Bloomberg Biz reports there might be... "One surf company to rule them all..."
BeachGrit‘s desks in both Bondi and Cardiff-by-the-Sea are vibrating wildly these days. The phones howling nonstop with too-crazy-to-believe-yet-maybe-true tales! The MacBook Airs so hot that Derek Rielly had to douse his with vodka! The latest? Quiksilver and Billabong, both helped along by Oaktree Capital Management, may be merged to form one big thing.
Bloomberg News, leader in finance reporting, says:
Oaktree Capital Management LP may consider combining bankrupt surfwear retailer Quiksilver Inc. with Billabong International Ltd., a brand the investment firm already owns a stake in, a judge in Delaware was told Wednesday.
Durc Savini, an investment banker at Peter J. Solomon Co. who is working with Quiksilver, testified that “at some point” Oaktree may put the clothing companies together if it’s able to bring Huntington Beach, California-based Quiksilver out of bankruptcy under its control.
And who could have ever seen this coming? Maybe the Brothers Marshall who have been making a QuikBongRip t-shirt for years (buy yours here!) but who else? Not me. It seems even hard to fathom. Both brands are iconic but in very different ways. Their teams and ethos feel, well, different. For Taj to don the Mountain and Wave tastes heretical. For Kelly, I mean Dane, I mean Jeremy Flores to affix the woodcut two black and white wave thing smells off.
I hope, unlike every other rumor that BeachGrit sends your way, that this particular one is untrue. Or to quote surfing’s version of Bloomberg (Boardistan), “Guess the media just get to make stuff up and then we can link to it like it’s news.”
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RipaQuikBong sounds better to me, as a name and instruction
Its actually pretty easy to stomach this.
Why pay two designers full wages to copy each other? Much more economical for 1 person to “design” (read: slap) two different logos on the same Bangladeshi flanno and charge $90.
“You may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.”
Would have been equally weird and interesting 10 years ago… Andy and Kelly in the same team.
Two awful logos become one
The fact that this is being decided in Delaware says it all.
Damn. The QuikBongRip tees have sold out… Luckily they had some of these in my size instead.
Oohh, you’d cut a dash in them, Negs.
Surfers and fashion… just seems to end in foreclosure. With clothes like above its no surprise.
taj already rode for quik once upon a time so not hard to imagine
Bongsilver has quite the ring to it – gonna patent that!!!!
“Bring out your dead!”
“I’m not dead yet!”
“Sure you are, you’ll be dead in a minute.”
“Look you stupid bastard, you’ve got no arms left”
Quiksilver: “Yes I have”
“Look”
Quiksilver: “It’s just a flesh wound”