Who doesn’t want to be just a little rich? Who doesn’t want to worry about money ever again? No more rent. No more car payments. No more stressing when the electricity bill is jammed into your mailbox and you open it and it’s $500 and all you’ve got is a few shekels in your account.
Not you? Oh, you lie!
Anyway, we like cash as much you do (at least deep in your heart) and, right now, at sixty Australian cents per share iconic surf brand Billabong is looking like one helluva buy. Yeah, don’t shake your head. This isn’t an emotional thing.
Let’s do the numbers and you’ll see.
First, Billabong has been through the ringer. The tough days, the hard decisions have been made.
A few years ago, four hundred or so retail stores and some crappy acquisitions they paid through the nose for were eating ’em alive. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the gear (although it is a taste thing, this I accept) and it was selling well.
There was even a time only two years ago when the company’s debt had swollen so much it was fifty-fifty whether or not the administrators were going to be called in.
When Billabong listed as a public company in 2000 the shares sold for a little over two bucks. Fast forward a few years and they were $16 and climbing. Analysts were calling it the new Nike and predicting numbers in the high twenties. If you’d bought, say, 50,000 shares when it listed (a $100k wedge), you were now worth close to a mill.
So why buy ’em now at sixty cents?
Billabong have halved the number of retail stores and sold off a few of their biz’s, reducing debt, but, tellingly, a couple of hard-nosed US private-equity companies have bought hard into Billabong.
And the CEO is Neil Fiske, who was instrumental in driving the fortunes of the king of US retail Les Wexner, turning Victoria’s Secret and A & F into the dirtiest of money spinners.
On the creative side, Billabong has hired Roxy’s head designer to help drive Billabong gals, RVCA is starting to soar and Tiger Lily is still an unfulfilled buy.
Most interestingly, Billabong’s founder Gordon Merchant recently dropped $2 million upping his share parcel from 8 to 10 per cent. It’s a move that hints that he is finding the price too good to refuse.
As soon as the market works out the new management with their PE Backers have a plan to restore their old margins and and with Billabong still turning over one billion a year hit makes a share price of little over a dollar likely.
Is it worth a punt? Yeah, if you’re going to stick around for a few years. It’ll jump around, as shares do, but don’t torture yourself by watching the share price on your phone every few hours. Take a long-term view.
Set, forget, and come back when it’s around a buck. Then sell.
Note/warning: I ain’t rich so don’t’ wah…wah… and start pointing fingers if the sharp price goes south. My advice is pretty high end… but yeah… ain’t no guarantees.
I’ve spent my entire life in the ocean and experienced near pants-shitting fear on more than a few occasions, but there’s really no place on Earth I find quite as terrifying as Ke’iki Beach.
Located on the sandy stretch of Oahu coast between Log Cabins and Sharks Cove it’s a shoulder separating dry sand closeout 90% of the time, capable of sending you to Kahuku ER on even the smallest of days (sidenote: if you get wrecked on North Shore and have to choose between the Kahuku Medical Center and Wahiawa General- head to Kahuku. Far fewer junkies lining up with fake injuries in the hopes of scoring an opiate scrip. Better yet, suck it up and make the trek into town for Queen’s.)
When it gets bigger it moves offshore into much deeper water. Which would be great, if it weren’t for the giant stone anvils lurking beneath the surface.
Heading out into that insanity on a pink foam pseudo-boogie at the behest of JOB would be a fools errand. Luckily for us, there seems to be no shortage of fools.
I won’t lie to you. I’m deeply, madly, head over hells in semi-platonic love with the San Clemente surfboard shaper Matt Biolos.
Oh you knew that already? Yeah, something about writing his praises, every other month, for the last 10 years might’ve spelled it out. If gay was my game, I’d be so bear.
But why be ashamed when he’s a titan of the game? A shaper genuinely interested in others’ opinions, who actually listens to the marks he shapes for, a man whom God has given everything: money, popularity, family.
He tears me to pieces with his average-man vibe. And, so, I wanted to ask, today, me in Jakarta, he in California, about what makes a magic plus a little side-talk on the good and bad of being a career shaper.
BeachGrit: Okay, first, amid all the awesome, what do you fucking hate about shaping?
Biolos: I really get tired of the grind, the battle of managing production and running the back-end and the financial strain of biz. The stresses of growing or shrinking. Always feeling like you need to have some thing new going on, or coming out. The dirty part. Also, 30 years of foam dust gets old. My skin is permanently dry and damaged. My hair is falling out in weird ways…my eyes are going fast. Gotta wear glasses at work now. I also hate that no matter how many great boards you make, no matter how many deadlines you hit or how many miracles you pull off, there’s always some one not happy or someone whose board got built wrong or took too long.
BeachGrit: What is it about the gig, about owning a large surfboard company that thrills you to bit?
