Kelly Slater

Remember OP, the corduroy shorts?

But Quicksilver had a big thing because I was a Quicksilver guy for 23 years.

And it was Quicksilver, Roxy was the women's line, and DC was the shoes.

So those three brands were powerhouses through our industry.

and, and skating with DC shoes, obviously, but, you know, Quicksilver is so wealthy.

They're making so much money.

And so all the surfers and skaters and sponsored athletes and, you know, models and all that sort of stuff, we're all making really good money from the brands.

And, um,

And then eventually, a lot of them became public brands.

And they were kind of chasing stock price instead of just making what authentically made them great brands.

It was more worried about the company structure than it was about the product that was being made.

And then outsiders came in and started buying, take over these companies and stuff.

And it really changed what surfing was in the past 20 years.

And those companies also, they didn't own the tour, but they sponsored each of the individual tour events, and they had the media rights.

So they would run their media rights.

Billabong would run them the way they want, Quicksilver the way they want, and they would own everything from that particular event.

Now we have a world tour.

The WSL took over from what the ASP, it used to be called ASP, and they took it over and they own all the media rights to all the events now.

So it's not the individual sponsors.

So that kind of changed as well.