A stitch in time?
Phil Jarratt on the unravelling of former stock market darling, SurfStitch.
In the recent and checkered history of the surfwear industry there have been two frequently used explanations for why brands hit the wall. The first is that the company had grown so big so fast that its surfer founders had no idea how to run it. The second is that the company had grown so big so fast that its surfer founders had handed the reins to MBA-toting masters of the universe, who had no idea how to run it.
In my book Salts and Suits (Hardie Grant, 2010), written as market leader Quiksilver was trying to recover from the near-mortal wounds inflicted by their suited CEO Bernard Mariette (architect of the Rossignol purchase), and heir apparent Billabong was just getting over the disastrous reign of their suit, Matthew Perrin, I pretty much took the view that the salts should have trusted their pioneer vision, rather than handing control to people whose only vision was to go public and make a fast fortune.
Now I’m having second thoughts.
The drama giving me pause at the moment is, of course, the catastrophic collapse of SurfStitch, because this seems to be a case of a suit getting a salt so excited that he agrees to put on a suit while they both party like it’s 1999. Although they were stock market darlings for a minute, after buying out major shareholder Billabong and last year ending up worth more than their former owners ($511 million) after going public, it is hard to now avoid the inescapable conclusion that neither Justin Cameron nor Lex Pederson had the faintest idea what they were doing.
With the ASX all over them for alleged irregularities in reporting, the stock price in freefall until a trading halt was called, and a shareholder class action now being mooted, SurfStitch’s jet-propelled rise and fall is fast dwarfing Quiksilver and Billabong as our most legendary example of the surf industry biting off more than it can chew.
How do you explain what’s happened at SurfStitch? The original business model – high volume, cut-price global online surf retailer – may not have endeared the lads to the old school surf retailers, but to hard-arse business types it must have seemed sensible and sustainable. I can remember a few years back consulting to big fund managers on a regular basis about the future of Billabong’s dodgy-looking retail strategy, and guys who handle that much money tend to ask all the hard questions.
But apparently Surfstitch’s broad vision of letting retail management run itself while the brand gurus went on a shopping spree for content creation had some appeal to the money market, and even when Justin Cameron flew the coop, so to speak, no-one said a word. It has only been the wake up calls of three profit downgrades in six months, and now a $20 million loss, that has set the cat amongst the pigeons.
I guess because the core business is online, I can’t help drawing comparisons with the here-today-gone-tomorrow dotcom boom and bust at the turn of the century. Remember Hardcloud and Bluetorch? Nah, no one else does either, except maybe the contributors who never got paid. The pioneer dotcoms always seemed to have ambitions that far outweighed their ability to deliver, and SurfStitch acquisitions like Stab and Garage Entertainment seem to have been fuelled by the same kind of desperate desire to be cool, rather than profitable. (That is, as long as the bottom line didn’t impact on salaries or perks.)
Last week Fairfax Media reported that SurfStitch's new chief executive, Mike Sonand, had “promised to restore profitability next year by fixing the core retail business and spending less time chasing content such as surfing documentaries.
In a damning indictment of SurfStitch's previous leadership, Mr Sonand said the retailer ‘had a fairly unhealthy focus on topline growth’ and had spent too much time chasing content deals and raising capital rather than keeping costs under control and building adequate management systems.”
"The business has just tried to do too much," Sonand was quoted as saying.
Or perhaps too little that mattered. //PHIL JARRATT
Comments
Anecdotally - may not matter to some, but everyone I know still uses surf stitch .
Apparently - I don't do shopping myself - they have a good range of products and are extremely prompt in delivery.
Which is important if you've paid for stuff, I'd say.
Summation : They'll be back.
But what the fuck would I know about money ?
I've found their service quick - from order to deliver in the matter of days. When I couldn't find stock in local retail stores, I jumped online and ordered via them.
Locally, we have other 'discount' surf outlets to buy things like wetties, boardies etc. but you have to be lucky with what stock is in stock when you want or need to buy something.
