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Huntington Surf & Sport makes its mark with surfwear industry



Huntington Shop Has Grown With Surfwear Industry

Aaron Pai, owner of Huntington Surf & Sport Inc., could be considered surfing’s equivalent to Sid Grauman, the man behind the famous hand and footprints at Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

But the messages on Pai’s 4-year-old “Surfers Hall of Fame” in downtown Huntington Beach don’t resemble the ones written in the Mann’s Forecourt of the Stars by film icons such as Mary Pickford and Gary Cooper.

“Thanks for all the free wax! Happy Waves,” reads one of Pai’s inscriptions, this one by four-time world champion Lisa Andersen.

Three years ago, Pai fabricated his cement surfing tribute at the entrance inside his Main Street store across from the Huntington Beach pier. The display immortalizes the hands, feet and signatures of famous surfers including Kelly Slater, Mark Occhilupo and Pete “PT” Townend, among others.

Pai’s shop has 38 tiles altogether. After seven years of trying, Pai only recently got the nod from his landlord and the city to take his surfer shrine onto the sidewalk.

Locals and tourists from around the world come to Pai’s store to shop for surfboards, surfwear and to grab a cup of coffee at the in-store cafe, Java Point. The store is a big hit with Japanese visitors,so much so that this year Huntington Surf & Sport granted its first license to Osaka businessman Koichi Kataoka, who opened a Japanese store in June.

“It’s doing pretty good so far,” Pai said of the Japan store. “We like having it out there because it promotes our private clothing line.”

Directly across the street from Huntington Surf & Sport is rival surf retailer Jack’s Surfboards and its offshoots: Jack’s Girls and Jack’s Garage, a skateboard and snowboard store. Jack’s has its own surfer’s shrine, a bronze tiled tribute to top surf industry heroes. If Pai’s concrete homage is surfing’s Forecourt of the Stars, then Jack’s tile tribute is the Hollywood Walk of Fame version.

“They both are right there at Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway,it doesn’t get any more pure California than that,” said Bill Sharp, editor and publisher of Surf News in Costa Mesa. “It’s like the surfing industry’s version of Hollywood and Vine.”

Huntington Surf & Sport is both a hard-core surf shop and a tourist stop. The company, which employs 130 people including part-time workers, boasts salespeople who are avid surfers. Several former employees have gone on to open their own stores, such as Laguna Surf & Sport and Surf Side Sports in Newport Beach. Others have taken jobs in the surfwear industry.

Local surfwear companies such as Quiksilver Inc., Billabong USA Inc., Hurley International and Volcom Board Wear are top sellers at Huntington Surf & Sport, Pai said. But the store also has its own line of apparel that accounts for about 18% of annual sales, he said. The company’s yearly sales are estimated to be roughly $5 million, though Pai declined to confirm the figure saying only that sales were up 5% to 7% last year.

“We have been increasing each year,” he said.

The growth of the surfwear and action sports industry has bolstered Huntington Surf & Sport.

Take Quiksilver, a Huntington Surf & Sport staple. In the 1970s, the Huntington Beach-based apparel maker was just a dealer of men’s swim trunks and T-shirts. Now it has multiple products as well as boys’ and girls’, women’s, men’s, snowboard and skateboard apparel lines.

“The surf industry has matured over the years and that has helped us out,” Pai said. “Also, the quality of products has improved. There was a learning curve in the beginning, because a lot of companies were learning to manufacture. We would have trunks on the rack and would find the stitching coming out and buttons popping off. They know now that quality is key, and competition drives up quality and makes them want to do better.”

Randy Sanders, vice president of sales for Billabong USA in Irvine, said Huntington Surf & Sport is one of the surfwear maker’s top accounts.

“They are one of the most authentic surf shops across the country,” Sanders said. “They combine both volume and image, plus they have always had very good personnel.”

Pai agrees. “I believe that people are the most important asset of any business, not computers, not cash registers. I could not do this without good people,” he said.

Ryan Heuser, president and cofounder of designer Paul Frank Industries in Newport Beach, said even though his company’s funky modern accessories aren’t a natural fit with the surfer crowd, the company is doing well enough that it recently expanded its offerings to include sportswear and pajamas.

“Huntington Surf & Sport can do the volume and grow brand awareness to its customers without getting a company over-exposed,” he said. “They sit on the top of food chain of cool stores.”

Pai, the great-grandson of Korean immigrants, is an avid surfer himself who grew up in OC and Hawaii. In the late 1970s, Pai attended Orange Coast College while working as a bellman at the Holiday Inn in Anaheim and as a clerk selling wetsuits and surfboards at the original Huntington Surf & Sport.

A year after the original store opened, owners Paul Heussenstamm, Bob Bolen and Rich Perrier weren’t getting on and asked Pai if he was interested in buying the store. He was, though it wasn’t easy.

“The Small Business Administration loan did not come through at first because there was a lot of red tape. The owners were growing impatient,” Pai said. “They eventually said, ‘Either you buy the store or we are going to offer it to (the store’s manager).’ So that’s when I asked my parents for $60,000. I ended up paying them back in a year.”

Two years later, Pai graduated from California State University, Long Beach, with a bachelor’s degree in business management. The small store grew to yearly sales of $1 million in the late 1980s. But, by then, Pai was eyeing the company’s current location on Main Street. He wasn’t the only one. The city of Huntington Beach was in the midst of a downtown renovation project to modernize the pier area.

Pai wound up competing with surfwear retailing’s big kahuna, Anaheim-based Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. The specialty chain, which sells youth-oriented surf apparel through its now 560-unit chain, was eager to lease the beachside location. Pai persevered following a letter-writing campaign by customers that convinced the landlord that he was the best tenant for the site. The new store opened in August 1990.

“The builder picked us because of our local strength and we had done so much for the community,” Pai said. “We are not in a rush to grow our business. It’s more important for us to have quality and grow over time. We admire how PacSun has grown. Anybody who can maintain a good business like that is one to be admired.”

Over the years, Pai has expanded his store beyond apparel into surfboards and new categories such as junior’s, girls and boys, and watches and purses. He’s also added a longboard department for older surfers. The store is in 2,500 square feet of space with another 2,000 square feet of warehouse and a 600-square-foot office.

Pai has added new departments as his business has grown and neighboring tenants moved out. The first expansion came in 1992 when Pai built a 700-square-foot section for surfboards. In 1994, he built a store-within-a-store for Quiksilver known as the Boardrider’s Club. (The Quiksilver store is closed for renovations and is set to reopen in the spring.)

In 1996, Pai moved into a 1,400-square-foot space once occupied by Amy’s Bakery to build his longboard department and Java Point coffehouse. Next, in 1999, a junior’s division was built in a 700-square-foot space once occupied by Jan’s Health Bar. Three yeas ago, Pai also leased an additional 5,000-square-foot warehouse space at Gothard Street and Ellis Avenue in Huntington Beach.

Last April, Huntington Surf & Sport expanded beyond its main location to a new site, also on Main Street. There, Pai built a 2,000-square-foot store to sell just skateboards and related apparel. n

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