SES walked the Vans US Open of Surfing site with VF President of Action Sports Americas Kevin Bailey to see how the venue has changed this year.
Last year, the first year of Vans’ title sponsorship, the event went smoothly.
However, on the last night after the contest was over, some intoxicated adults went on a vandalism spree on Main Street. That led to a melee with police and revelers, and lots of bad headlines and jokes on late night talk shows.
Kevin said the main change this year is that the venue has shrunk in size as Vans, the city of Huntington Beach, and event owner IMG work toward making the event more family friendly.
Vendor Village, which Kevin said grew chaotic at times last year, has been eliminated. Instead, Vans has added an enlarged Van Doren Village aimed at families.
Games like foosball, skeeball, and ping pong are part of the mix, and there are bean bags for hanging out, a photo booth, and a larger deck area with tables and umbrellas. This is where Steve Van Doren is cooking free hot dogs, and where Vans staff is interacting a lot with kids. There’s also a screen showing a live feed of the event, and a Vans Custom Culture tent for those feeling creative.
This area has been created in a way that allows it to be contained so that authorities can react quickly and root out problems if needed, Kevin said.
Store on the sand
Vans learned a lot from operating the store during the US Open last year. Before, they underestimated the demand for beach basics like beach towels and umbrellas, Kevin said, a mistake that will not be repeated this year.
The retail team also needed more product storage close by, so this year the store is bigger to accommodate the storage on site instead of having workers running offsite to get backup stock.
Vans also learned that some, but not all, footwear sells well in this environment. This year, they’ve been very careful about what footwear they bring to the beach, and implemented what they learned about which graphics and colors work for the US Open clientele.
“We don’t view this as a volume event for us,” Kevin said. “It’s more about meeting the needs of the consumer coming to the beach.”
Vans has a large retail division, and retail employees come from all over the country to work during the event. Kevin is confident the retail team has worked out some of the logistical, staffing and product kinks that they discovered last year.
HSS and Jack’s are both selling event merchandise and are “blowing through product like crazy,” Kevin said. “We delivered it early and they are selling through at a crazy pace. … One of our big focuses is supporting our accounts up there on the corner.”
See Page 2 for how Vans is trying to up the family friendly quotient
Family friendly a work in progress
Kevin said the ultimate goal is to make the event more welcoming to families. Changing the vibe of the event will take time, especially he said, since the event had grown to “near epic proportions” before Vans took it on.
“We said last year we wanted to raise the bar on family friendliness,” Kevin said. “That is not going to happen overnight.”
Last year, Vans banned any brands participating in the Vendor Village from writing or stenciling vulgar words on beach goers. Unfortunately, some industry brands activated off beach on Main Street and encouraged that practice. That was disappointing, Kevin said.
While it’s hard for any brand or even the city to control what happens off the beach, some Vans employees are stepping in to discourage the vulgarity where they can.
Kristy Van Doren, who is in charge of the entire event and is spending a lot of time interacting with event goers in the Van Doren Village, marched a few teen girls to the bathroom and made them wash paint off their hands. The girls had been marking bodies with their painted handprints.
She has also handed teens with vulgar words on their bodies cleaning wipes and told them they had to clean off the dirty words if they wanted any free product.
I asked Kevin how a title sponsor can prevent that in the future.
“We can’t control what happens off beach, but IMG and the city have worked hard to come up with a plan to control some of it,” Kevin said. “But ultimately, the responsibility lies with the parents. I know if I had kids who came here, I’d check to see if there was any Sharpie stuff written on them.”
The upside to the hiccup last year is that it sparked a lot of dialogue between the city and residents about how to handle the big crowds that come to the beach at certain times of year – for example on July 4th, Kevin said.
The city did an “amazing” job handling the crowds this July 4th, Kevin said. He empathizes with residents who live downtown, who have a tough time no matter what weekend it is.
Reducing pinch points
To reduce potential friction in congested areas at the event, Vans also added higher bleachers so attendees can watch surfing and then swivel around and watch the skate and BMX events without having to trek through the hot sand and crowds.
Vans also moved the main retail store further from the entry to reduce congestion, and added walkways under bleachers.
Making the site easier to navigate will come in handy this weekend when the biggest crowds of the week are expected to watch the junior’s, women’s, men’s and longboard surf events, and the Van Doren Invitational skate and BMX competitions.
We have a few photos of the venue before it officially opened last week, and a few from the Van Doren Village while the event was running, above in our slide show.
