Industry moves to help Sandy victims, including devastated shops

There has been an outpouring of support from the action sports industry to help the relief efforts of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated a lot of surf shops and surf industry friends on the East Coast.

We spoke with a variety of people yesterday to find out what’s happening on the ground and what people are doing across the country to help.

A lot of brands have come together to help out in a major way including donating goods, creating tees to raise money for relief efforts, collecting and directly distributing clothing and goods to those in need, extending credit terms and putting receivables on hold for those shops that suffered the most damage.

Here are some ways companies are helping, and ways to get involved. We’ll continue to report more as the weeks go on.

BILLABONG

Photo courtesy of Ergo

Americans President Paul Naude shared with us how Billabong is involved with the recovery efforts:

“It is difficult to say the least to sit here in California and see and hear what Hurricane Sandy and the current Nor’easter storms have done to our friends and partners in New York, New Jersey and other areas along the Eastern seaboard.

Some of the staff here at Billabong has been paying particular attention to the situation in the East and we have responded in several areas, including:

- Sending Raven Lundy from Virginia Beach to New York and parts of New Jersey in the Billabong bus loaded with gasoline, clothing, food and supplies that were donated by citizens in Virginia Beach.

-We are currently in the process of sending approximately 3,000 units of pants, jackets, jeans, tees, hooded sweatshirts, etc. to six different accounts throughout New York and New Jersey for distribution to those in need.

-We are also in the process of developing SMU product for these accounts at an increased margin to help assist in making up for the selling time they have lost and will continue to lose.

Additionally, we have sent out a letter to the accounts that faced the brunt of the storm informing them of the following actions we are taking:

-We have put the receivables for these accounts on hold for now and will review them again sometime in January or later when necessary.

-When they can get around to it we are encouraging accounts to review their product orders with their rep and make whatever changes are necessary until they have a clearer picture of when they will be back up and running.

-Should accounts be in a position to do business for the holidays and need to replace destroyed or soiled product we are making At Once product available at a special discount for these accounts.

-We are working on replacement fixtures and point of purchase materials for those that have lost these materials in the storm.”

See Page 2 for the huge effort New Jersey-based Ergo is undertaking