Biolos: I like the freedom to travel and see the world. Been flying around the planet building boards for over 25 years now, but the last couple have been most rewarding as I am now bringing my entire family around with me. Last year we followed the ASP tour a bit and went all over South Africa, stopping and visiting Dubai on the way. We also went to Europe for a month, visiting Spain, France and Portugal. It’s great being able to work with world-class athletes. I like the challenge in that. I really enjoy designing in general. Whether it’s for the pro’s, or even more rewarding at times, the average dudes, like me.
BeachGrit: What are the variables of making surfboards or manufacturing that you wish people knew?
Biolos: Well, like any business, it’s rife with employee issues. Anyone with manufacturing would know what I mean. We manufacture! We don’t just write orders to factories and wait for containers. We build a lot of boards and it requires a lot of skilled craftsmen. People are not robots. They have emotions, get tired, and sick, or bored. When you have a couple dozen guys: machine operators, shapers, air brushers, laminators, fin guys, fill-coaters, sanders and more, there are ups an downs. tThe same goes with equipment. Machines act up, air compressors explode, air lines burst, power tools go on the fritz. Supply chains can go awry. The bell curve of manufacturing in a some what seasonal biz, means our raw material suppliers get hammered in the spring and getting deliveries can be difficult. The same goes for cash flow. You make hundreds, thousands of boards. You pay for all the materials and labor and overheads. Then you ship ’em to retailers and wait… wait… wait… to get paid. It causes strains. These things are inherent in pretty much any business. On a different level, there are crazy detailed variables with building boards on a high-performance level. We actually go through and weigh individual blanks for our team riders, picking the lightest ones, of seemingly identical blanks, before cutting them on the machines. On cold humid days, it’s almost impossible to get light laminations here in California. Dry warm days make for really nice light boards.
BeachGrit: Tell me, what’s the most profound thing you’ve learned about surfboards, as in, what’s the… secret to magic boards?
Biolos: It’s all about balance. If one aspect is extreme then a counterbalance is needed. More curve on one aspect requires less curve on another. After 15 years of designing in CAD, I have come to notice some consistently recurring relationships in magic boards. There are certain things that just seem to work. Like, if your outline has a nose which at 24” is 1” narrower than your tail at 24” it always seems to balance best with a certain ratio of measurements in the bottom rocker in the same positions. I have little ratios like that which tell me things.
BeachGrit: What about shaping? What does it give you?
Biolos: Shaping has given me everything. The incredibly fortunate life I have is all from shaping surfboards.
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Why should we care about Miki Dora, dead 13 years already? "What he was really like as a person doesn’t interest me at all," says the noted historian Matt Warshaw. "Maybe he was a total dickhead, maybe he had a secret heart of gold, maybe he was acting all the time, maybe just some of the time. Who knows? Who cares what Dora was really like? What counts is what he represents. Surfing is a game and a hustle. For all of us, just on different levels. You want to surf a lot, you gotta hustle. You lie to your boss, your wife. You break laws, even if its just jumping lights to get to the beach faster. And . . . and . . . you try and do it with style! You out-style the fuckers!" | Photo: Pat Darrin
Surfing is a game and a hustle, says Matt Warshaw. And Miki Dora did it with…style!
What do you know about Miki Dora? Anything? Maybe it’s as a vague apparition, or it’s the dusty odour of what we usually call a “legend”, maybe nothing at all.
I’ll be brief. Miklos Sandor Dora aka Miki aka Da Cat was a Hungarian-born surfer who inhaled the surfing dream hungrily. He flamed! He was style in the water, suits out of it, convertibles, Hollywood and movie stars. He was also a thief, a scammer and an impossible loner who travelled the world chasing adventure and waves, his only real friend a small dog called Scooter Boy.
A few days ago, the noted historian Matt Warshaw posted an entry about Miki’s step-dad Gard Chapin. (Read it here, it’s rad.) And, because Matt does history better than anyone in the game, I figured it was finally time for he and I to exchange on Miki.
Was he as great as they said? Does he still matter?
Between San Francisco (Matt) and Sydney (DR), we back and forthed.
BeachGrit: So you just posted a piece on the death, murder of whatever, of Gard Chapin, Miki Dora’s stepdad. And this interests me, because it reminds me of American surfing culture’s fetish for Dora and what he represents: rebellion, individuality, perfection of style. I met Miki a few times in France and was deeply unimpressed despite the fact he was surrounded by acolytes. What don’t I get?
Matt: Okay, but first — you met him? I never did. Tell me a little about it. I know that five people meeting Dora could easily have five different impressions.
