I was involved in a cottage industry which employed over 80.000 Aussies,years ago I and many of my competitors realized the cheap OS knock offs would smash us,with FK all help from the government,haha they did!I was asked by many people ha is your son going to take over down the track,same answer as about,not in my lifetime.
at the end of the day ONLY THEY KNOW WHY IT'S HAPPENED,& WERE NOT GOING TO BE TOLD THE TRUTH!!!!!!!! & IT ALL IS ABOUT THE MIGHTY $$$$$$$$$$$$.................they thought they were turning with the times,.... they were wrong!!! SIMPLE! & U CANT SAY IT WAS DARRENS,SIMON OR MUZZA'S FAULT.....IT WAS "THE COMPANY "BASE"!!!!!......... these guys are the legends of shaping surfboard & made a mistake,we all make mistakes!!! but to say that these guys cant start again shaping under there own names????? COME ON!!! ..........THESE GUYS ARE WHY WE HAVE WORLD CHAMPIONS... CHRIST SIMON IS A WORLD CHAMP!!!!!!... GIVE THEM A BREAK!!!!! BUT AS FOR THE ADMIN OF "BASE" THERE THE ONES WHO SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did Simon Anderson win a world title? Not sure about that, won the Bell's ,Coke and Pipe Masters all in one year. I just googled it, revolutionized surfing but still couldn't beat Mark Richards.
At the end of the day all those guys were the directors of the company and they will be held responsible, they employed the administration. There probably going to shape a heap of boards to dig themselves out of the hole they have dug themselves.
they are again selling boards and making money
just like dodgy builder on aca. surfers are a forgiving bunch...not me though. all the latest mags have these guys in them,but not one single sorry to those that got duped just poor me and i have to start again..well d1ckheads you blokes started this empire that could even defeat darth vader, failed and you screwed people...so get farked the lot off you and keep away from me...pr1cks
Billabong aside....
The shaping industry will always remain "cottage". It won't disappear or anything. We'll learn to live with cheap imported crap... Most of us aren't overly happy with that imported stuff... It suit's the learners, summer surfers, teenager's first board, etc. The price is right... kind of...
But, if you're looking for something a tiny bit different to "off the rack" you'll always go and see your local shaper.
I know a bunch of guys that can shape a decent board, and they work on their own, in their own shed out the back. Overhead is near zero. Plenty of glassers work like that too. They own their own shed, do contract glassing for the cottage shapers, if the shaper doesn't do the glassing.
www.smh.com.au/business/billabong-a-victim-of-its-own-success-20111220-1p3yy.html
Within the context of the article, this final paragraph is an extra "killer"....;
Sovereign debt rollovers in January that form part of a ?400 billion ($523.2 billion) first quarter refinancing task in Europe, including a ?111 billion Italian rollover, are the looming holiday hurdle.
This was on bloomberg
On Australia's Gold Coast, a 22-mile- long (35-kilometer) stretch of beaches named Surfers Paradise and Rainbow Bay, Neil Rech opened a surf shop in December and unwittingly disturbed the peace.
His store, Sedition Surfboards, sells Chinese imports for A$250 ($258), one-third the cost of some Australian-made boards that competitors are offering. Rival retailers averse to discounts and upset about local job losses questioned his patriotism, and even threatened violence, he said.
“It's quite heavy,” Rech, 34, said of the backlash. After teaching for two years in China before opening a store in Coolangatta, Queensland, “I realized how cheap you can actually get these boards so I thought it'd be a great opportunity to bring them here and sell them to the public cheaper.”
Inexpensive imports from Asia, coupled with a 55 percent jump in the local dollar since October 2008, are delivering a double dose of pain to one of Australia's most iconic industries. The struggles at surfboard makers are playing out at manufacturers across a country where China's demand for iron ore and fuel has spurred a mining boom while leaving non-resource businesses behind.
Manufacturers are on the wrong side of a divide in Australia's economy, which has avoided a recession since 1991 and boasts an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent, about half the level in Europe. While the number of mining jobs (AULQMINN) soared 21 percent to 242,400 in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, manufacturing employment slumped 4.4 percent to 953,500 and retail positions sank 2.2 percent to 1.21 million.
'Can't Compete'
The nation's currency has climbed 1.3 percent this year. It touched an all-time high of 80.15 euro cents today.
