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