IMHO, the whole content "integration" model makes sense - you read an article, or what a feature clip, and even a feature movie and can click a link straight to buy the product. Having the surf forecasting to keep viewers engaged on another level makes sense. As a retailer of more than just surf brands, the same 'online' store servicing the other "action sports" markets just means economies of scale.
This whole current situation is more about ego than anything else. Trying to pull all the different businesses together while also playing with the 'big boys' means those at the top had big ideas but the unraveling that has unfolded suggests they did not have the skills to deliver...
Right concept. Wrong people. Possibly wrong sequence of execution.
Yeah! Just buy a Drug Rug? They last forever! I do like a nice stretchy pair of Board Shorts! Past the knee please! I don't know what I'll wear to Golf tomorrow? I
What the fuck is a drug rug ?
Do I need to go to Silk Road to buy one ?
Blowin? How long have you been in the Asylum? Look it up! Dickhead! Ha ha
Surf Stitch is a logistics company. Stock comes in and goes out. Similar to Amazon. The issue they have is that they discount to much, offer free shipping and 100 day returns. Great for the buyer but as a business model its not going to last. Share price will slip further south as it appears the previous management acted illegal to ASIC rule and a possible law suit in the future. The big question is where the f ... is Justin Cameron. Cameron is doing well to stay out sight from anyone. I say let the media hound him a bit.
Is that their business model?
High volume, cut-price?
I've been on the site twice and the prices looked the same or dearer than the local surf shop so I never bothered going back.
Sometimes theres bargains I don't purchase from them but have had a look from time to time if their main business survives they will bounce back.
Fair summary Phil but me thinks SurfStiche's problem started when just after the float, being cashed up went on an acquisition phase. Look at what they own now - magi seaweed, FCS and more. So what are they - and that seems to be the problem. Cameron's background is in banking, so there is a weakness. As some of the chats above suggest that SurfStitch does the online retailing ok but can it really be a hardware company as well plus web site with surf articles, etc. As the new CEO Sonand stated, it needs to stick to its core business - but what is it or better what does the company think it is ?
Online retailing is ok for some items but there are many items that it just does not work.
Surfstitch is WAY more than just the online retail.
The mid year presentation has some good info about how it all fits together.
See here: http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20160225/pdf/435bf7hzn7wrbq.pdf
On face value kind of seems ok to me,
I use magic seaweed,
Used to check stab often,
Ride FCS,
But never puchased from surfstich but I reckon the time would come.
Somewhere in there is a workable balance.
As a general request for all of the 'Web 2.0' companies both here & the FANG social media stuff in the States, "please crash it, crash it already!".
Interesting views on another Surf/Retail/Online fail...
I may be wrong , probably just stupid , but at 48 years young , I could'nt give
a fig about this companys demise . Surf retail wise I'm only interested in good wetties, stretch boardies , wax and legropes. . . . forget the rest.
Are Pederson and Cameron surfers ? If they purportely do , then I think they may
be suffering from a common case of ......buy into surf business and see how super cool I look now .
IMO , its cute and convenient to buy online , but I try to support my local surf retailer.
PCS, Pedersen and Cameron founded SurfStitch. Pedersen is a pretty skilled bodyboarder with a solid history in core surf retail. Cameron is a journeyman surfer who worked in investment banking advising on online retail among other things. They put the business together after deciding to start a surf shop on Sydney's northern beaches, where there was a gap -- all the shops had been locked down by single brands (Quik. BBong etc) and nobody was selling everything. This was back in the early 2000s. They started an EBay store to clear excess inventory that they could buy for a song off the big labels, who were already beginning to fuck up through over-production. Then they clicked: just do the aggregate store online.
