Go ahead and finish that equation if you can. I have tried and tried to come up with an answer for awhile now and to no avail. I’m not necessarily saying I agree or disagree with this partnership and am actually sitting on both sides of the fence when it comes to understanding the reasoning behind it. With RVCA making “The Balance of Opposites” their main concept, the partnership between them and the mixed martial-artist BJ Penn brings that statement to fruition in both a positive and, potentially, negative manner.

RVCA is built around the concept of being an all inclusive, outside-the-box company that stretches beyond the limits of your typical action-sports clothing companies. On top of skaters, snowboarders, and surfers they are represented by musicians, artists, and any other that excels in and is driven by passion and creativity in their particular fields. Penn has proven himself to be just that by showing the drive and God-given talent to excel in that which has made him as popular and well-known as he is today.

By bringing in an unbelievably successful MMA athlete to the team, RVCA is stepping out of the limits to include ‘artists’ of such differing and contrasting styles and genres. This goes right along with their “The Balance of Opposites” concept and accomplishes that which they have set out to do.

Penn recently fought and won the UFC lightweight championship over in the U.K. While their PPV numbers have yet to be released, based on previous fights featuring BJ Penn it will be in the hundreds of thousands as far as buys go. Between that, the live gate, and everything else Penn does in the UFC he is one of, if not the most visible representative that RVCA has. He comes into the octagon sporting RVCA logos from head to toe and his ties with the company are very well known and easy to see. Here is where this may end up being a bit tricky for RVCA.

Penn has always been, and now more than ever as their champion will continue to be, one of the biggest stars of a company and sport that is one of the fastest growing in the world. Where the UFC was once a niche market aimed at the hardcore MMA enthusiasts, it is now blowing up and subsequently aiming to market itself to any and everyone. Specifically, as seen on their most recent shows and advertisements, they are going after the viewers and customers that we will simply call the World Wrestling Entertainment(W.W.E.) market. RVCA has no control of just how and where BJ Penn is marketed by the UFC. And if the UFC has their way the same fans that go out to cheer on and follow Hulk Hogan, Triple H, Ric Flair and cheer for the chair-smack, figure-four, and royal rumbles will without a doubt begin becoming a much larger percentage of their target audience. And inadvertently, with Penn being a walking advertisement for RVCA and their most recognizable advocate, they may be unexpectedly advertising to an unexpected and unintended audience.

Fans want to be like their champions (i.e. I wanna be like Mike), they want to walk like them, perform like them, and they want to wear what they wear. As the UFC continues to grow and expand its market there should be no surprise when RVCA starts showing up in places and areas they never expected. Is this what they had in mind with “The Balance of Opposites”? I highly doubt it.

It’s hard to say where this will lead. Depending on the UFC’s continued growth and expansion as well as Penn’s success with the organization this could lead to a variety of results for RVCA. Their is a point of no return for companies in the action-sports industry that once they reach are almost impossible to come back from, but with so many variables in this equation there is just no way to tell how this ends up for RVCA.

So where does this leave us? Pretty much right where we began - RVCA + BJ Penn = ?

RVCAbj penn

Up until now, the only heaters we have had in wetsuits have been the natural type that are dependent upon the amount of coffee or water slammed down before paddling out to each session. Rip Curl and their soon to be released H-Bomb wetsuit are looking to drastically change that. The suit is the first of its kind and is slated to be made available by Fall of this year.

This has been a product in the makings for a long time by Rip Curl. They have pushed the release date back after it was scheduled to be available in the Fall of last year and it appears they have it dialed now as evidenced of their video of surfers charging Arctic conditions while sporting the H-Bomb. The wetsuit will have three different temperature settings that can be adjusted with a button located on its outer surface. The H-Bomb is the world’s first power heated wetsuit, designed to keep a surfer super-warm (despite the chilly temperature of the water they’re surfing in) by positioning two fiber-heating elements, which conduct electricity that generate heat and warm the blood.

The only draw-back is Rip Curls projected price tag of $600-700 for the suit. At first glance that seems a little steep, however with the ability to adjust the temperature it may just eliminate the needed to own multiple suits of different thickness. Until more information on the suit is released it is difficult to make a conclusion on the impact this will have on the industry. So for now it looks like the best we can do is throw down a few more glasses of liquid before heading out for those chilly winter sessions

rip curl

Citing the need to give big-mountain riders an opportunity to display their style and skill, North Face has recently unveiled their plans for a two-stop big-mountain tour. The inaugural 2008 North Face Masters will hold its first competition at Snowbird, UT. on Feb. 8-12 while holding the closing stop of the tour April 2-6 at Alyeska, Alaska.

