The Endless Winter - Cold Water Surfing
“An ode to the sun, sand, bodies and waves” is how Times Magazine started their review of Endless Summer in 1966. Unwillingly, with this cult film Bruce Brown encapsulated the image of surfing in a cliché quest for a perpetual summer that would define the modern imagery of surfing. Carefree, eccentric, colourful, the Endless Summer surfers also became the icons of an emerging industry.
The movement was characterised by clothes expressing exoticism and a certain post-surf languor. At the time, the pursuit of an eternal summer was borne of a climato-technical reality: the almost total absence of wetsuits amongst northern hemisphere surfers where the seasons are more pronounced. Almost half a century later, after being sought, found, then lost, surfwear is coming back to its roots that stretch back to the sixties as has been noticed over the past 12-18 months.
Over-cautious, the industry’s big guns only lately dared to tackle the realities of surfing in cold water head on. Only O’Neill clearly distinguished themselves by levering the Santa Cruz-based brand’s Northern Californian geographic heritage through creator-icon Jack O’Neill. In the same way, surf media needed a breath of fresh air at the start of the new millennium as it was saturated by iconography based on palm trees, boardshorts and clear waters, which had become a deep annoyance. Exoticism took on a new face with a new surge of surf trips to the wild spots of the northern hemisphere such as Ireland, Scotland, Lofoten, Iceland, Alaska… Various sporting events followed this, contributing to establishing a trend for Cold Water Surfing (CWS): the aptly-named Cold Water Series, created by O’Neill (a circuit of the WQS) as well as the Nixon Surf Challenge held in Norway and more recently in Kamchatka on the eastern edge of Russia.
The response from the industry on the technical market was swift: R&D efforts on neoprene gave rise to warmer, more supple, more everything wetsuits, and to heated models and accessories (the Rip Curl H-Bomb, Quiksilver’s Heat Vest). As proof of this craze for Cold Water Surfing, neoprene sales have enjoyed a notable boost but most of all a second wind. “These days winter wetsuits are purchased all year-round which translates into better revenue in summer months”, affirms Mike Pickering, commercial director at GUL. “Thanks to this CWS trend we have been able to stock winter wetsuits all year round, this means models with high added value”, explains Mike.
This trend for more consistent sales throughout the year is also confirmed in the south with wetsuits from the French brand Madness proving successful: “More people are surfing and not just in summer. Naturally the neoprene market is improving with more and more surfers in the water in winter,” explains Benoît Brecq, marketing director at Hoff Distribution who are behind the wetsuit brand. Perhaps even more so than in summer, the search for quality products is more intense; surfing in cold water holds no place for mediocrity. In this way CWS has naturally pushed its clientele towards the top-of-the-range segment.
"We’ve certainly noticed more and more surfers spending their hard earned money in the winter to go all out and buy a top of the range suit and then for summer use making do with maybe a mid range suit”, confirms Mark Brown, C-Skins Technical Director. On the same page, he noticed that the winter time is when surfers do their homework and make highly informed choices when it comes to wetsuit purchases.
Even Madness, whose positioning is mostly around the entry-level, can attest to the good health of premium wetsuits: “As for the top-of-the-range, our Unlimited is selling pretty well, particularly thanks to its faultless quality and ultra-competitive price”, confirms Benoît.
Winter neoprene R&D has also become the focus of brand marketing. In order to point out the unnatural link between customers and wetsuits made in Asia, the development of these models is associated with a more local dimension: “The cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean are our laboratory and we spend as much time in the water to improve our wetsuits as we do in our design offices,” Mike from GUL proudly announces.
“Getting the products tested by the team is the only true way”, affirms Tom Ellyat, Marketing Director of British neoprene and clothing brand Osprey. The same rings true for Benoît from Madness: “Our riders spend hours and hours in the water. As a result, a lot of people see them and become interested in our products.” The same goes for the general exposure from the Malloy brothers’ surf trips to the Antarctic or from French female Lea Brassy’s trip to Iceland and Norway that were worth all those pages of advertising for Patagonia. Field testing becomes advertising. Finisterre will combine the two by selling 2014-2015 winter test models at discounted prices and getting people to participate in feedback sessions that will help them finalise next year’s autumn-winter models.
O’Neill have put in place an online platform dedicated to the technical aspects of their products: “In three clicks of your iPhone, you know more than your average surf shop vendor (they’ll appreciate that!).” The wetsuit brand C-Skins aren’t shy of going to great lengths with their Deep Freeze Tests wind tunnels: “We are using temperature detecting thermocouples to record internal body temperatures as well as infrared cameras to measure surface heat loss”, explains Mark Brown, C-Skins’ technical manager. With a limited budget to get across to surfers what goes into making their wetsuits and accessories, they had “to get imaginative” and spent “countless hours producing more in depth website information as well as online video campaigns and insider information”.
