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  L to R: Guy Stagman

I heard there were changes happening at QuikSilverEdition so I stopped by Quiksilver headquarters yesterday to find out more.

QuikSilverEdition is Quiksilver’s premium offering for men who have matured beyond Quiksilver’s young men’s clothing. The line includes wovens, boardshorts, walkshorts, pants, sweaters and jackets with more upscale materials and subtle designs. On average, price points are 26 percent higher than young men’s, said VP of Sales Kent Stevens.

The big change is that QuikSilverEdition will now be called Quiksilver Men’s internally and at a business to business level. To the consumer, it will be called Quiksilver.

The logo will still have the distinctive script just without the “Edition” and the uppercase “s” in Quiksilver. For tags and labels, orange will remain instead of Quiksilver’s typical red. The traditional wave and the ocean icon will be added.

Otherwise, everything else will mostly stay the same. Quiksilver Men’s will still have its own design, sales and merchandising teams and dedicated marketing resources. It will still be sold in the same type of accounts – upscale surf shops, departments stores such as Macy’s and Nordstrom and resort locations.

‘It’s a healthy business for us,” said Martijn Linden, Quiksilver Men’s director of merchandising. “We will continue on the same track of creating a premium collection of men’s product.”

Steve Tully, the president of Quiksilver brand in the Americas, wasn’t at the meeting yesterday but provided this statement.

“We felt intuitively that the line we have been branding as QuiksilverEdition would benefit from a simpler marketing approach. We did some research and validated it. This premium collection of better men’s sportswear should be called what it is, Quiksilver. We are not removing ourselves from the men’s marketplace or even scaling back our presence. We are simply leveraging the Quiksilver name and logo and positioning the line as a premium collection. … of apparel, accessories and shoes inspired by our boardriding roots.”

The team wanted to talk about the change to counter rumors that QuiksilverEdition was going away. There was an internal reorganization in the company’s marketing department that led to three people being let go. Some in the industry linked those larger marketing changes to the name change for QuiksilverEdition and assumed QuiksilverEdition was being killed, the team said.

Quiksilver executives view Quiksilver Men’s as growing and viable business, they said. In 2007, QuiksilverEdition sales grew 13 percent and Kent said the team is planning for similar growth for 2008 and 2009.

While there were some changes in the Quiksilver marketing department, overall the department is adding six new jobs. Many of the openings are posted on Malakye.com.

I included below some other logos for comparison. The first is the old QuikSilverEdition logo and the second is the current young men’s logo.