The surf brands did not like them much, despite the sense the business made; after watching Cameron's recent performances, I can understand why he wasn't super popular with 'em. In one of Australia's most famous business deals, Kerry Packer once sold Channel Nine to Alan Bond for a billion dollars and later bought it back for $200m; he said later "You only get one Alan Bond in your life and now I've had mine." Cameron got his Alan Bond with Billabong, who bought SStitch for a lot of money and had to sell it back later for considerably less prior to the pair floating it on the market. Maybe he thought he was gonna get his second this time. Then again, Kerry Packer knew television.
Lex approached Hurley who like all the others told him to fuck off. Pretty funny when they came on all fours years later begging for a slice of some surf stitch online time.
Good to have you putting in your 20 cents NC on Swellnet, btw did you get some pies in the big swell?
Ha ha I fucken surfed my brains out, like literally. Paddling in from where I was surfing by the Tuesday arvo, I felt like it was an effort to remember my name. Funny hey, like a lot of days I kind of don't give much of a fuck whether I go surfing or not, but those days, the old psychopath re-emergeth.
hey Nick interesting to hear your take on how they started.
A more skeptical observer might deduce that, taking their background into account, the 'surf shop' was a clever front to allow them to establish large accounts and buying power with all the brands whilst feeding the growth of their online (with a big warehouse nearby) to a point where, because of the cashflow and amount of product they were moving, the brands were beheld to them.
Then simply shut the "surf shop' ( which was always a low rent weird position) and the perfect backdoor entry to the market.
Based on the way things have now transpired and the actions of Cameron, in particular, the skeptic in me points to a big dose of Karma.
lj it's not really my take -- it's based on conversations with the two principals and other people who've been involved in and around the business.
I think if they'd been able to foresee everything to the extent you describe, they would not have found themselves in the current situation, because they would have possessed supernatural qualities of intelligence and clairvoyance -- perhaps even been Lizard People! Seems to me rather that they sorta played it as it lay. You gotta have customers and they found a lot of those. Then they got too clever with the other customers' (the shareholders) money. Wouldn't be the first or last to do that.
Ha Lizard People, I like that.
Interesting though, that two relatively new guys without traditional industry style background could become such big players with such influence over the industry, particularly your average surf shop owner.
They will be 'flat out like a Lizard drinkin' getting out of this one.
Thank you. You are right. These guys were not surfers or even concerned locals. They were different. Their interest in the surf market was purely cannibalistic. This whole thing for the surf industry has been like an Independence Day movie.
Great work Phil,`
Sounds cloudy, confusing and littered with sharemarket gooboldly gook.(Surfstitch scenario. )
Really though, is surf retail that large in 2016? Seems the whole state of surfing retail is in decline?
Honestly have surf companies and the stock market ever co existed? Have any been successful? Can anybody name one ?
"Honestly have surf companies and the stock market ever co existed."
Not long ago I was reading the judges verdict in the Bill McCausland vs Surf Hardware International (SHI) case and there was line in there that summed it up pretty well. Bill, as you probably know, started SHI with two mates and together they made Gorilla Grip and FCS before the other two sold their share to Macquarie Bank. That put Mac Bank and Bill McCausland in bed together and things didn't go very well, ending in the court case.
Justice Slattery said there was "a degree of cultural conflict between the polished Harvard Business School graduates from Macquarie and a creative self-made man who had built and managed a surfing hardware business on Sydney's Northern Beaches."
That dichotomy - the polished biz school graduate and the creative and bull-headed surfer - is a familiar source of conflict. For me, I think it shows how idiosyncratic the surf world is. We have our values and our beliefs and our priorities, and when a surfing company satisfies them then they do well. Yet when the levers of control are handed over to Mac Bankers or Suits, or whatever you want to call them, then the company begins making decisions that don't meet our particular expectations and they begin to falter.
I'm not trying to play to the surfing ego, but it's testament that, yes, we are a little different from everyone else.
OP, Gotcha, Quiksilver, Billabong, Hang Ten, Lightning Bolt,Volcom,BBC, Jimmyz's?
where are they now?
I remember being a kid, walking into a surfshop i could smell three things, Resin , Wax and Neoprene Wetsuits.I smell none of that at most now days. So i do not even bother walking in.
