Depactus debuted last month at the Agenda trade show in Long Beach, and it appears the San Clemente-based brand focused on young male adventurers has carved a spot for itself in the local surf apparel industry.
“Our first appointment, Jack’s Surfboards, they were really excited about the line, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the show,” said Bruce Beach, Depactus’ cofounder and chief executive.
The company’s schedule for the two-day event was packed with some 50 appointments.
“You can do your homework, you can do your research, but until you actually show to retailers, you don’t know what their response is going to be,” Beach said.
Depactus’ warm reception comes as no surprise as Beach, who founded Electric Visual and later sold it to Volcom Inc., left little to coincidence when developing the venture.
Industry Vets
The company’s management team, for starters, is comprised of industry veterans such as himself and his business partner, Luke Egan, a pro athlete who once surfed for Billabong and Arnette’s teams.
“We needed some great talent, knowing how competitive the market it was,” Beach said. “Our first hire was Lawrance Quigley, who had been design director at Oakley for 13 years.”
Quigley, who specialized in designing board shorts and “technical shells,” or jackets, took on the role of vice president of product at Depactus. He is working closely with creative director, Myf Bradbury, who hails from Encinitas-based Nixon Inc., where she was responsible for the design, development and production of its wristwatches.
At Depactus, “she made sure everything we did had a sense of purpose, not just a distinct style, but our whole range had a cohesive look and feel to it,” Beach said.
Tom Ruiz will oversee merchandizing strategies, global distribution planning, revenue forecasting, new-business development, and sales management. He’s a transplant from Volcom, where he spent nearly 16 years as executive vice president of global sales.
So why would a midcareer pro like Quigley and others bet on a startup?
“Lawrance wasn’t looking for anything. It was a huge risk for him—13 years [at Oakley], a very steady job with a great, great company,” Beach said. “I pretty much laid out for him what we are doing. He is a hard-core surfer and fisherman, and he really liked the whole concept.”
And there was another incentive besides the brand vision, considering new ventures usually don’t pay as much as well-established firms.
“Everybody on our management team has an equity position in our company,” Beach said.
The ownership benefit also applies to Depactus’ marketing team, Instrument, an independent digital creative agency in Portland, Ore., whose client roster includes Nike Inc., Google Inc., Levi Strauss & Co., and YouTube.
Beach pointed out that the deal isn’t the typical practice for Instrument.
“We started working with them on the development of the brand—before we had a name or a logo, when we were defining our product. And we put together a long-term plan, so a lot of the things that they are working with us (on) weren’t just for the quarter or for the month or the year, they are really based on a long-term strategy.”
Beach and Egan are looking for a few more folks to support Depactus’ mission. They self-funded the company for the first six months to the tune of more than $3 million, according to news reports.
“It was a major investment,” Beach said. “We are now in a stage where we’re doing a first round of financing. It’s private, and it’s with a select number of what we are calling ‘strategic investors’ who are either good friends of mine or people I’ve worked with, people who know the category really well.”
The brand’s potential hasn’t yet crested.
The collaboration with the agency folks, “who are not really surfers, but guys who fish, climb, hike and ride motorcycles,” helped Beach and his team realize Depactus could focus on “more than just surfing, and have the whole adventure and lifestyle aspect to it, to become a real outdoor brand.”
Brand Ambassadors
Instrument helped develop the brand’s Men of Extraordinary Pursuits—four brand ambassadors “who are going to tell the story of our products through their adventures and their pursuits,” Beach said.
They include surfers Ry Craike, Mark Healey and Matt Meola, and surfboard shaper Chris Christiansen from Encinitas.
The brand’s target audience is the young, active male, “anyone who participates in anything to do with surfing, diving and fishing, anything in and around water,” Beach said. “A lot of those people are also enjoying camping, hiking, the outdoors.
“Our brand is very useful, masculine, strong, and even the name Depactus is a Latin term meaning ‘deep set,’ out in the sea. We’re trying to hit the cross-section of high-performance and styling, but at the same time, even though our target market is 15- to 25-year-olds, we want to be known for quality, durability and have a very utilitarian look and feel, and we want to be inclusive. We don’t want someone who is 35, 45 and 55 to look at the brand and say, ‘Oh, that’s just a young kid’s brand.’ ”
Campaign
A marketing campaign scheduled to launch Nov. 14 will help introduce the brand to consumers. Print media buys will include local enthusiast magazines, such as Newport Beach-based What Youth and Surfer, Surfing, and Surfer’s Journal, all three of which are based in San Clemente. The digital portion of the campaign will focus on the magazines’ online editions and social media channels (see related story, page 5).
An in-store retail unveiling of Depactus’ first line—spring 2015—is scheduled for Feb. 1, to be accompanied by the launch of its e-commerce website. Roughly a third of its offerings will be “a deep range of boardshorts that can compete with the biggest, most established brands out there,” he said. They will include “high performance” styles that sell for more than $110 and feature “welded seams and all the best materials,” plus other cuts that sell for $50 to $75.
“We are well into development of our fall line,” Beach said. “There is that term, ‘You are only as good as your last [line],’ so we’re out of the gates with spring, and we’re in deep on fall and looking at the holidays. But it really helps if you get out of the gate strong and people are confident what your brand looks like and that you’re going to be able to deliver and execute. That’s the way you want to start off.”
