Ocean Hut in Lavallette, New Jersey, which was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, is back in business. I talked to owner Tony Giordano to find out how thing are going.
When did you re-open, and is the shop in in the same location as before?
Tony: We opened the doors the Wednesday before Easter. Not only is the shop in the same location, it’s a complete 25-year remodel motivated by Sandy.
I am proud to say I put everything back together using the same footprint as before. The counters and cases are in the same spot, the men’s and women’s dressing rooms are in the same spot, even the wetsuits and surfboards are in the same spot since we bought the building in 1980.
It’s just all brand new. It smells like a new car when you walk in Ocean Hut. At least that’s what a lot of customers tell me. We have a lot of cedar accents in here. The dressing rooms are made out of reclaimed barn wood, the floors look like a boardwalk (laminate but really durable), and all the build-outs everyone gave me fit in very nicely.
How is business these days?
That’s the biggest question and a lot of it’s a mystery. The store is beautiful, and it’s really well merchandised. We are up to par on the weekends and a little scary during the week.
A lot of people’s homes aren’t done. They are all at different stages. And some of the beaches aren’t going to re-open this summer and the rentals are down about 80%. We are hoping for good weather on the weekends, but we are expecting a lot of challenges throughout the summer season due to people not getting their homes done in time and regulations requiring people to raise houses and all this other noise that’s out there.
Besides people getting paid late by insurance, you can’t plan to re-build anything unless you dig out of your own pocket.
Before our insurance checks came in, we spent out of our own pocket for about 90 days. Even when checks did come in, they only got us about two thirds of the way on everything. I considered that good enough because I am over the aggravation part of it all. I just want to move forward.
Are you finding a lot of people are still having difficulty with insurance?
I think there are lucky people out there that get squared away, and then there are people who aren’t happy with the settlement and still have to fight it out.
There are a lot of people in different predicaments. They just lowered the real estate values here, and that will be a problem. So you may now have a mortgage greater than what your property or building is worth. In the short term it’s a savings on property tax, but in the long term we all want to see our values go up. I would expect all the values to be back in five years. But today’s value is a little scary.
See Page 2 for rebuilding challenges and how Tony’s life is now
How have the brands and manufacturers been in helping you get up and running again?
It’s been a mixed bag. A lot of people are very sympathetic to what happened to us, and for some people, it’s business as usual. It all depends on the relationship with these people and how deep it goes with them, and for the most part, we have deep relationships with them because we’ve been in business for 38 years so we feel pretty fortunate.
We also are fortunate in that we have a much bigger reach. With the beauty of Facebook, we have 2,600 fans following us on Facebook. So social media has really helped us. When we said we were re-opening on Facebook, people came out from all over. We spent no money on print and radio advertising, so social media helped play a big role to letting people know we are back in business, especially in that first month.
We will have a grand opening on Memorial Day weekend, and hopefully we will have some pros that will be walking around and at the beach. We are working on that now.
How has the relief effort been and can people still help out?
I think Waves For Water has done a fabulous job around here, and they are really helping out the surf community, which has been great.
You know for me, I just spoke to JDog (CEO Jason Steris) at Volcom last week and I said to him, all I need is an understanding that we are facing the unknown. We make 75% of our income in 15 weeks and I don’t know how that is going to go. If you came and went in my truck and I took you around the island for twenty minutes, you’d say, “Tony, I don’t know either.” We are in it for the long haul, but we have some challenges as well.
The state of New Jersey has also given us some challenges. They will be repairing the road without any consideration of summer traffic. And then they are planning on replenishing the beaches, which is not going to be a pretty thing considering how good the surf has been the last few months. They are collecting signatures for easements to bring in big equipment and blow in sand and that could really ruin all the sandbars.
They want to make it a football field of that hard, “shelly,” rocky sand. The surfing community is pretty nervous about it, whereas some of these homeowners in the small towns are for it. That’s going to be a challenge too, because it’s noisy and dirty and messy, and it takes a long time.
How are you guys doing personally?
My son is having a good school year and I talked my wife into working at the store a little more. We are all a little tired, and we are still working on the house. But I have my skate shoes on right now, so I have been skating down and surfing across the street. So things are pretty much back to normal, just a lot of work. The family is okay. There are not a lot of people living on our street, which is a little weird, but eventually they will come back.
The funny thing about New Jersey is, as soon as they start sweating out north and out west, they seem to flock here. I think once the summer hits, things will move faster.
And the surf has been good?
We have had a really good run of surf the last month so everyone has been pleased, better than other years. It’s been really consistent and good so that’s been really helpful as well.