Surfstitch, before these articles. I had never heard of it.
@stunet,
I wonder how Bill McCausland feels now? A perfectly good innovative company, being sold off. Then new parent company runs SHI right into the ground? All that hard work, undone by some Greedy vultures.
Same thing happened to the following Xcel, Da Kine, RVCA, ..............and so on.
Good analysis.
From what I see they seem to always be discounting stuff and heaps of different promos going on at different times. I haven't looked at their accounts so don't know their gross profitability but I do know that freight costs and Google add words would be a significant cost not to mention probably plenty of staff earning good money. So the conundrum for them is to go for maximum profitability at the expense of revenue or else go after revenue at the expense of profitability as they have to date. The big question is really whether there is a way to make it work at all? Can you sell stuff from what is a niche industry online at a price higher than your cost of business and hence make a profit? That I guess is what shareholders are currently grappling with!
http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/former-stockmarket-darling-surf...
Love your work Phill. The above article gives a good account of events
A bunch of hardworking people hoodwinked by the stockmarket. Sad really......sad, i feel sorry for them.
Couple of other things to consider.
Online surf forecast websites are not cheap to run. In addition to staffing - according to this article, MSW had 22 employees - there are significant costs in running a surfcam network, a comprehensive surf forecast system (much like ours) and then the general overheads for a website with a large global audience. Plus ongoing development, maintenance, marketing etc.
At a very rough estimate, excluding staffing, the cost of running MSW would have to be somewhere in the vicinity of $0.75 - 1 million per year. Add in ballpark employee expenses for 22 staff (salaries, on-costs, benefits, tax) and this annual figure could easily be tripled.
So in order to pay their bills over the last decade or more, MSW - like Swellnet, Surfline etc - primarily made money through two channels: advertising and member subscriptions. They also had an online store though it’s not clear whether that was a strong revenue channel or not.
And this is where it’s a little difficult to work out how SurfStitch have done the sums.
MSW’s ongoing expenses are likely to remain the same moving forward - if not increase. There may be some cost savings if and when SurfStitch migrate all companies to one platform, however it looks like MSW are expanding their operations into the USA (MSW and Stab founders have apparently “relocated to Southern California to build up a content structure”, as a part of the acquisition). So, overheads are probably going to to go up.
And if the broader strategy is to utilise MSW’s content and audience to drive purchases at the SurfStitch store, then I think it’s fair to assume that the advertising model that has supported the MSW business for the last decade will largely disappear (instead of selling ads to third parties, they’ll run “in-house” advertising to drive customers towards a purchase).
So, every advertising position on MSW’s website must be apportioned some kind of value (that’s how they’ve run the business to date). But it’s one thing for a third party advertiser to allocate marketing dollars towards MSW - because advertisers have a wide range of goals and targets - compared to SurfStitch who have to make every page impression deliver a financial result.
And SurfStitch’s broader business model is making a margin on apparel/hardware sales - of which they’re in the deep-discounting business (i.e. so margins are very slim at best).
So, if there’s not a lot of fat on SurfStitch’s margins, then how can they justify the operational expenses of (say) $2-3 million+ per year just to keep MSW running?
Plus the operational costs of Stab and Garage Entertainment?
Sure, SurfStitch (and Surfdome, and Swell.com) would have all spent a lot on advertising anyway. But if we look at MSW in isolation, and assume the running costs over three years to be around $3 million per year, then does the $9 million in overheads plus the acquisition cost (some percentage of the reported $20 million sale price of MSW and Stab, say, $15 million?) make sense?
That’s gotta be recouped somehow. I just don’t see how over the next three years, SurfStitch are going to generate $24 million worth of profit on apparel sales derived from people checking out MSW surf forecasts.
And, SurfStitch will still have to maintain a considerable advertising spend across other non-core platforms (for example, Google Ads, Facebook). That's more advertising $$ out the door.
