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More surfers, more surfboards but less overseas travel… Will the pandemic affect the boardshorts market? The answer along with the latest trends for spring-summer 2022 by David Bianic.
HURLEY
retail buyer’s guide
RETAIL BUYER’S GUIDE
SO, MORE BOARDSHORTS? With the COVID saga still not over - soon we hope and with the effects of the pandemic on the leisure market hugely benefitting surfing equipment, will the same go for boardshorts? As Nick Crook from Boardies Apparel reminds us “COVID-19 has impacted sales as people couldn’t travel on vacation, but certain countries with beaches were okay.” So less purchases related to exotic destinations but more time to spend at the beaches in your own country, it’s unclear whether brands will manage to balance it all out… From Oxbow Marketing, Laura Grenon reminds us that for the French market this was compounded by the non-essential shops being closed during the various lockdowns, which did nothing to help sales from physical retailers. Furthermore, Hurley and Soöruz are reporting that boardshorts have not enjoyed the same spectacular growth as wetsuits 22
‘‘All-day comfort is undoubtedly a feature of our next-generation boardshorts” Briana Mori, Lightning Bolt
have, showing that boardshorts cannot necessarily be put in the same bracket as technical clothing: in other words, just because there are more surfers doesn’t necessarily mean additional boardshorts by the same amount. As well as other complications due to the health crisis, brands have had to use their imaginations to plan their 2022 spring-summer collections’ manufacturing amid much uncertainty: production delays, surging transportation costs, etc. “Although we had to struggle like most of the companies with delays and raw material scarcities, by producing locally - a sustainable option (it allows us to reduce the logistic operations and transport waste) - it gave us more control over the production
