Volcom Inc.’s distinct stone logo has gone up on 17th Street, the trendy shopping thoroughfare in Costa Mesa.
Posters from the maker of surf and skate clothes are plastered on the windows of a former Rite Aid building next to Mother’s Market.
A new store for Costa Mesa-based Volcom? Nope.
Surfside Sports of Newport Beach is opening there.
Surfside Sports, which sells Volcom clothes at its Newport store, plans to open in Costa Mesa in time for back to school.
At 17,000 square feet, the Costa Mesa shop is double the size of Surfside Sports in Newport. (Rite Aid has moved to the corner of Orange Avenue and 17th in the same strip mall.)
Surfside Sports sells surf, snow and skate clothing and accessories.
Owner Duke Edukas said he isn’t sure if he’ll close the Newport store. The lease is up Dec. 1, he said.
Edukas said he’d keep it if he could buy the building. The building recently changed hands,one partner bought out the other, he said. Edukas said he made offers to buy it.
Surfside Sports has been a Newport Beach staple for 30 years. Edukas has owned the store for 15 years.
Why the Volcom signs instead of Surfside? Guerilla marketing, Edukas said. Volcom suggested generating buzz and keeping people guessing by putting up the Volcom logo instead of simply advertising “Surfside Sports coming soon.” Edukas liked the idea.
Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc. also came to Edukas with the same idea, he said. But Volcom came to him first. In the next few weeks, Quiksilver signs will go up, he said.
“We’ve got a ton of support from the industry,” Edukas said.
Surfside had been looking for a new spot for about five years, he said.
“But there hasn’t been a location that really popped at us,” he said.
Seventeenth Street is hot.
The street has “become what Triangle wanted to be,” Edukas said, referring to the troubled Triangle Square in Costa Mesa.
Blackline Environments, nearby in Costa Mesa, is designing the store. Blackline did design work for Irvine-based Billabong USA, a surfwear maker that also runs stores.
The new store is going to keep the same products but will vary the mix, according to Edukas.
Bread and Surfwear
Surfside Sports will have a neighbor in the former Rite Aid building on 17th Street: The site is set to house a Panera Bread in about 4,700 square feet of space.
Ted Hoover, owner of the South Orange County Panera Bread franchise, California Bread in Newport Beach, said he was waiting for something to open up on 17th Street.
“We thought it was a great trade area,” he said.
The Rite Aid building itself was too large, Hoover said. So the owner first needed to find another tenant, in this case Surfside Sports. A match was made.
He has three Panera Bread stores in OC and plans to open 15 more in the next few years. The next one is slated to open in November in the Woodbury neighborhood of Irvine. Richmond Heights, Mo.-based Panera Bread Co. also plans to open stores in North OC.
Meanwhile, Back at Volcom
Volcom may not be opening a 17th Street store, but it does plan to open a store this summer in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. Volcom plans to open two to three stores this year, spokesman Wade Huckabee said.
Volcom has two stores but no plans for an extensive retail push, he said. Volcom is first and foremost a clothing designer, he said.
Volcom held its first annual stockholder meeting, a fairly mellow event for the usually rambunctious company. No peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, no skateboarding, according to Huckabee. Very corporate. Doughnut holes and coffee were the fare. The company did make a presentation, highlighting its artistic bent.
South Coast Touchup
South Coast Plaza is set for a remodeling along the lines of new floors, handrails and planters. More details to come. Also at South Coast Plaza, MNG by Mango opened last week. Theory is set to open this week.
Auto Sales Slipping
The Costa Mesa-based Orange County Automobile Dealers Association’s quarterly Auto Outlook report projects a 2.9% decline in new vehicle registrations in OC this year.
The report foresees 189,000 registrations, which serve as a proxy for new auto sales. Orlando, Fla.-based AutoCount, part of Costa Mesa-based Experian Group, provides the report for the association.
The predicted decline started playing out in the first quarter, with registrations slipping 8% versus a year earlier.
SUVs, pickups and minivans led the decline.
Luxury autos posted the biggest rise during the quarter, followed by “near luxury” and “midsize luxury.”
The three U.S. brands lost 3 percentage points of market share based on registrations. Japan’s share,that of Toyota and Honda,was up 1.8 percentage points.
European brands BMW and Mercedes were up less than a point. South Korea’s brands logged a point increase.
Toyota and its Scion brand again held the No. 1 spot during the quarter, despite a 2.4% decline to 10,263 registrations.