As for MSW’s membership revenue - will that model still be retained into the future? I presume it’ll be rolled in with Garage Ent and maybe some Stab content. But it’s hard to estimate without knowing the numbers of subscribers (MSW and Garage).
Sure, this is an extremely simple way of looking at things, and there’s a lot of assumptions and unknowns.
But one thing is for sure - Justin and Lex certainly did a very good job in initially selling the idea to to the shareholders.
"... then I think it’s fair to assume that the advertising model that has supported the MSW business for the last decade will largely disappear (instead of selling ads to third parties, they’ll run “in-house” advertising to drive customers towards a purchase)."
I think you'll find the revenue stays, but the 'new' model gives them another avenue to generate revenue from the advertisers - namely special marketing and content features. For example, like this one that is included in the half year presentation slides:
Monster would have still be paying for ad space across the various sites like MSW, Stab, etc ... but, it ws being leveraged and enhanced with the 'special' content feature.
PS: What's happened to the 'quote' option when replying to a comment on here?
The numbers don't stack up on that example though.
Are SurfSitch genuinely claiming that MSW spent $300,000 to produce their "Winter Sessions" project? What 'athlete' costs did they incur? The competition sourced user-generated content.
I'd like a breakdown of where the production funds went.. I'd hate to see how much money they spent covering the North Shore season!
And the supposed 'Economic Benfits' of the project don't quite make sense either.
Fair enough they claim ecommerce revenue (though remember, we're talking about thin margins on apparel sales), but 'advertising revenue' - was that from Monster, or third party advertisers who came on board the project?
And 'content syndication' - so, they sold all of the content to another third party who reproduced it elsewhere? If so, whom? There's not much info on the web apart from a number of small blogs who ran the press release (and certainly wouldn't have paid for the privilege).
Plus the other stuff like 'inventory benefits' (?) and 'cost savings' via 'external advertising', 'search engine marketing' and 'affiliates'.
They're honestly confident with a concrete ROI of 40% from all of that? Most of it looks like fancy marketing speak to me, instead of being the single project used as justification to investors why SurfStitch should spend $20 million on the acquisition.
Would've been a very simple formula they sold.
Content=eyeballs=sales.
Good analysis Phil, and this line really sums it up - "The first is that the company had grown so big so fast that its surfer founders had no idea how to run it. The second is that the company had grown so big so fast that its surfer founders had handed the reins to MBA-toting masters of the universe, who had no idea how to run it."
What you haven't stated, which is also true and probably more relevant is that this is happening to many businesses outside the surf industry, and the problem is always the same.
There are perverse incentives in business, and the biggest one is to get big enough to list on the stock market so you can cash in your chips, eventually. This also gives rise to huge pay and bonuses to MBA types and other rapacious consultants, and they all have the same advice, you have to get big or someone will take you out.
That advice is wrong. The ridiculous 'go-for-growth' model does them in eventually. They always go for too much growth, and as all the other big players are doing it everyone is chasing a finite number of 'bolt-on' businesses to add to their company register so that they appear bigger. Issues of profitability are very low down the pecking order of considerations, and there is always an MBA out there who will lay down terms such as 'synergies' to suck in the egos of the decision makers.
And it's nearly all bullshit.
As a reference, the big four major banks in Australia, almost unsinkable money making machines, have all found themselves on the precipice of bankruptcy somewhere in the last 30 years, always due to buying other established businesses that had all these 'synergies'. These guys are bankers, they own the rules to the game, and they have been caught out big time.
BHP, Rio Tinto, and other major miners (love that term!) have all trashed billions of dollars buying businesses that were sort of related but had known problems that they couldn't turn around. They also bought at the top of the market, and as goliaths in the industry overpaid even more.
It's about egos and poor advice, and much of that poor advice comes from highly educated numpties who have no comprehension that what they are selling is wrong, and never look back at their errors and amend their future advice.
Big business is notoriously bad, and the fact that many survive and thrive is not due to great strategy, brilliant investments and a wise and all-knowing CEO. They survive because somebody has to. If you throw 1000 darts at a dartboard one of them is going to be a bullseye.