For decades, the world has seen the sport of Snowboarding grow rapidly in many forms, with amateur and professional competitive outlets for half pipe, park, snowboarder-cross, and traditional racing …yet until the introduction of The North Face Masters Tour, Big Mountain snowboarders, even those publicly embraced heroes at the highest level of their sport, have not had the opportunity to put their skill and talent to work against other athletes in a competitive arena.

With the tour, North Face is making a serious push at being the main face of Big-Mountain Snowboarding. The make it pretty clear on the tour site, that they believe they are filling a major void in the industry with these events. By limiting the this inaugural tour to two events and wisely selecting these two legendary mountains to hold them on there is a real possibility they may do just that.

north face

As previously mentioned, Billabong has put on it’s first ever virtual surf contest. Between the months of last October through December, surfers were given the chance to film anywhere on the North Shore and submit entries of their favorite rides.

During that time Billabong received 120 clips from local-groms to seasoned pros alike that have since been viewed and rated by visitors on FreewaveChallenge.com. After tallying the number of views and rating-levels each clip received as well as receiving input from respected journalists and surfers, Billabong has announced the finalists for the first ever Freewave Challenge. Five clips were selected for each category as contestants could submit footage for either Best Tube Ride Or Best Performance ride. It comes as no surprise to me that Hawaii-surfers were responsible for half of the selected rides with the contest being held in their backyard. After careful consideration, here are 5ones.com picks for each:

Best Tube Ride
Best Performance Ride

Anyone interested in viewing the other clips that made it to the final five can head over to FreewaveChallenge.com and see what you think. There are some pretty epic rides and this appears to be a really tough decision. The final rankings will be counted down from fifth to first places beginning Feb. 1, 2008 and $40,000 will be handed out among the winning surfers and videographers.

billabong

The Surf Expo held earlier this month in Orlando, Fl. saw the release of the Hangup Systems for Surfboards in North America and it has created quite a buzz. In fact it did so well that over 200 retail stores placed orders for the system and over 80 are already in the process of converting their standard retail surfboard presentations to the Hang Ups. Almost all who visited the Global Surf Industries booth at the expo gave rave-reviews on the system and imagined the endless possibilities they have will have to fill all of the space that converting to this new system will give them.

Basically the Hangup System is a way to hang surfboards and avoid building costly racks and stands, while in the process minimizing the amount of space that typical surfboard stands take up. Boards are hung upside down using the fin sockets thus allowing retailers to display 14 or so boards per meter as opposed to the 6-7 that a typical retail rack is able to display. Global Surf Industries also lists the following benefits of using the Hang Up System on their website:

• Flexibility in hanging arrangement for retail environments - no specialized rack is required. The same rack that displays clothes, wet-suits or board-bags can be utilized for your surfboard display.
• Increase your sales by increasing your floor stock. More stock = more sales, same space more flexibility.
• Easily able to accommodate seasonal changes. Surfboards or Steamers on the same space same rail.
• Makes the most of valuable retail floor space.
• Your boards always hang straight and tight.
• A modern professional presentation for your merchandise.
• No part of the surfboard is touching the ground and if secured using the grub screw the surfboard will remain secure.

The only downside is that the Hangup System doesn’t work with fixed-fin boards or twin-fins. It does sound like that is something they are working on though. I can’t imagine store-owners being anything but stoked to have a way of storing more boards using less space while having them appear even more organized. Don’t be surprised to see these systems being utilized more and more as you cruise into your local board-shop.

surf expo
hangup systems

Can it seriously be possible that we are now beginning the year 2008 and there are still mountain resorts in the United States that are getting away with banning snowboarders from their hills? Unfortunately, and unbelievably, the answer is yes. While we are now down to the final four mountains that refuse to lift their snowboarding ban, it’s still not good enough. Mad River Glen, Vt., Taos, New Mexico, Alta, UT., and Deer Valley, UT. all somehow continue to institute a ’skiers only’ policy. Apparently the godfather of snowboarding, Jake Burton, has had enough.

Burton is encouraging all of us fellow knuckle-draggers to band together and peacefully protest this atrocity at each of these mountains. On Dec. 15 of last year, a sneak attack was led on Mad River Glen. About 40 white-clad boarders organized themselves at Burton HQ, conveniently located 45 minutes from MRG, for an early morning sneak-attack. They were armed with donuts and smiles, taking an early morning hike up the mountain and catching the elitists before they even knew what hit them. With cameras rolling, the brigade took to the hill while on-lookers below gathered to see their mountain being poached. Once the group made it to the bottom they proceeded to greet skiers with donuts and a friendly hello while staging a peaceful picket line in protest of the continued segregation.

