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  The Corona

I asked Beach Bums owner Cliff Haddadin to confirm that his chain of action sports stores is closing. At one point, Beach Bums had 14 stores in California and Nevada.

I reported the closure of the final stores in this post earlier today.

Here’s what Cliff told me in two emails.

“Beach Bums was a dream of mine. I’m very satisfied to where we were able to take it.

“We provided a much needed service for our valued customer and in turn an outlet for brands to tell their story,” he wrote.

“It has been a tough three years Beach Bums as a company and staff have learned so much through it all. One thing that kept us going is the motto most of us live by: ‘Treat Others As You Would Like To Be Treated.’ “

I understand Beach Bums is going out of business, the website has been shut down and only one store remains open.

Unfortunately that is the inevitable, we took some drastic measures back in 2008 when we saw this downturn coming, from better margins through strategic private label program that would not hurt our branded business.

We also tried to control corporate expenses in many ways from drastic executive cuts, corporate/store layoffs and pay cuts, rent relief, to eliminating stores that were not performing through buying out leases, which we have done in a few cases.

We did our best to ride out the storm. But it was a tough battle, none of which we could control no matter what we did.

Just like any other business owner that depended on this venture we pumped more personal funds into BB in late ’08 to help weather this downturn, but we were faced with the mother of all recessions.

When did you shut down the stores? How many stores did you have?

We started our expansions in late 2003-2004 and most of our leases were coming up for renewal/extension of term. Given the recession, most landlord’s rents were way too high to commit to another long term lease, under which the business would not to be profitable.

Is Beach Bums going to file for bankruptcy?

We are looking at all alternatives we have available.

Will vendors be paid outstanding balances?

BB have been very transparent and up front with all our vendors.

From day one, we kept them up to date with business conditions and all vendors will attest to this. We did not give false hopes or mislead any vendor. It is not in our business practice our character!

With that being said, we kept our buys to a minimum and in line with our open to buy guidelines, which in turn kept most of our payables very small, dollar-wise, compared with prior years.

We didn’t want to take advantage of the situation let alone our valued vendors. With this being said, the majority — and we mean the majority — of our vendors were paid completely.