Buying MSW was a dumb move. That was right at the top of the list of their problems.
MBA mathematics 101 - increase income (turnover / revenue / sales) x current profit % = projected growth in profitability and cashflow. Simple.
Increasing overheads, or margin squeeze from growth costs (i.e. more discounting, integration costs, more peeps in head office to 'manage' the show, etc), never mind, we'll be right (I believe that's a second year course in most MBA's - called 'how to turn a blind eye to an obvious fuck up') ... ;)
How much does the surfing market grow on an annual basis besides natural growth. It does not seem that SS have increased their market but simply diversified across areas for the same market hence no real growth. We know how surfers don't like spending money. A simple example, given all the hype the recent (classic) east coast low in early June and that it was extensively analysed for well over a week prior, how many blokes prepared their gear. I'm suggesting 80percent were not prepared - undergunned, leggies or fins not right. SS online would not have solved their needs.
What will be interesting is, is the sum of the value of each the SS business units more valuable than its current share price.
"A simple example, given all the hype the recent (classic) east coast low in early June and that it was extensively analysed for well over a week prior, how many blokes prepared their gear. I'm suggesting 80percent were not prepared - undergunned, leggies or fins not right. SS online would not have solved their needs."
Kinda ironic that you mentioned this, given the undertakings of another surf website over the weekend.
Which undertakings ?
Current estimates in Australia are that the surf market shrunk by about 30% over the past 5 years. Figures in the US would be worse although they have come back over the past 2 years. Europe is considered a basket case. Figures are all rubbery but their has been no organic growth over the past 5-7 years. This is why Surfstitch was such an anomaly. So where did they get their growth? Was it real?
"SurfStitch is cutting about 40 jobs in the US as the beleaguered online retailer restructures its US operations."
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/06/20/surfstitch-cut-40-jobs-us
Not sure what percentage that is of their US workforce, but SurfStitch claim 500 employees worldwide - so a three way split between EU, US and AU would have around 160 in each region.
If that's the case then it's around 25% of their US staff (though I reckon they'd probably have more staff than that in the States, so it'd be a smaller percentage).
I was wrong. SurfStitch (ie Swell.com) had just 66 staff in Irvine, California. So they've cut almost 2/3 of the workforce.
New CEO Mike Sonand said: “We can support US customers from both our UK and Australian operations".
http://www.ocbj.com/news/2016/jun/21/surfstitch-trims-irvine/
I'm amazed any of these companies go anywhere. What is there to buy? You need a new board, you make one, you need a new leggie you buy one from the service station.
Excuse me, sir.
Some of us couldn't make a surfboard if our lives depended on it. If I made a surfboard there wouldn't be a straight line on it. I also wouldn't know what to call my model, except 'shit shapes anon.'
Where in the world can you buy a legrope at a service station? Where is this nirvana?
Crescent Head servo got wax & leggies just like about every beachside village servo on the east coast I ever been to and boardies come from every op shop in every available shape & style for like..nothing
Surfstitch? What is surfstitch?
you use jumper leads as a leggy?
hardcore!
SurfStitch shares initially rallied to 26c with the news of the 40 job cuts in the US, but they sunk back this afternoon, falling another 6.4% to a new all-time low of 22c.
I only purchase sale items from surf stitch and sale items that have an extra % off. This is only because where I live, major regional city mid north coast, there is only one surf shop ( several outlets) who in MHO are ripping off the locals with over priced items thanks to no competition. Ill buy the staples wax etc but I'll never buy a full priced item again. I'm happy to purchase discount boardies for $30 instead of $80.
I donT care much for the mechanics of surf stitch trading practices as long as they keep up with the discounts I'll keep buying. Loyalty has sadly been replaced by greed especially where I live.
