"With a projected turnover of over three-bill from its pretty little canvas shoes and branded trinkets in 2023, Vans has enough cash to buy ‘em all a few times over."
Hot little rumour going around, pretty close source etc, is that Billabong, Quiksilver and RVCA have been offered to the multi-billion dollar shoe company Vans in what we’re told is an attractively priced package.
With a projected turnover of over three-bill from its pretty little canvas shoes and branded trinkets in 2023, Vans has enough cash to buy ‘em all a few times over, as well as throw in a million-dollar bonus here and there to get the deal over the line.
Quiksilver, Billabong and RVCA all operate under the umbrella Boardriders Inc, majority owned by Oaktree Capital, an American global asset management firm.
Of course, Vans, which was founded by the late, great Pauly Van Doren in 1966 with his little bro James and their pals Gordon, Ryan Emmert and Serge D’Elia, ain’t much diff, ownership wise.
It was bought in 2004 by VF Corporation, a behemoth in rude fiscal health that owns fifty percent of the US backpack market via its brands North Face, Timberland, Eastpak and JanSport.
The sale is neither here nor there, I suppose, giant corpos tossing their assets around, but ain’t it wild that in the span of twenty years, the rocks upon which modern surf culture was founded, in Billabong and Quiksilver’s case, have become little more than a logo with a bit of residual goodwill.
RVCA is an interesting one, its co-founder Pat Tenore, one of the canniest in the biz, turned the surf brand into a pivotal player in MMA, then sold out for thirty-seven mill, having bought out the other founder, Conan Hayes, a well-known man in election circles, for seven and a half mill in 2011.
