Thalia Surf Shop owner on business trends, more

I recently checked in with Nick Cocores of Thalia Surf Shop in Laguna Beach and asked him how the gloomy weather impacted sales this summer, what it’s like to be surrounded by manufacturer-owned surf shops and about his strategy of carrying smaller, up and coming brands such as Ando & Friends, Hippy Tree, Yellow Rat, Insight and Ambsn.

How was business during the summer and so far this fall? Were you impacted by the gloomy summer weather at all?

Nick: Business this summer was good. It wasn't what we had planned for but we made the best out of it.

So far fall is just OK. We are on track to have a 10% sales growth this year over last year. The weather played a big part in our sell through of board shorts.

We had to take big markdowns to move through all of our boardshorts and walkshorts.

You are pretty much surrounded by stores owned by manufacturers. Has that impacted you - either positively or negatively?

Nick: Yes, that is true. We have eight surf shops and 1 SUP store.

Of those nine, six are owned by manufactures. I feel it has helped us out in more ways than not. Even though there is a lot of competition we have unique stuff that you can only find here in our shop.

We do a big private label program that is targeted to our locals as well as tourists.

My staff is really good and we care about our customers.

In the end people know that we are a real independent surf shop with a good product mix and can hold our own against the corporate backed stores.

On page 2: focus on young brands