And I guess that is the nub of the problem for them. Most of my friends who use Surfstitch only do so at clearance prices and when there are good deals going which seems to be most of the time. I remain unconvinced that this is even a viable business model for the online sales let alone the other bolt ons that Ben has done a good analysis around why they don't add up either. The $30 discount boardies are not contributing anything I'm guessing to Surfstitchs running costs and somehow they too need to sell some $80 boardies to make their business viable. I'm just not sure it ever will be!
That's funny, in the "seven ways to tell whether a private equity-backed IPO should be avoided" article there is no mention of previous operation by surfers!
Article here: http://theconversation.com/seven-ways-to-tell-whether-a-private-equity-b...
And, in other news, wonder what 'ole John Ho is thinking about his investment at the moment?
http://www.afr.com/business/retail/janchor-explains-why-surfstitch-could...
Interesting that he has links with Alibaba...
20.5c and falling every day. Total company value now less than what they spent 6 months ago. Wonder how comfortable Cameron and Lex are now sitting in their multi million dollar mansions they splurged on after the float. Wives must be really stoked.
Or is it time for a bargain ?. It's gotta be worth something ?
The cw hurley app is now called surfstich and they are charging a monthly fee now as well as increasing the price for the app. Most reviews are negative seems they haven't got there tech sorted which is strange cause the app use to work fine under the hurley banner. Also lots of complaints about excessive ads etc.
Puts into perspective what we get for free on swellnet so thanks for the service fellas and for what its worth i reckon the surf forecasts/reports are superior over here anyways.
The previous comment are a wonderful diversity of opinion and in some cases understandings of what happened. Surfstitch was a concerted effort by persons that in some cases had been paid to stay out of the stock market because of their previous treachery. One notable contributor here has extolled the virtues of the guys who started this. Sorry Nick these are not good people. Smart but never honest. Their intention was always to attract wealthy investors firstly from Singapore then elsewhere to a venture with the intention of wiping out bricks and mortar retailing and make a fortune for those less than honest guys who started surfstitch. Yeah their target was the bloke in your local area who does you a deal looks after the local board club donates to local sports clubs and charities and gives large numbers of local kids their first jobs.
I honestly respect their business acumen but their intentions were always unethical and easily called unaustralian.
Surfing is a lifestyle and a culture and when hard business tries to take it over it will always hit headwinds especially when it considers us an unlimited resource that they can own and control.
Like most stock market disasters the people who have been hurt here are mostly people like you and me who are not incredibly rich; they simply believed what they read and made an informed decision about investing their super or something similar.
The real question now is did these guys tell the truth or guild the lilly to an extent that is unlawful.
Pretty good take on it all bs262! Sounds like you've got a bit of insight to it all and like you I've been questioning the ethics of this the whole way through. A lot of people have lost a lot of money based on clearly false forecasts and assumptions
If as you say is true or even has an element of truth, then it would be hoped the class action should address this. I think the flip side is that the 'unethical' persons will find it difficult to get a future in the financial world. Success is an important measure and needed for a CV. This does not look like success.
Every day for the last week the share price has reached a new all time low. Now 18.5c.
Read the article on Twiggy on MSW today. Leggies are all priced in British Pounds so obviously their system doesn't pick up my Australian IP address. Can't afford 90 punds worth of Mick Fanning Fins either. Pretty small issue but technically a poor feature on the website.
They also sent a production team to Fiji for the big swell...maybe the last one?
Good to hear you scored too NC.
MF - using a proxy ?
?????? not sure I follow Tony......in the words of Pauline Hanson 'please explain?'
MF, you mentioned that even shopping on the AU web site, you got prices in pounds, not dollars. The server could be using your IP address when you are connecting hence change the currency accordingly. If however, you are using a proxy site which will hide your IP and replace it with the proxy's then that could be the reason your getting pounds. Unless your trying to hide your tracks, you shouldn't need to use a proxy. You should also realise what the proxy maybe doing something with your Comms to where ever you go.
Thanks yes no doubt my tech guy hides our IP address then. That would explain it. Cheers T
Surfstitch facing $100 mill class action.