Rip Curl's San Francisco experience

We followed up with Rip Curl Marketing Director Dylan Slater to ask him some questions about some of the rewards and challenges of hosting The Rip Curl Pro Search in San Francisco this year.

How did the city respond to having the contest there?

We did our best from the start to work with the local surfing community, and we feel the majority of the local surfers supported the event.

When the event started and the waves were delivering, it was amazing to see the crowds from the city come out.

At times, there were an estimated 15,000 people lining the shores to watch, which was great because they don’t have easy access to watching the world’s best surfers live.

We had numerous environmental initiatives going on simultaneously with the goal of running one of the greenest ASP World Tour events ever – the local community seemed to appreciate that effort.

Any surprises or challenges with hosting a contest in a big city like San Francisco?

Kelly Slater with San Francisco 49ers Alex Smith, Joe Staley, and Adam Snyder

Ocean Beach has a lot of regulations. The beach permitting was all done through the National Parks, while the parking lot permitting was through the State Parks and Rec.

We had great support from them both; however, understandably there were quite a few obstacles to marry an ASP World Tour event with all standing regulations.

No use of Personal Watercraft Assist was definitely a hot topic leading up to the event, which ended up not being an issue in the long run.

How did merchandise sales go? What was the strategy with the merchandise and where did you sell it?

Mick Fanning and Taylor Knox at the Rip Curl/Skullcandy collaboration party

Our event merchandise sold fantastic. We partnered with 14 key retailers to get behind an event merchandise affiliate program, and the early results are indicating that this was Rip Curl’s best performing event merchandise produced to date.

We had a great assortment including jackets, fleece, beanies, scarves, and even mittens.

Additionally, we had a small retail store onsite for just the event merchandise which did well for us.

Our merchandise affiliates included: WISE Surfboards, Jacks, Spyder, South Coast, Hansen’s, Surf Concepts, Katin, Beach House, 17th Street Surf Shop, OBBC, Heritage, Proof Lab, Sunshine Freestyle, and the U.S. Coast Guard.

See Page 2 for Green Day’s performance, retailers that attended the event, more

What retailers came to the event? Did you mainly have them at the contest or did you take them around the city as well?

Green Day performing at the event kickoff party

We had representatives from Jack’s, Val Surf, Surfride, South Coast, Surf n Sea, Kokomo, and accounts locally like WISE and Proof Lab.

Not only did they get to experience two great days of surfing during the event, but they also attended our kickoff party we did with the Surfrider Foundation, where Green Day played live.

Additionally, we did a product launch event for the collaboration we did with Skullcandy and Mick Fanning for his signature audio-enabled fleece.

It was great having the retailers there to be a part of all these unique moments during the event.

What about the webcast – how many viewers did it attract?

Kelly Slater celebrates his big win

Numbers are still being confirmed, but early indications show that this was maybe the most successful Rip Curl ASP World Tour event we’ve ever had in terms of webcast numbers.

We know we have more uniques than the two previous events this year, as well as the Rip Curl Pro Search in Puerto Rico last year, where Kelly clinched World Title #10.

Any challenges with the webcast? I know one morning it was down when I tried to get on.

Surfers received customized San Francisco Giant jerseys

Aside from some minor glitches early on in the webcast that were worked out immediately, everything ran smoothly.

Having the event move somewhere each year is a great idea in theory, but it poses strenuous logistical challenges to the event producer to start from scratch each year.

All in all, we were pleased with the webcast and broadcast production as a whole.

In the future, do you think Rip Curl will look to hold contests near major urban centers? 

The destination of San Francisco was all about showing another side of the Search, the “attainable Search.”

We wanted to show you don’t have to travel to the Earth’s end to find the ideal “Search” destination, and we feel we achieved that. Regarding future events, we keep an open mind about all potential destinations.

Did you partner with any retailers based in San Francisco for the event?

Yes, we partnered with WISE Surfboards to be the official Surf Shop of the Rip Curl Pro Search. They have so much heritage in the San Francisco surfing community, and we worked with Bob and his team to throw the WISE Surfboards Locals Expression Session, a big team signing, and running a Flashbomb wetsuit demo center onsite, while filtering all traffic back to WISE.

We’re grateful for their support and partnership through the whole process.