BeachGrit: I was living in Hossegor and hanging with the guys from Quiksilver, mostly, and they were paying Miki to be Miki, as in a witty golf partner, living surf legend. And my pals kept asking, “Do you want to play golf with Miki?” And, me, being anti-nostalgia and terrified of being dragged down golf’s hole, kept knocking it back. The first time I met him was at Stephen Bell’s board factory out the back of Hossegor. Mark Phipps was shaping his boards, these eight-foot-ish gun things, beautiful, and I was there when Miki came to pick up a board. And, let me tell you this, Matt, he was a gorgeous old man, late sixties, this was just before he found out he had pancreatic cancer. He was wearing a sort of pleated sports shirt, big pants belted high, was six-two or so, and had coffee-coloured skin.
Matt: So in fact you actually weren’t deeply unimpressed. You were impressed!
BeachGrit: Yeah, I liked what I saw. And then that book All For a Few Perfect Waves(click here to inspect) landed and I liked him a little more. But why is he so fetishised? He must’ve been a pain in the ass to have as a pal. Why do you like him?
Matt: What he was really like as a person doesn’t interest me at all. Maybe he was a total dickhead, maybe he had a secret heart of gold, maybe he was acting all the time, maybe just some of the time. Who knows? Who cares what Dora was really like? What counts is what he represents. Surfing is a game and a hustle. For all of us, just on different levels. You want to surf a lot, you gotta hustle. You lie to your boss, your wife. You break laws, even if its just jumping lights to get to the beach faster. And . . . and . . . you try and do it with style! You out-style the fuckers! So Dora. I mean, never mind the surfing. He was either the most stylish longboarder ever, or in the top three, whatever. Forget that for a second. He’s smartest guy in the room. He owns a tux. He owns tennis whites. He can pick the right wine at Musso & Frank. He can talk about Europe. He does irony. He’s worldly, when every other hot-shit surfer, then and today, is completely lost on the other side of the coast highway. You like eye-rolling the Gudauskas brothers? How can Dora not be your man?
BeachGrit: …yeah, you’re right, he… played it. Did that part in Surfers the Movie do it for you? I still watch it.
Matt: No, exactly, I was just going to bring up Surfers: the Movie. It was Chas Smith, or maybe it was you, Derek, who said the whole point of us interacting as surfers — again, not counting the wave-riding part — is to be entertaining. To NOT be boring. So I would maybe amend that and add a few exceptions, but okay, for the most part I accept that statement. And on that basis Dora was so far out ahead of the rest, past and present, that nobody else really registers. And that’s exactly what you get in Surfers: the Movie. Christian Fletcher, Arch, Cheyne, Johnny-Boy, Rabbit, Owl — all these guys with rebel cred totally disappear once Dora’s onscreen. Just vanish. Dora’s amazing rant is the only thing anybody remembers about that movie. And a big part, a huge part, of why that rant is so perfect is that Dora admit’s that his life in a lot of ways is messed up. That he’s lonely. He was damaged as a kid, and he’s further damaged himself as an adult. His closest companion is a little fucking dog. In other words, yes, Dora’s out-styling everybody, and out-rebelling everybody, but he’s lost. He’s stuck. The fact that he died at his father’s house, because he didn’t have his own family, is incredibly sad.
BeachGrit: I was actually very impressed by the way Dora died, tanning by a pool in Montecito. I thought it a very civilised and beautiful way to depart. Can you describe those final couple of months?
I just know what I read in David Rensin’s book All for a few Perfect Waves and from what I heard from Steve Pezman, who visited Miki a couple weeks before he died. I don’t know if it was all that beautiful. A lot of pain meds, a lot of morphine, a catheter. But yeah. He was out there tanning. At some point an old friend came by in a Ferrari and took Miki out for a long tear-ass drive through the Santa Barbara hills. Right up till the end, if the pain left, Miki made jokes and laughed. And he made amends to people he may have hurt or offended. He was gracious.
BeachGrit: Is there a contemporary equivalent of Dora?
Matt: Noa Deane yelling “Fuck the WSL!” at the SURFER Poll, and being thought of as rebellious — it almost makes me glad Dora died when he did, so he didn’t have to witness how far we’ve sunk in terms of being cool and different and maybe a little dangerous.
Do you love French Bulldogs? Of course you do but guess who has the grandest French Bulldog ever? That’s right. Best surfer in the world (2004-2011) and his falconer and designer girlfriend Coutney Jaedtke! Over the course of the last three months, Ask Pam, an advice column that has covered topics as diverse as the insignificance of life and the Solange-Jay-Z rift, has become a much loved and much visited part of BeachGrit.com.
At first, Pam’s answers were simple keystrokes. I’d send Courtney the emails; she’d fire back Pam’s replies. Then Pam wanted audio. And so we set-up a little soundcloud account for Pam to upload her answers.
And, now, thanks to the computer skills of her master Dane Reynolds, Pam has become… animated!
You may have seen this before, here, nowhere else, but you should see it again, for sure. And if you’d like to be included on Ask Pam, send an audio file (voice memos on an iPhone works perfectly) and a photo of y’self to either [email protected] or [email protected].
