“Everyone wanted to sign John. We just kind of thought, if he was going to start his own thing, now would be the time.”
The surf industry has a long-running kink of slapping sticky hickeys on surfers and trying to squeeze them into the shape of a brand. Perhaps less so now, with the stickers losing some of their stick. But just look at our quasi-regular co-host, Dane Reynolds, whose lack of connection to the traditional surf-brand model ultimately led to his split from Quik and the creation of his own company.
Five years into the Florence experiment, Sam and Doom sit down with Ryan Hurley, co-founder and creative director of Florence, to discuss the business of building a company around John Florence, the ambition to make it something much larger than a surf brand, and also Michael Jordan.
But first, the origin story.
When John’s contract was coming to an end, the offers were plentiful. Among them was a reported $1 million-a-year deal from Rip Curl. John could have signed with any major surf brand, accepted the full cheese platter laid out for his royalty and continued living the glamorous life of a professional surfer from yesteryear: ride for a company, appear in a few campaigns, help sell its clothes and earn millions of dollars.
Instead, he started his own company. Although, as Ryan reveals in this episode, the idea wasn’t really John’s.
It was proposed by Ryan and his brother Dan, who had already built a considerable business at Hurley under the family patriarch, Bob. John had spent most of his career riding for Bob’s company. When his contract came up, the Hurley bro’s saw an opportunity.
Everyone wanted to sign John. Why not build something with him instead? And for that matter, why not name the whole thing after him?
Which brings us to MJ.
The Jordan brand is the archetype for what Ryan wants Florence to become: a premium sports brand, built around a generational athlete, and eventually expanded into something that exists beyond the athlete’s original field.
Jordan’s playing career eventually petered out in Charlotte, a slightly sad epilogue to the Bulls era. But by then, his name had already become a global sports company.
Sidenote: who is the Michael Jordan of surfing? Probably Slater, for mine. John might be LeBron.
Anyway, surfing, in this conception, is the point of origin, but it ain’t the final destination. Surfing leads to the ocean, the ocean to the great outdoors. And the great outdoors, theoretically, is a considerably larger market than surfing.
If anyone can build that kind of bridge, Ryan believes, it is JJF.
Ryan also has some fairly pointed thoughts on the current state of the surf industry. He sees the 1990s as its golden era, when surf brands were pushing design and culture forward, and the 2000s, with it’s helicopters and billionaires, as a kind of silver era. The present, well. A little light on the old abundance.
Strange, then, that Florence is growing.
“A lot of the old ways of doing things are broken, and I think it requires new thinking to create a new future,” Ryan says. “But it takes people time to come around to new ideas.”
Also included: who is more important to Florence when it comes to selling product?
John or Nathan?
Find out in Episode 23 of StabMic.
Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Yucca Fins, SlowTide, Devium, TurtleBox, Vaer, and Dome Dust, for making StabMic possible.
