Every year in the beginning of January is the Agenda show in Long Beach. The premiere street wear, skateboarding, and surf brands as well as up and coming indy brands show their upcoming collections for the upcoming Summer and Fall seasons. This years show was busy as usual and so were we. I flew up with Michael (owner of Blue Hawaii Surf) and we met Terry our counterpart and co-owner of Blue Hawaii Surf China shops. Our agenda (no pun intended) was to reconnect with our vendors, identify new brands that we want to partner up with, and to get an overall vibe of how the industry is doing and where it"s going. From what I saw it seemed like the surf side of the industry was coming out of the funk that it's been in for the past couple of years due to over saturation and identity crisis. It seems there's more of a fun yet focused demeanor going on with surf and this is being fueled by the up and coming smaller independent surf brands that are starting to pop up. Skateboarding on the hardgoods side seems to be going through the same progression. There were a handful of new companies like Russ Pope's Transportation Unit and Welcome Skateboards to name a few. These new brands seem to be less focused on stairs, handrails, and ledges and more focused on the fun of skating simple things like curbs, ditches, and man made obstacles while having a load of fun while doing it. On the street wear side of things brands like FITTED from Hawaii, and Super Co caught my attention primarily because these brands are from or have roots in Hawaii. It seemed like there was still a lot of the bling factor still going on with most of the other street wear brands and a lot of sameness. There's still small pockets of cool stuff going on in street wear but it's definitely becoming harder to find originality with these brands especially when you can find most of them in Zumiez, Pac Sun, Tilly's, and other big box department stores that suck life out of everything that these brands stand for in the first place. Overall Agenda was a really good show. We were able to handle all the business we set out to take care of and we got reconnect with old friendships and establish new ones. Definitely look forwards to the next show later this year!
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| Early birds on day 2 of Agenda while others slept of the hangovers from the parties and events from the night before! |
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| Always dig the pic collage at the Stance booth. These are to individuals who help to make up the Punks and Poets and define what Stance is all about. |
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| The Hurley Printing Press was one of if not the main attraction at Agenda. Pick a design from one of the selected artist and get a tee screened right there on the spot. D.I.Y. at it's finest! |
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| These guys worked overtime and then some to get everyone in line hooked up with a tee. Good job Hurley! |
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| I had a hard time deciding who's artwork to pick. C.R. Stecyk and Bobby from Tribal had rad designs, but in the end I went with Tim Hendricks. I dig his tattoo influenced artwork and like the fact that braddah has some ties back to the islands! |
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| Bobby from Tribal's design on the far right was sick! |
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| But I ended up with Tim's rose on the far right! |
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| One of my favorite booths in all of Agenda. Russ Pope's Transportation Unit always keeping things fun. He and Paul Schmitt from P.S. Stix worked on a couple of custom shapes for the upcoming season and the remains of the templates where used as original one off art work for TU's booth. |
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| DLXSF built a replica of the China Banks in San Francisco in front of their booth. Guys were ripping the shit out of it! This was definitely one of the coolest things I saw at Agenda! |
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| Scotty Ill from The Hundreds is one of the raddest guys I know in the street wear side of our industry. Wish there were more guys like this in the industry who approach things the right way and with sincere intentions. |
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| Vissla is Paul Naude's new venture after leaving Billabong. I'm excited to see what's going to become of this. I believe with all the trials and tribulations that he dealt with towards the end of Billabong were great lessons on what not to do as a surf brand. With a clean new slate and a solid team helping to spread the message keep an eye out for Vissla in the years to come. |
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| Had to stop by our favorite vendor RVCA to pay a visit to Eric Thomas. Pat Tenore is a good example of doing things right and for the right reason. The RVCA brand is one of the only brands still thriving and growing stronger in the surf industry. It's because Pat had a unique vision and surrounded himself with a bunch of unique friends under very sincere circumstances. |
