Despite the high costs of cotton which have effected many fashion retailers in the past year, Swedish fast-fashion retailer H&M reported banner 1st quarter sales up 13% and for the month of March—even better. But the big news is their recent announcement for launching another retail chain in 2013. Here’s the latest from Karl-Johan Persson, […]
Skateboarding has splintered into a variety of subcultures over the past 10 years and among the most interesting is the development of longboard skateboarding. The resistance to longboard skateboarding among core shops and skaters as a credible genre flies in the face of the fact that it’s popular. In this story, we take a look […]
On March 23, 2012, SkullCandy released their latest financials with some interesting results that also say a great deal about the designer headphone industry, where music’s headed in terms of listening devices, and the challenges the industry as a whole has in the coming year. First, SkullCandy increased net sales from $9.1 million in 2006 […]
The beleaguered PacSun continues to forecast losses into 2012, indicating a hard hit for the action sports-based retail chain which is hoping to recreate a more fashionable presence in the new year. As we’ve noted based on our Youth Culture Studies data, various action sports-based brands and extending lifestyle apparel and footwear brands have fallen […]
SXSW in Austin, TX, is the place to be right now as the film and interactive portion are underway, and the music showcases portion, featuring keynote speaker Bruce Springsteen, is about to begin. It makes sense then, that with hordes of leading-edge tech-heads in the area that speculations would arise about various new media forecasts […]
Park City, Utah, one of North America’s premier ski and snowboarding destinations, has filed a law suit against Canadian land owners, Talisker Land Holdings LLC on Monday, March 12, 2012 in an attempt to curb the tide of what may result in the closure of the resort and loss of 1,200 jobs. According to a […]
Today, March 8, 2012, VF Corp announced that Lion Capital would be acquiring majority ownership in John Varvatos Enterprises, with Varvatos retaining an ownership position and title of Chairman and Creative Chief Officer. John Varvatos comes up in youth culture fashion not only for his reputation for creating rock-influenced designs, and his cool collaboration with […]
It sounds like an old AOL story, but Google, owners of YouTube, have announced that they’re enlisting “Hollywood” to generate more views by creating another 25 hours of programming with topdogs in TV spending a $100 million “seed” money. This is YouTube’s largest spending commitment on content so far. The question is, why? At least […]
Hours after posting the initial story about the potential Billabong takeover, last night came more news as Billabong and Nixon announced the partial sale, or 48.5% of Nixon, to Trilantic Capital Partners (not to be confused with Texas Pacific Group which put in a bid earlier in the morning for Billabong for $766 million). The […]
Ever since Billabong’s horrid December 2011 financial report of a drop of 44% for an all-time record low on December 19th, the surf brand has been under a microscope among financial advisors as to what’s next for the troubled action sports company. After the December report, Goldman Sachs announced a structure review, with Billabong stating […]