“Australia is certainly an economy in transition,” said Adam Carr, a senior economist in Sydney at ICAP Australia Ltd., a unit of the world's biggest interdealer broker, who formerly worked at the Australian Treasury. “We can't compete at the lower end of the chain.”
From Bells Beach to Brisbane, Australia's board builders are facing a choice: close down, or try to preserve local designs and branding by applying them to products made abroad.
“We have to adapt,” said Michelle Blauw, co-owner of Currumbin, Queensland-based D'Arcy Surfboards and president of the Australian Surf Craft Industry Association. “You can't always point the finger and blame everybody else for the situation that you're in.”
Shares Slump
Manufacturers across Australia are grappling with rising costs and a strong currency that's making their products less competitive overseas. BlueScope Steel Ltd. (BSL), the country's biggest steelmaker, said in August it would stop exports, shut a mill and a blast furnace, and fire 1,000 workers. Its shares slid 79 percent (BSL) in 2011.
Weaker consumer spending is adding to the pinch, as the slowing global recovery hurts sales at companies including surf- accessory retailer Billabong International Ltd. (BBG) The Gold Coast- based surf-clothing maker's stock plunged 78 percent last year. By comparison, Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index lost 15 percent.
D'Arcy sold its Gold Coast board-making facility in December after sales slowed because of the rising currency, cheap Asian imports and consumers' belt tightening, Blauw said. The business is still running from her garage with two employees, down from a peak of 11, she said.
Closing Shop
Born in beach towns in the 1950s, the backyard nature of Australian surfboard manufacturing has become part of the challenge, according to Blauw. In a nation where a tenth of the 22.8 million inhabitants are recreational surfers, producing world surfing champions such as Layne Beachley and Mark Richards, there aren't official statistics monitoring the board-making industry's size, she said.
“Surfing is almost our national pastime,” Blauw said of the birthplace of the three-finned “thruster” surfboard in 1981, which changed maneuverability and revolutionized the sport. “But small manufacturers like ourselves are shutting down left, right and center.”
While the sale of board shorts and other surf wear has propelled companies such as California's Quiksilver Inc. and Australia's Rip Curl International Pty into global brands, many Aussie board makers haven't been able to match that growth.
To protect Australia's brand in the global market, Blauw is trying to organize manufacturers and craftsmen to push for mandated country-of-origin labeling so Australian-made boards are distinguishable from imports.
Australian board maker Ron Wade had a glimpse of the future when he saw Chinese boards six years ago.
Industry 'Stuffed'
“I went, 'Mate, if this is what's going to come out of China, our industry's stuffed,'” said Wade, 66, who started his company in Mona Vale, New South Wales, in 1967. “In the next 10 years, there will be a few factories around but they will be few and far between.”
Blauw said some Gold Coast board designers have recently gone to work in the mining industry in search of more income. Board companies that are staying afloat say the country is seeing the twilight of a cottage industry that reflected Australia's reputation for laid-back lifestyles.
“The local manufacturers are losing some of that mystique,” said Mark Kelly, managing director of Global Surf Industries, who estimates that the global surfing-goods industry has grown to A$6 billion to A$7 billion a year. His Manly, New South Wales-based company sells more than 50,000 boards annually, including 15 brands that are made in China, Taiwan, Thailand and New Zealand. “It's not a hobby anymore; it's a real business.”
In Coolangatta, Rech said that while it may take time for his competitors to adjust to lower price tags on boards, Australia's economy will be better off in the long run as the imports will benefit consumers.
“It's like sticking a fat man on a treadmill,” he said. “First he doesn't like it, but then he gets into it.”
Imports aren't good for Australia, if nothing is made here anymore Noone will have a job or money to buy anything . You can't just import everything and think oh isn't it wonderful its half the price (and half the quality)
same as all boardshorts - made in china,
but someone has to shape those boards, unless they are a straight copy of a proven model, if your expecting some sort of performance, its the glassing and manufacture thats happening in china, not the design
I'm still going to go to a local shaper for a surfboard
As surfers we should not even think about buying imported boards,for all the obvious reasons.
In fact we should mock and ostracise anyone you see riding them.
(similar to lid riders and dare i say it, SUPers)
Would this happen in Hawaii?
C'mon people support Aussie shapers/manufacturers, even if it costs a little more.
