There have never been so many surfers on the planet. More and more young and old people are giving surfing a try. And yet, the empire that helped make it popular is falling.
The concept of "surf industry" has changed profoundly in the 2010s.
What once was a multi-billion dollar market anchored on surfwear has now broadened its borders to embrace a much larger segment: wave pools.
However, there's still way more investment in surf parks than the revenue that they generate. In the future, it will surely change.
So, what happened to surfing's cash cow? What happened to the boardshorts, bikinis, tees, sandals, and branded towels?
Why aren't they driving the industry anymore?
The last time SurferToday.com reported relevant growth in the surf industry was in 2011, as the world recovered from the ashes of a global economic depression.
At the time, the Surf Industry Members Association (SIMA) released a statement with improvements across several segments of the market.
But there was also a hint of what would become the surf industry's decline.
"Many independent core retail stores that have closed their doors in the past two years have been replaced by specialty chain stores or brand-owned stores," SurferToday.com wrote in 2011.
In other words, surf shops were closing, beaten by the world's largest sports retailers - Decathlon, Intersport, Dick's Sporting Goods, etc.
Suddenly, they were making affordable surfboards, surf wax, leashes, traction pads, wetsuits, and mimicking the Big Four's (Rip Curl, Quiksilver, O'Neill, and Billabong) apparel and clothing.
Tides go by fast
Today, there is nothing these multinational sports retailers won't cover when we talk about surfing.
They have even broken into the stand-up paddleboarding and foiling categories with their own subbrands.
So, when the CEO of an action sports conglomerate criticized Decathlon on LinkedIn for their tasteless surf skirt, "crappy-built surf product that gets sold off the back of a video," he was right yet missing the most important point.
The surf industry is to blame for its own decline.
For decades, the world's most popular (and respected) surf brands have pushed a pair of boardshorts for $150 or more and t-shirts for $50-$75, undermining the market and consumer behavior.
At some point, surfers became detached, and the sales of the Big Four, for instance, dipped to the point of bankruptcy.
Greed and detachment from reality paved the way for small, independent brands to flourish and for large retailers to mass-market anything tagged with the word "surf."
Plus, we tend to forget that in today's world, most of the branded "quality" products that the romanticized idea of surf shops sells are produced in the same Asian factories where Decathlon sources its more affordable goods.
So, where did the surf industry get it wrong?
The surf industry was really a fashion business - not a surf business
As we've seen above, during the 1990s and early 2000s, brands like Quiksilver, Billabong, Rip Curl, and O'Neill generated far more revenue from clothing and apparel than from actual surf equipment.
The revenue gap was enormous.
However, the model worked very well for the famous surf companies because, until then, millions of teenagers who had never surfed wore surf brands.
Surfing represented freedom, travel, Australia, Hawaii, and California. These were clichés, yes, but they really clicked and made sense in any non-surfer mindset.
The brands sold an aspirational lifestyle rather than technical products. They sold a dream not fueled by endless, edited, short social media clips of wave rides.
Professional surfers, films, magazines, and events were essentially marketing investments for apparel sales.
The system was working well, and the price tags were increasingly getting higher and higher, with even greater margins for the surf conglomerates.
Until things change, as they always do in the capitalist world.
Surf culture stopped being the dominant youth culture
Another phenomenon emerged. There was actually a dramatic structural shift - a cultural one.
In the late 1990s, surfwear was fashionable everywhere, with oversized boardshorts and graphic tees becoming mainstream.
Beach culture felt aspirational. Surfers were proud of their lifestyle, and that sentiment crossed the sport's borders.
However, by the 2010s, youth culture was a very different thing.
Streetwear, sneaker culture, skateboarding, hip-hop, luxury collaborations, and athleisure diluted surfing's lifestyle dominance.
Consequently, the surf aesthetic increasingly looked dated compared with brands that constantly reinvented themselves.
Traditional tropical graphics and logo-heavy apparel remained while fashion evolved. And then, there was no going back.
Loyalty, a variable on which the surf industry had relied for decades, nearly ceased to exist.
Surfers were no longer interested in carrying one of the Big Four's logos on a t-shirt and paying $50-plus for it.
Boarshorts were no rocket science for someone to pay $150 for them.
Fast fashion copied surfwear instantly
The surf style never got completely out of fashion, and mass-market clothing moguls knew it. So, they went for it.
One of the biggest competitive shocks came from Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, Shein, and similar retailers.
Consumers could buy from them floral shirts, beach shorts, graphic tees, tropical prints, etc., without paying a premium for Quiksilver or Billabong.
