Just three months after challenging surfwear and skateboard apparel companies on their own turf, Nike Inc.’s All Conditions Gear action sports apparel unit plans to close down its Irvine office on Nov. 17.
The company is shutting down the OC office as part of a shift in focus to outdoor and winter sports products, said Jerry Lund, ACG’s national sales manager in Irvine. The Irvine office employs only Lund and two others but was gearing up to hire 15 more people for ACG’s men’s line, Lund said.
“We were getting to the point of collecting orders from stores,we had gone through two trade shows,and were stopped dead in our tracks,” Lund said. “There were some recent changes in the overall direction of ACG that made it a poor fit for the brand in the image conscious, specialty store-oriented surf market.”
ACG established its OC office on Aug. 1 and hired Lund away from Irvine-based Rusty Apparel after 12 years there. Deborah Waters, who had worked for both Hang Ten and No Fear, is ACG’s Irvine office director. More recently, ACG hired Guy Trotter as its marketing director. Trotter took the job after leaving Vista-based Atlas Distribution, maker of skateboard apparel line Planet Earth and Adio shoes.
Lund, who lives in San Diego and commutes to Irvine, said he might take a position with ACG overseeing Western regional sales based in Denver. But, Lund said, he hopes to stay in Southern California.
“I may do enough travel that I may not have to move,” he said.
Nike had hoped to tap the hard core surf-and-skate market with its own men’s line of board shorts, pants and accessories under the ACG label. The ACG unit, which had made a failed attempt at surfwear several years ago, is primarily a maker of apparel, shoes and accessories for hikers, mountain bikers, water sports and snowboarding. The 11-year-old ACG outdoor products division, which counts annual sales of $237 million, is one of several brands created by Nike.
ACG formed a partnership in August with Irvine-based Counter Culture Manufacturing. The two companies shared office space, collaborated on product development and shared suppliers and manufacturing sources.
The action sports market is dominated by OC names such as Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc. and Billabong USA and O’Neill, both of Irvine.
Former Rusty marketing director Pete “PT” Townend, now editor of San Clemente-based Surfing magazine, said Nike’s move into the surf-and-skate business reflected how far the industry has come. But he said the shoe giant’s retreat shows how important it is to have roots in this community.
“We have our own Nike, but it’s called Quiksilver,” he said. “Maybe they just saw that tackling the extreme market was some thing they were going to pour a lot of money into and they were not going to see a return on. They can now put the same money into ACG’s other areas.”
ACG’s new focus on winter sports apparel was evident with the unit’s recent co-sponsorship of an indoor quarter pipe snowboard contest and music event featuring rapper Eminem at the Great Western Forum in September.
“ACG is going to really do a lot of marketing and try to enter the basic outdoor and winter sports market,” Lund said.
For the surf and skate markets, ACG created a spring 2001 line of board shorts, walk shorts, pants, woven and knit shirts, hats and accessories that debuted this fall at the Surf Expo in Florida and the Action Sports Retailer Trade Show in San Diego. There also were plans to pursue a female collection of apparel and accessories next year.
“The first time anyone saw product was at ASR and Surf Expo, but there was no production and fabric was not ordered yet so the shut down was painless,” Lund said.
The ACG division still plans to launch a line of skateboard shoes under a yet-to-be-named brand, Lund said.
Nike still will have an OC presence. The company has a 100-person distribution facility in Foothill Ranch that handles apparel with licensed team logos under the NIKE and SPL 28 names. n
