The Surfside Sports Snow Carnival, which kicks off the snowboard-selling season in Orange County, attracted a lot of industry executives on Saturday as well as a lot of shoppers.
In a rarity, the weather has cooled early in the season in Southern California, with rain forecast for this week, which is giving the industry some optimism at a time when there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air because of macroeconomic conditions. And from what we saw at Surfside, consumers, at least at this store, were having no problem opening their wallets.
You can tell how important Surfside is by who turns out for the event – you almost see as many industry executives at the Carnival as you do at a trade show.
We took lots of photos during the day, which are below in the slide show.
Vans had a big presence
Domonique Checkwood of Stance and Brent Sandor of 686
Randy Childress of Electric, Joe Edukas of Surfside, and Brent Lantz of Volcom
Lance Varon of Xcel
686 SVP of Global Sales Jono Zacharias helping a customer shop outerwear
686 sales rep James Akers and SVP of Sales Jono Zacharias
Aaron Quigley of VonZipper
Jay Twitty of Jones Snowboards and Oakley
Liam Barrett of 100% helping a shopper pick goggles
Well-known snowboarder Dave Downing, right, who works for Burton, is amazing every year, working like a mad man on the sales floor. He shares his knowledge with shoppers and even helps them when they want to buy a brand besides Burton.
Laurent Vrignaud, currently of Moulin and formerly of Burton, with Matt Davis, formerly of Burton and currently with 100%, with Matt's daughter, Harper
Doug Couger of Never Summer
Duke Edukas holding court
Joe Edukas of Surfside and Mike Hamabe of Vans
Shoppers came ready to buy
Volcom always puts on a show
The carnival was busy
Joe Edukas making a sale
Boot shopping at Surfside
Randy Childress of Electric with son, Stone
Matt Davis of 100% manning the booth
The DC Booth
The Burton booth
A line at VonZipper
Dakine attended the event