In addition to the protest that already took place, Burton is encouraging snowboarders to poach other mountains and submit a video that documents their experience, and the best video will be awarded with a cash prize worth $5000. So far there are no user generated videos posted on the site. Is that a sign of a failed attempt at Burton trying its hand in social media marketing? Or is simply because snowboarders don’t care enough that only four out of the hundreds of mountain resorts in the U.S. don’t allow boarders?

I’m sure each of these resorts has their reasons for limiting their guests to two-plankers, but at this point those reasons just don’t fly anymore. There simply is no way that these mountains can continue to justify picking and choosing who is allowed on their slopes. Burton has it right as he continues to encourage more of these peaceful poaching-protests, even going as far to call it our “patriotic duty.” Poach away my friends, poach away!!

burton

Billabong’s Freewave Challenge threw a twist into surfing competitions and opened up the doors for all competitors, surfers and videographers alike, to win some serious prize money outside of the arena of typical contest surfing. The competition officially began on Oct 1st of last year and is now in its judging period.

Taking place in surfing’s epicenter, the North Shore of Oahu, contestants had from Oct. 1 until the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31st to submit video of themselves on their best waves. The competition is broken down into two categories: Best Performance Ride and Best Tube Ride. Any worthy ride on a wave not occurring during a regular surfing contest is eligible.

With out any qualifying tour, elimination rounds, or any ’standard’ of what constitutes the best ride, this contest became one of the most inclusive and gave equal chance to local-legends and pro-surfers alike. Video clips of contender rides were required to be uploaded to the FreewaveChallenge.com hub by registered videographers in the specified time period where they were to be viewed and rated by surfers and fans from all over the world. Now that the entry period has concluded the most popular and frequently viewed videos are being judged by some of the top names and top journalists in the industry. The winners will be announced at an awards party later this month and $40,000 in cash and prizes will be given to the winning surfers and videographers.

With so much being made yearly about the standard used to judge the majority of surfings big events, it will be interesting to see what ends up being deemed the best ride. It also opens up the door for surfers who aren’t as well known and may not be ‘contest’ surfers to throw down something sick and walk away with a big stash of loot and a lot of recognition. And it appears Billabong has been quite pleased with the success of this new style of contest as they will announce the date and location of the next Freewave Challenge at its awards party.

billabong

If you haven’t heard of nvohk pronounced “invoke” it is a new “community managed Eco-friendly brand” that is starting to get some press. It is going against the grain and creating a Surf brand that is driven by the community. They are looking for 20,000 members to pay $50 dollars a year, these members will be given control over logo design, product design, and marketing etc… 35% of the proceeds will be given to the community via what they are calling reward points. These points will be redeemed through various means including nvohk merchandise.

It is also an Eco-Friendly brand that will create products from 100% sustainable materials as well as donate 10% of the proceeds to Eco-Friendly charities. Here is an excerpt from their site:

• + build a responsible clothing company that truly puts consumers and the environment in the forefront
• + make high-quality products from 100% sustainable materials
• + provide an ongoing fund raising and support engine for environmental organizations

Overall I think it is a really cool idea, I like different business models, I think this generation is more apt to communities and all of that. I do think that even though the Surf/Action Sports/Environmental industries are extremely large, it may be somewhat hard to get 20k users. Not because the message or idea won’t be accepted but more because a lot of the individuals that make up these demographics are young, poor, and lazy.

I signed up, I was number 96, I think you should as well if nothing but for the birth of a really cool and unique idea. When I signed up I couldn’t help but think of some ideas to help spread the word a little quicker.

Email Address Importing: One of the things they do after you sign up is have a handful of boxes for you to paste in your friends email accounts to share the site with. I only pasted in 3 of my friends cause these were emails I had memorized, and I am too busy/lazy to go to my email and browse through my address book and copy and paste names in. If I did take the time to do that I could of comfortably invited 100 plus people that would of more than likely signed up. What they should do instead is add in an app that is common in social news sites that lets you import from your Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail address books so you can add a lot of emails in a matter of seconds.

Badges: Also they should create badges that show the member count that gets updated every time a member signs up. These badges will link back to the site and be used for people to copy and pase onto their sites, blogs, and social networking profiles like Myspace and Facebook. If you are proud to be a member you will show it and help spread the word.

