what others thought.
One thing I am happy about is there were 100 seats, they were all full and heaps of people standing as well. The place was packed, it provides a much needed boost for the Surf Museum a well. That is important.
Well done CMC - look forward to the rundown when you get a chance to post. 210 is a fair turn out for any event let a lone one at $99 a head. Hats Off.
I was there along with Billboard and a few other 'breezers. Agree with CMC, a good evening and it would have been good to have time to go deeper on a few issues.
From what was presented it seems that Asia is like a tale of two cities when it comes to surfboard manufacturing and quality. The upshot was that you just can't classify all Asian originated product as being the same (poor) quality, in fact its far from it - just like with Asian cars (eg. Honda v. Proton/Kia).
On one hand you have the huge hi-tech Cobra factory in Thailand that produces world class boards, in a range of constructions, for shapers like Greg Webber, Hayden Cox (from HaydenShapes & FutureFlex), McTavish, Takayama, Al Merrick, Rusty, Byrne, MR, Wayne Lynch, etc. These are typically priced in line with locally made product of similar quality.
On the other hand, there is the poor quality, price point boards (generally from China) that two forum contributors said were being dumped in Australia due to our favourable dollar. It is these boards that are putting so much price pressure on local manufacturers and retailers.
And similarly to cars from Asia, brand name and price is usually your best indication of quality.
PS - afterwards i spoke to two well known repairers who are considering either refusing to repair cheap Chinese boards (or charging double) due to the poor integrity of the foam and glass and the extra work (and rework) involved. One repairer was abused by a customer because his cheap board subsequently collapsed around where the repairer had previously fixed it. The actual repaired section (Q-cell) was still fine, so the problem was actually the original crappy blank!
Good idea to up the repair bill imo,must be hard to repair one of these boards which are putting people out of work.
Who else from seabreeze attended
