jeff | Jeff Harbaugh

Making Changes in a Difficult Market; Orange 21’s Sept. 30 Quarter and Nine Months

Orange 21 (Spy Optic) is one of my favorite brands for a couple of reasons. First, over the last couple of years they’ve worked themselves through some really tough issues, making difficult decisions when required. And they’ve had to do it during the recession. Second, for better or worse they’re public. We get to see the numbers, actions, and […]

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Volcom’s Quarter Ended Sept. 30 and Some Strategic Industry Issues

Kering (Volcom)

Those of you who read my stuff know I never try to be the first published. When Volcom did their press release I reviewed it. I listened to the conference call and read its transcript and thought about it. Then I reviewed their 10Q when it was finally released. Then I thought about it some more. Now, I’ve thought

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Requiem for the ASR Show. Now What?

Trade Shows

At the moment you hear about it, it’s kind of a surprise. But when the initial shock passes, it’s not. I thought The Editors over at Boardistan put it best. Back in 2009, referring to ASR, they said; “We have to wonder what happens to the entire trade show business model when they have to pay retailers to

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The End of an Era (In a Good Way!) at Quiksilver

Quiksilver

I don’t think anybody else noticed this (or at least I didn’t see anybody else mention it) but on October 27th, Quik got a $20 million term loan from Bank of America. Along with some cash on hand, they used it to pay off the last $24.5 million (including accrued interest) of their original term loan

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Billabong’s Annual General Meeting

Billabong

On October 26th, Billabong Chairman Ted Kunkel and CEO Derek O’Neill made speeches at the company’s annual meeting. Together they only run to to seven pages of big, easy to read, type. You should read them, and you can read them here. There’s a lot of good, succinct information on why fiscal 2011 is a

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Action Sports Market Evolution as Reflected in VF’s Quarterly Results

VF Corp. (Vans, Reef, North Face)

VF released its earnings and held the quarterly conference call yesterday at 8:30 Eastern time. I’m not quite dedicated enough to listen to it at 5:30 AM on the West coast, but I did listen to the replay later in the morning. You can see the press release here. Remember, we don’t have the SEC filing on the

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Vail’s Annual Report; What’s the Future of Resort Real Estate?

Vail Resorts

This 10K was filed a couple of weeks ago for the year ended July 31. There are about 760 ski areas in North America. Vail owns five major ones that accounted for 7.7% of skier visits (about six million) during the last season. We don’t get many chances to see individual data from many of them, so taking

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An Insider’s History of the Surf Industry; Good Reading!

Surfing

Part of my weekend was spent reading Phil Jarratt’s excellent book, Salts and Suits; How a bunch of surf bums created a multi-billion dollar industry…and almost lost it. Phil has worked in surf publishing and the surf industry for more than 35 years, including five years as the head of marketing in Europe for Quiksilver. He seems

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Never Summer’s and Mervin Manufacturing’s Little Patent Brouhaha

Mervin Manufacturing

I guess I should start by admitting that I’m not an expert on snowboard technology, and I don’t have a strong opinion (any opinion, actually) on which kind of camber is best and I don’t know who made which claim first. I also haven’t read, and don’t intend to read, the patents. I figure I

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Nike’s First Quarter; Strong. The Integration of Brand and Retail is Particularly Interesting

Nike

Normally, I prefer to wait for the actual quarterly filing to be available before doing this kind of analysis, but I trust you can all appreciate what a monumental waste of time it would be to really dig into Nike’s balance sheet. They’ve got $4.7 billion in cash and short term investments and $9.7 billion in

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