GSI OPENERPG62BEDE’S NEW INK PG64FIRST LOOK PG68FOAM WARS PG74TWINS ARE HOT PG58GOOGLE EARTH PG80SUP WITH THAT?

“Life is better when you surf.” That’s the slogan of the century’s fastest growing surf company, and you’ve probably never heard of it. Kinda weird you haven’t, since Global Surf Industries — perhaps even more than Surftech, Firewire or any other operator — is the brave new face of surfboards in the modern, post-Clark era. In the next year, estimates founder Mark Kelly, GSI will ship close to 100,000 surfboards to 42 countries, including the USA, Australia and most of Europe. This massive growth has occurred despite GSI pretty much turning every fondly held surfboard-making myth on its head. Crusty old plane-wielding shaper in the back room? Handmade magic? Pro surfer team? No way! GSI unashamedly markets and distributes boards with what Kelly calls “the everyday surfer” in mind. If you’re riding a 7S Superfi sh, an NSP semi-softboard, an Anacapa Bandit or a Walden CD, you’re on a GSI product. “It seems to us that everyone focuses on the top 44,” Mark told SURFING. “Who is going to be the next Kelly Slater and can they get them on their brand of boards? In reality, the majority of surfers don’t care about who is winning the competitions, they just want to surf the waves near where they live. “We chose to look after the beginners,” Kelly continues. “52 percent of America’s 2.4 million surfers have been surfi ng for three years or less. That number’s stayed the same for 10 years, and that’s our bread and butter.”

Kelly thinks he might have had this insight because he’s a late beginner himself. He’s a 43-year-old ex-diver who worked in global marketing for Adidas and Surf Hardware before setting up GSI in Sydney, Australia in May 2002. “I started surfi ng when I was 30. So I missed all that (mythmaking)… It’s like what I found at Adidas; it’s really all about the sport, the pastime, the love of that.” With Surf Hardware, he traveled almost non-stop all around the world for fi ve years, and gained another insight. “Everyone thinks their local surf scene is diff erent to everywhere else — but it isn’t. I know some little hole-in-the-wall surf shops in Italy that if you put ’em down on the northern beaches of Sydney they’d kill it.” His big idea was to create global surfboard brands, outsource manufacturing to a central point (in this case the Cobra factory in Thailand), and use the savings to cut wholesale prices to surf shops — giving the shops a chance to make some money. GSI’s success has been greatly helped by the worldwide growth of surf schools, which Kelly thinks have done more than anything else to demystify the sport and make it quickly accessible to the 52 percent. “We started by just pumping out mini-mals…you couldn’t even fi nd a second-hand one anywhere.” Another factor has been quality for price. Kelly’s partner, Cobra, by its own admission and by that of neutral observers, has one of the slickest and best-run surfboard factories on Earth.

Kelly thinks he might have had this insight because he’s a late

MARK KELLY’S NO SHAPER, BUT HE KNOWS HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS. INTRODUCING GSI, THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SURFBOARD COMPANY.

MARK KELLY’S NO SHAPER, BUT HE KNOWS HOW TO RUN MARK KELLY’S NO SHAPER, BUT HE KNOWS HOW TO RUN MARK KELLY’S NO SHAPER,

A BUSINESS. INTRODUCING GSI, THE WORLD’S BIGGEST

GLOBALGLOBALGOING

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Mark Kelly, touring the Americas with his fl eet of GSIs. PHOTO: MARK HILL/ESM

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A third is that surf shop profit margin. Traditionally, shops have managed to make a meager 10 to 15 percent on a $700 newie; GSI boards average a retail profi t margin of double or higher than that. This is one reason why GSI is looked at with some horror by many small local boardmakers in the USA; they fear that profi t margin will slowly force them out of the shops. Kelly thinks diff erently: “I’ve had shops tell me that the extra profi ts have allowed them to stock more local shapers’ brands.” GSI has some highly reputable designers on board with models, including Greg Webber, Steve Walden, Bob McTavish and Al Merrick (the Anacapa range is Merrick-designed). But Kelly doesn’t approach name designers, preferring the approach to come the other way. “It’s a big emotional ride for a shaper,” he says. “People will say to them, ‘Why are you going with the enemy?’ They need to be able to withstand that pressure, and that happens only if they make the decision to join.” Kelly’s goal eventually is to fi nd “the frontier of design,” for which he has an interesting defi nition — instead of it being the Board the World Champ Rides, it’s “boards that make it easier to surf and have fun.” He pinpoints the parabolic snow ski as an example of design turning a sport around by taking the hard work out of the average Joe’s experience. Meanwhile…does he see any future for the handcrafted board? “They’ll become like tailors. There’s only a few tailors in Sydney and if I went to them to get a suit, I know before I walk in the door that it’s going to be at least $2000. If you appreciate that custom handmade board, then in the future I think you’re gonna have to pay for it. Because a lot of good boardmakers get bro-dealed to death.” —Nick Carroll

—CHEYNE MAGNUSSON QUESTIONS FRACTIONS ON THE MORNING OF THE FINAL AT THE NIXON SURF CHALLENGE IN SAN SEBASTIAN, SPAIN

“HOWMANYQUARTERS ARE THERE?”

GOING GLOBAL MA

RKET

PLAC

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