This movement has provided the means for companies who have dedicated “heart and soul” to Cold Water Surfing to emerge. Amongst them is Finisterre, a brand with meaningful geographic roots in St Agnes, Cornwall, England. “The company was founded by cold water surfers in order to meet the demands of people wishing to travel to world class waves located in cold environments. If, in the middle of January, you don’t have the right clothes on an island in Norway or in the Hebrides, you won’t survive and that’s where Finisterre comes in”, says the brand’s Marketing Director Ernest Capbert.
Ernest puts his finger on one of the special things about Cold Water Surfing, even though there have been thick wetsuits for cold water for almost half a century, they were built for surfing in northern California or Australia, destinations where the temperature of the water can drop to under 10 degrees but with a temperate, if not warm, climate outside. “CWS requires two types of product: clothes for living in these wet, windy or glacial places and products for surfing there”, sums up Ernest Capbert.
Pretty well mapped out, Cold Water Surfing’s neoprene range is a business that is rolling. For now as well as for the future, the real issue lies in the clothing market: “If you take a look at the products made by surf brands for CWS, the quality standards are far from adequate. The places where Cold Water Surfing happens require bomb proof products and as a result surfers are turning towards brands outside the (boardsports) industry to find this kind of item,” reveals Ernest. Indeed, either surfers turn towards reputable outdoor brands in the same mould as Patagonia, or they pinch from the ski/snow range of boardsports brands: “Luckily we have been in the snow market for 25 years”, rejoices Jan Lindeboom, senior product manager of O’Neill Europe. “Our technical teams have spent their careers making jackets for snow, they are specialised in insulation and ergonomics, in impermeable puffers, clothes that breathe and other waterproof stitching. Of course, it’s more work but it’s also much nicer to do.”
WHEN OUTDOOR MEETS SURFWEAR
Most surfers don’t want to walk around with flashy, oversized snowboard jackets on their backs… At O’Neill, the response was pretty original, to fuse two internal design teams together, snow and surf to come up with new technical clothes. “This new department produced our first Adventure Series collection three years ago,” a range whose turnover has doubled each season. “It now represents 10% of our turnover, we should have started earlier,” smiles Jan from O’Neill.
Other big names from the industry such as Patagonia didn’t take this route, preferring instead to rely on existing products that already appeal to an older clientele who don’t need to identify themselves with the ‘surfer’ style or who even want to distance themselves from it. “Patagonia has made a name for itself by producing the ultimate products for extreme conditions in the mountains,” reinforces Gabe Davis, surf manager of Patagonia Europe and renowned surfer who grew up in the cold waters of Newcastle. “For us it’s easier to borrow from our other technical ranges- mountain, trail or even fly fishing - and to offer specific products to cold water surfers,” adds Gabe.
Proof of the CWS phenomenon if we need it; clothing sales are intimately linked to neoprene: “We have noticed that sales from the Adventure Series collection were directly related to wetsuit deliveries”, explains Jan Lindeboom at O’Neill, “especially January-February and August-September.” O’Neill also state that they sell jackets and fleeces all through the year, making an increase in jacket sales in summer of over a million Euros per year. “Of course, these products are more expensive but consumers are prepared to pay a few more Euros for a nice jacket that keeps you warm and dry, especially if it lasts more than one season.”
Just like the traditional surfwear market, sales are not limited to core participants and we are now seeing fashions from CWS reaching a much wider audience. The values associated with CWS speak to these clients: “Even non-surfers wear boardshorts on holiday. It’s the same for Cold Water Surfing, non-surfers appreciate values such as travel, nature, living off the beaten track and the beauty of surfing in cold water on perfect pristine waves,” affirms Ernest from Finisterre. O’Neill confirm this CWS knock-on effect amongst the wider public: “If you show an image of our team Rider Damien Castera in the rain on a beach in Alaska, everyone understands that if you wear the same jacket in town then you’ll stay dry and warm. In truth we sell this type of jacket in large numbers in shops in the middle of Amsterdam and the big towns in Germany”, adds Jan Lindeboom.
“Cold Water Surfing is not a fad or a seasonal market”, concludes Gabe Davis from Patagonia, “it’s about providing products suited to the places where people want to surf and sometimes the best waves are in glacial regions”. While surfwear brands have managed to build their success on the image of surfing in tropical places, everything points to Cold Water Surfing opening up new opportunities for growth. You’ll just have to throw caution to the wind, down to business!
