![]() Pushed by surfer dad Harry to excel, he was soon impressing everyone on big waves at Makaha and Sunset Beach. There, he was a young haole, enduring merciless hazing by locals. Hakman spent his early years in Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes, but he moved to the North Shore of Oahu by age 12. He started in a shed in Costa Mesa with Bob McKnight, and now he ends up a head of a behemoth Aztec pyramid-sitting in the jungles of Europe, so to speak.” “To me, there’s a sort of cynical beauty in that happening. “Is he? That’s crazy,” says Steve Pezman, the former Surfer magazine publisher who today publishes The Surfer’s Journal, when told that Hakman remains an executive at Quiksilver Europe. And while he doesn’t deserve all the credit behind the brand’s ascent, surfing observers maintain Hakman is the key to understand the origins of Quiksilver’s appeal-and how it ultimately went astray. He didn’t respond to an interview request via longtime friend Duke Boyd, founder of the Hang Ten surf clothing line in the 1960s. Now marketing director of Quiksilver Europe (legally untouched by its American sister’s bankruptcy), Hakman lives in France. And the biggest tragedy? It didn’t have to be this way. It’s a once-unthinkable fate for the company that was supposed to surf on forever. And last week, Quiksilver representatives started court-ordered mediation with creditors in New York the company’s stock wallows at a fraction of a penny per share on the New York Stock Exchange. Within days, 80 employees at the company’s mothership in Huntington Beach were laid off. According to filings, the company’s balance sheet had assets of just $337 million-less than half the total it owed. 9, when Quiksilver sought relief in a Delaware bankruptcy court from $826 million in debt owed to more than 30 creditors. But the brand has crashed mightily ever since, leading up to this past Sept. In 2006, the firm reported revenue of $2.5 billion-a company record. It made Orange County an action-sports-apparel Silicon Valley and undertook acquisitions with the intent of solidifying Quiksilver as a global brand for the good life. In Orange County, the company became a local powerhouse, gobbling up talented designers, artists, executives-a sand-and-surf Apple with no signs of ebbing. And by 2004, it announced annual earnings that exceeded $1 billion. Within 10 years, it became the first publicly listed surfwear company soon after, it opened boutiques in New York, Paris, London and Dubai. Soon, the surf mags were running photo after photo of pros gliding down famous waves such as Banzai Pipeline and Sunset Beach while wearing them-the best advertising imaginable.įrom its garage-like space, Quiksilver swelled. Before long, Hawaii-based Americans such as Hakman sported them. The combination of Velcro, snaps and a high waistband made them grip hips and stay on, even in the largest waves. In 1976, the best surfers in the world began seeking Quiksilver because they were the best. “He didn’t say much, but I think he was horrified by our business act.”īut Green saw something in the two-McKnight, a USC business school graduate, and Hakman, a classic beach bum who knew golden opportunities the moment he saw them-and used the rest of his stay in Southern California to teach the pair how to build the trunks he had invented. “ was checking us out,” Hakman recalls in Jarratt’s 1997 tome, Mr. ![]() Days later, when they regained a degree of sobriety back in Orange County, a more businesslike philosophy ensued. They took turns blasting across the Mojave Desert, daring one another to swerve onto highway berms and even crashing into an exit ramp while doing 90. The six surfers loaded up on beer, tequila and cigarettes piled into a Lincoln Continental and headed to Las Vegas. The party that began at the Quiet Woman didn’t end there. To Hakman and McKnight, the four Aussies were “all talking gibberish.” But after half an hour, the Americans were talking gibberish, too-and an empire was born. With three buddies, the Quiksilver founder was “propped up in a booth, surrounded by empty wine bottles,” writer Phil Jarratt related two decades later. Green was already slurring his words when the two arrived. He asked Hakman and McKnight to meet him at the Quiet Woman, the Corona del Mar pickup joint marked by a pub sign featuring a woman missing her head. And now the company’s founder, Alan Green, was jetting to Orange County to check on his newborn operation. ![]() For weeks during the latter half of 1976, the twentysomethings had fumbled with sewing machines in a Spartan shed off 17th Street in Costa Mesa, tasked with getting America ready for Quiksilver, a then-obscure Australian clothing brand known by only the most committed surfers. Jeff Hakman and Bob McKnight were worried-they couldn’t get the trunks quite right.
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