"You guys represent the most important part of surf culture, its family, passion for the ocean, and true STOKE!"
Not content with killing the Pipeline Masters, Vans gave the Christmas gift that keeps on giving (Misery! Poverty!) when it sacked five hundred workers as part of its plan to “speed up the turnaround of the company’s Vans division and (parent company VF’s) overall North America business.”
I love capitalism but, god, your cold heart!
And the blood-letting wasn’t confined to the cube-dweller, who always lives in fear of that inevitable tap on the shoulder, but extended to its most celebrated athletes including San Clemente’s beloved Gudauskas brothers.
Tanner, Dane and, what’s the third one’s name, Roy? (Hello Google? Pat? Oh Pat!) were all dumped by the brand after twenty years of wildly successful service, something not lost on the brothers’ storied followers.
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Kelia Moniz, who lost her own battle with capitalism earlier today, wrote: “Man, You guys represent the most important part of surf culture, its family, passion for the ocean, and true STOKE! This will all remain true regardless of any sponsorship. So epic the path you have paved for the next gen.”
“To me you 3 were vans!” wrote Sage Erickson. “The classics! Enjoyed all you guys did for them!”
Laura Enever, “They were so lucky to have you guys!!!”
(Parker Coffin wrote exactly the same thing.)
“You 3 embodied the ethos of the brand!” wrote Ian Walsh.
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Word on the ground is the world’s most stylish surfer Mikey February flew himself to Hawaii for the Pipe Masters and is now in California trying to get a contract, like anything, out of Vans.
And Nathan Florence, surfer of the year and easily the most valuable man in surfing, has yet to receive any sorta offer from Vans even as his contract runs into its last few weeks.
Its former global action sports director Justin Regan, who left Vans to work for Skull Candy, recently wrote a stinging rebuke of his former master under a post from Damon Way.
“It’s gotten to a point now where brands are releasing collaborations on a two-week cadence,” the creator of DC and Incase said on a Monster Children podcast. “It’s gotten to the point where none of it has value anymore.”
Regan responded, “This is 100 percent true. We were doing on a week for a while at Vans to feed a media cycle. It was totally devaluing.”