JEANS and thongs aren’t the type of attire usually associated with a successful corporate culture. However, denim and flip-flops is the standard garb worn by staff at international surf brand, Rusty, based in Osborne Park.
JEANS and thongs aren’t the type of attire usually associated with a successful corporate culture.
However, denim and flip-flops is the standard garb worn by staff at international surf brand, Rusty, based in Osborne Park.
That includes Rusty managing director, Geoff Backshall, and Rusty’s ‘brand and board lord’, Mark Sutton (otherwise known as ‘Mogga’).
But the relaxed demeanour that permeates the company’s design studios veils the upheaval the company has experienced in recent years.
Despite repeated international litigation involving Rusty’s United States licensees – which led to the Perth office becoming global licensor and a complete restructuring of the company in September 2008 – and the impact of the global financial crisis, the company has managed to maintain an annual turnover of more than $100 million worldwide.
Messrs Backshall and Sutton believe this was largely achieved because Rusty remains a private company, giving it flexibility to cope, although cost cutting measures such as trimming employee numbers and implementing new procedures also helped.
“We’ve become a lot stronger over the last two years,” Mr Sutton said.
“These hard times made us look at business differently, a bit more professionally.”
Employing 90 staff locally and about 50 more around the country, Rusty’s Australian business, largely run from the Perth office, makes up almost 50 per cent of worldwide earnings.
Mr Backshall said Australian turnover dropped by almost 10 per cent last year (the worst in the company’s history), falling to about $40 million in 2009.
But the GFC was almost a welcome relief from the headaches caused under the organisation’s previous configuration.
Originally, Rusty in Australia was the first of about a dozen licensees worldwide to strike up a deal with its namesake founder, Rusty Preisendorfer, one of the world’s preeminent surfboard designers and manufacturers, or ‘shapers’ as it’s known in the industry.
More than 20 years ago Mr Backshall signed an independent licensee agreement with Mr Preisendorfer before the US-based global licensor, C&C, became involved under a sublicense agreement.
For many years the organisation was successfully run under C&C but Mr Backshall said during the late 1990s he saw the US business slowly failing which led to his company, operating as Vegas Enterprises, to acquire the rights of the brand globally.
“Finally, in 2006, we signed a deal where we secured 52 per cent of R-dot [previously Mr Preisendorfer’s company and the holder of Rusty’s intellectual property and trademarks],” Mr Backshall said.
However, C&C continued to underperform, which led to the termination of its licensing agreement and Vegas becoming the global licensor (in charge of Japanese, Brazilian, Latin American, South African and Indonesian licensees). However C&C then initiated several lawsuits in “typical American style” according to Mr Backshall, which were finally settled in 2008 just prior to the sub-prime crash.
“In the midst of all that we launched Rusty Europe, and that Europe business is owned and operated by us,” he said.
Today the company competes with publicly listed outfits Billabong and Quicksilver, both of which turn over more than $1 billion annually, for a greater slice of the international surfing and sports market.