The lifestyle became separated from the brands - like Rip Curl and O'Neill - that had created it.
And so, surf brands were left competing against companies with much faster design cycles, lower prices, and enormous supply chains.
Pricing power was dramatically reduced and, with it, the historical surf logos got into financial trouble.
Surf brands overexpanded
Before the first hit, many surf companies assumed the boom would continue forever.
As public companies or private-equity-backed businesses, they opened hundreds of stores, expanded globally, acquired unrelated brands, increased inventories, and pursued continuous revenue growth.
Their focus was not on feeding and nurturing the "fanbase," but on adding layers of profitability to their annual financial reports.
So, it's no surprise that when fashion trends shifted, they were left with too many stores, excess inventory, heavy debt, and complex organizations.
Billabong was a classic example, with aggressive acquisitions eventually leading to enormous write-downs and financial distress.
Authenticity became diluted
Surfing is unlike any other sport. It is centuries old; probably thousands.
Surfing's universe is so rich and interdisciplinary that the industry that breathes around it cannot behave like any other industry.
Surfers are sensitive to the core and essence of their sport. There really is a thing named surf culture.
Let's not forget that, originally, surfers proudly wore surf brands. Later, everyone wore surf brands.
And eventually, surfers increasingly stopped wearing the major surf brands and many core members of the tribe migrated toward smaller independent labels, local shapers, technical performance brands, Patagonia, and other niche lifestyle brands.
Many pro surfers, such as Kelly Slater (Outerknown) and John John Florence (Florence Marine X), have created their own labels.
Eventually, large corporations became perceived as generic fashion companies rather than authentic surf brands. And punishment ensued.
Digital commerce changed brand power
There's another relevant variable hitting the surf industry's longtime status quo.
In the 1990s, if you wanted surf clothing, you often visited a surf shop or branded retail store.
Today, consumers discover brands through Instagram, TikTok, direct-to-consumer websites, marketplaces, or trusted, leading online surf magazines like SurferToday.com.
That is to say that small brands can easily reach customers without building massive retail networks.
Consequently, one of the biggest advantages enjoyed by legacy surf companies was axed.
On top of that, all these large surf conglomerates are terrible at communicating with their stakeholders.
Surf media collapsed
There was a time when photographs of surfers unveiling their talent, style, and technique were almost only featured in magazines. Print magazines, we should stress.
The old ecosystem was based on the idea that surf brands sponsored athletes, whose performances funded and sold magazines, which eventually led to surf videos and films.
The cycle would fuel an aspirational way of living that would eventually sell clothing.
When apparel sales declined, magazine advertising disappeared, print magazines closed, expensive surf films became harder to finance, sponsorship budgets shrank, and contests became more dependent on outside funding.
In other words, the industry's marketing engine largely disappeared.
Surfing itself is a relatively small sport
As hard as it might sound, it's important to make a distinction.
Globally, there are perhaps 20 or 30 million surfers, but only a fraction surf regularly.
And that is not enough to support billion-dollar apparel companies.
The industry required hundreds of millions of lifestyle consumers buying hoodies, backpacks, shoes, hats, casual clothing, and many other items.
Once those consumers moved on, the underlying surf market proved much smaller than investors had assumed.
And this is what we're left with.
Financial ownership accelerated the decline
We've mentioned this before, but it's never too much to stress it again.
Many iconic brands passed through public markets, private equity, licensing groups, and other types of strategic schemes.
These owners often emphasized quarterly growth, licensing revenue, cost-cutting, and operational efficiency, rather than maintaining cultural relevance.
And this is critical.
The result was brands that became financially optimized while losing emotional connection with consumers.
We might only recall a program - Rip Curl's "The Search" - that clearly aligned with what it means to be a surfer today.
Apart from that, consumers are getting pretty models wearing expensive surfwear.
Recent bankruptcies exposed a long-running structural problem
Maybe the collapse of the surf industry was inevitable. Maybe globalization tends to bleach authenticity across all industries.
But, for instance, the 2025 bankruptcy of Liberated Brands (the operator of Quiksilver, Billabong, and Volcom in North America) was not the beginning of the industry's troubles.
The signs were all over for at least since the new millennium.
The fall of Liberated Brands highlighted issues that had been building for over a decade.
Company leadership cited inflation, high interest rates, fast fashion, e-commerce, and changing consumer preferences.
But those factors compounded an already weakened business model that never quite showed interest in changing or adapting quickly to the fast-moving times.
While most of the classic, iconic surf brands continue under new ownership structures, the era of giant surfwear chains appears to be over.
Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com
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