Clockwise from top left: Duke Edukas of Surfside and Joel Olenik of Electric; Lance Eddy of Vans; Dylan, Waylon, and Dustin Odbert of ambsn with Mike Wallace of Billabong; Kenny Hill of Smith; Kelsey Elmore, Stacey Lima, and Sasha Hartloff of Roxy. Photos by SES.
The Surfside Sports Snow Carnival, which kicks off the snowboard-selling season in Orange County, attracted a lot of industry executives on Saturday as well as a lot of shoppers.
In a rarity, the weather has cooled early in the season in Southern California, with rain forecast for this week, which is giving the industry some optimism at a time when there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air because of macroeconomic conditions. And from what we saw at Surfside, consumers, at least at this store, were having no problem opening their wallets.
You can tell how important Surfside is by who turns out for the event – you almost see as many industry executives at the Carnival as you do at a trade show.
We took lots of photos during the day, which are below in the slide show.
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Vans had a big presence
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Domonique Checkwood of Stance and Brent Sandor of 686
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Randy Childress of Electric, Joe Edukas of Surfside, and Brent Lantz of Volcom
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Lance Varon of Xcel
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686 SVP of Global Sales Jono Zacharias helping a customer shop outerwear
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686 sales rep James Akers and SVP of Sales Jono Zacharias
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Aaron Quigley of VonZipper
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Jay Twitty of Jones Snowboards and Oakley
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Liam Barrett of 100% helping a shopper pick goggles
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Well-known snowboarder Dave Downing, right, who works for Burton, is amazing every year, working like a mad man on the sales floor. He shares his knowledge with shoppers and even helps them when they want to buy a brand besides Burton.
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Laurent Vrignaud, currently of Moulin and formerly of Burton, with Matt Davis, formerly of Burton and currently with 100%, with Matt's daughter, Harper
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Doug Couger of Never Summer
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Duke Edukas holding court
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Joe Edukas of Surfside and Mike Hamabe of Vans
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Shoppers came ready to buy
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Volcom always puts on a show
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The carnival was busy
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Joe Edukas making a sale
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Boot shopping at Surfside
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Randy Childress of Electric with son, Stone
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Matt Davis of 100% manning the booth
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The DC Booth
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The Burton booth
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A line at VonZipper
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Dakine attended the event