Maybe all Aussie boards should have a Made in Australia sticker on them too.
Well, I hate to admit it, but I have 2x GSI boards - one a McT. First boards I have purchased that were not shaped locally in over 30yrs of surfing. In both cases the shapes were radically different from what I had been riding, and both were almost an impulse buy when looking around...
Neither board was any cheaper than a locally shaped board - the McT was $1,350 -And both boards were purhased from a small local surf retailer with a shaper doing a good trade.
I tend to keep my boards for about 4yrs or until they are like a golf ball - but I will be going back to a local shaper for my new boards...
Funny thing about the GPA Post is that everyone complains about cheap Chinese boards and how they are ruining the market.
I have sat in meetings about this and told them that I believed a far greater impact on Australian production is not cheap Chinese boards. It's expensive Chinese and Thai stuff. Companies like GSI and Firewire make far more boards on a singular brand level. They sell for more than a locally made board. Most did not like me saying this at all, I was chastised actually.
BUT WHY?
I argue that most people don't buy on price as much as people think they do, they buy on convenience, information, quality, reputation, awareness, service etc. These things are done extremely well by the above mentioned companies. Sophisticated marketing campaigns and distribution channels drive these brands into the market with a great impact. To make my point Firewire is #2 in the US Market behind Al Merrick, ahead of Lost and Rusty. Made in Thailand boards in the most patriotic country on the planet. GSI is the biggest manufacturer on the planet now.
Edit: To make a greater point, Doggie even rides a Firewire. Would he ride and post on here a cheap Asian board?? NO! my point is that these guys are taking the core market as well, not just beginners etc.
Most local manufacturers on the other hand make no effort towards any of these things. The ones that do, like let's say JS are doing extremely well.
What's the common denominator here? I'd say it's running a business well, doing things to let customers know about your boards and what you offer differently to a Chinese Board or even the bloke up the road. If people are finding it hard to tell the difference between a Chinese board and a local one, I'd say we're in trouble!
The solutions are:
Training and education of the workforce. Young people with fresh ideas to product development need to be attracted to the industry, all of the bad press about China killing them, etc is doing nothing to help either. No formal trade recognition etc.
Country of Origin labelling: The laws on this are as attached. Spread them around. www.homeaffairs.gov.au/ Only GSI actually labels their boards with country of origin, the rest of them are imported illegally.
Do people care where it is made? Some will, some won't, at least the labeling provides a platform for the local guys to differentiate.
There are good people working on this stuff right now, it will happen eventually.
There is no quick solution but local guys need to stop blaming imports as an excuse to sit and do nothing waiting for the sky to fall. If you do that, it will! Nobody can stop them, you need to find a way to be better than them..........
Hopping down off the soapbox now.....
Nice post CMC I agree with ya. Not too mention that the Chinese are very good at making stuff and are getting better by the day - it will not be long before their cars are dominating the car space. Look at Aust cars - very expensive and protected by govt intervention (tariffs etc) yet how many people still choose to buy them over the more reliable and cheaper to run Jap machines? Their volumes are shrinking every year. How much would cars cost the average Australian if these protections were not in place? Considerably less. Yes it would cost a few jobs but by in large Australians would be a lot better off (flame suit on). Its about comparative advantage and in cars Australia does not have it!!!
There is no reason that the Chinese and Thai boards can not be made to high quality and great shapes. They seem to be able to make most other things to high standard when they want to.
Not everyone needs the latest JS shape. Most people from what I see around the traps would be a lot better off with some more volume under their feet rather than thinking they are the next KS or GM!!! There will always be demand for high quality Australian shapers and they just need to adapt to the changing market place and get on with it. A lot of them have. I think Base started out with a nice idea but they just got caught up in the bulls*it and lost sight of what they were trying to achieve. Ie: Let the muppets call the shots. Surfing takes a long time to achieve any great level of performance and for most people who come over and give it a crack for their 1 yr holiday or occasional summer surfs then those cheaper boards are more than adequate I recond. So why should they not be able to buy something for $250 to do the job for them than splashing out $700? Makes no sense.
I'm a FIREWIRE fan,Aussie design made in Thailand.Has anyone bought one lately.Has the price dropped because of the strong AUS$,I bet it hasn't do to thier product being very good and demand strong..I have 3 and will buy another when the time comes unless I can get the same quality and durability from an Aussie maker.