Tracking: It looks like they have Google analytics enabled on the site, I hope they have conversion tracking set up so that every time someone signs up they can track that to the referring url. This way they can see what brings in multiple sign ups and look for ways to increase that.

Marketing: The did a press release that was covered on Transworld, and about 6 other outlets I could find. They should also look at setting up Social Networking profiles at Myspace and Facebook and network with all users that have surfing and action sports interests.

StumbleUpon Ads is also a great way to target your exact demographics, you can buy traffic for .05 a click. You can set your demographics to those that only say they like sites related to surfing/extreme sports, etc.. you can also set it to age groups and gender. You can set your campaign to get 1000’s of visitors a day.

Also they could go to Google Blogsearch, Technorati, and Ice Rocket to search for blogs that talk about Surfing and action sports and email them asking them if they like the site and if so would they be willing to do a write up.

Those some quick basic Ideas I came up with I think it is a great idea I would love to see it get to the 20,000 member mark just to see how well a community could run and operate a brand.

*If any of you use stumbleupon go to http://www.projectnvohk.com and thumb it up with your tool bar, I submitted it the other day, and a couple thumbs up will give them some sweet traffic for free.

There was a post on the ASR Blog about Alpine Stars firing their sales reps and going the ever so trendy route of the boutique street wear promotion method. I’m not saying Alpine Stars is dead but they are obviously trying to re brand themselves through new store fronts and audiences. This post from ASR along with recent ads I have seen in Surfing Mags for Maui and Sons, got me thinking. Can an action sports brand resurrect itself? Could AIRWALK pick itself up and leave the shelves of the Payless toddlers section and get prime play in a Zumiez or local boutique?

I think it depends on your definition of dead, and where your threshold is for core, some people would say Fox Racing is too mainstream and that it has lost it’s core, while others are just finding out about them (if they are just finding out about them they were probably wearing a No Fear shirt at the time :). Can Maui & Sons, No Fear, AIRWALK and others make a true comeback? Im not talking bottom line, because most of these companies lost their core because they were too concerned about their bottom line and pushed assembly line products through mainstream outlets like, Mervyns, Millers Outpost and pretty much any other place that sells Stussy (I have been dying for an excuse to mention Stussy in a blog post).

I think once you are dead you are dead in action sports. The demo is way too opinionated and treats their brands as a way of life. RCVA got hot because anyone outside of a core consumer thought it was a sub brand for RCA Records with really strange designs of chicks in neck braces and guys in owl suits. The action sports demo thrives off of this, they don’t want people to know what they are wearing, and they certainly don’t want people to buy it. I don’t wear RVCA half as much as I used to because I see it all over the place now, I just wear my old designs that no one else has, I don’t really buy new ones. But I digress.

Can a dead company make it back? I am talking dead as in no more sales, lost riders, shops dropping them, etc… If they did, it would take a lot of money, some seriously good riders, and a memory erasing machine. The recent success of Nike SB could be somewhat of a sign for the good. Nike was obviously nowhere close to being dead as an overall company, but I don’t think anyone including them could have expected the tremendous success of the Skate crossover. They honestly tore that up, they marketed it correctly, they got really good riders, and they are killing the designs on those shoes. They came in and took over. Could AIRWALK do the same thing? No Fear, Maui & Sons and AIRWALK are all hitting ads in the mags, but I am not seeing anything innovative as far as design, products, and riders.

What do you think it would take for a Dead company to make a come back in action sports?

Ski filmmaker, Rage Films, has signed a deal with The Ski Channel to distribute both exclusive and non-exclusive content through Time Warner Cable’s Video on Demand service. In addition, the deal includes an investment from The Ski Channel into Rage Films with the option to buy the company outright at a future date. They will also be a major sponsor on the yearly Rage Film Tour.

Congrats to Rage Films. While they’re aren’t quite on the same level as say Poorboyz or MSP, they’ve consistently produced some of the sickest ski films year in and year out and deserve the success they’re having. This gives them a great opportunity to expand outside their usual audience onto the biggest media platform imaginable, the TV.

It will be great for the sport of skiing as well; aside from Fuel TV most channels only show oldschool skiing that is quite frankly very lame and makes the sport look ridiculous. Now when you tell someone you’re a skier maybe, just maybe they won’t have that stereotypical racer in neon spandex cruising down the groomers pictured in their mind. Skiing has come a long way in the last 10 years and no longer deserves the gaper stereotype.

I can only hope this turns into the a nice liquidity event for them later down the road and I’m expecting big things out of Rage with the new capital infusion. I have included the trailer from their latest flick, Enjoy, for your viewing pleasure… Enjoy.