Inside the Roaring 2000s at Quiksilver, Part 3 of 3

Read Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

Clay Marzo wasn’t an artist like Dane, who could express himself in different mediums; Clay had only one space to showcase his talent, and that was the ocean. 

Before I met Clay, I heard rumblings that his odd personality was caused by some sort of learning disability. My parents are both educational psychologists, so I was curious what the deal was with him. 15-year-old kids who score two 10’s at the NSSA Nationals and who are so talented they intimidate Kelly don’t come along every day. 

I first met Clay on the Gold Coast of Australia at a big dinner filled with athletes and staffers. He ate in complete silence and didn’t make eye contact with anyone. After he finished eating, he wandered away from the table, laid down in an empty booth, and started silently rapping. 

He ate in complete silence and didn’t make eye contact with anyone. After he finished eating, he wandered away from the table, laid down in an empty booth, and started silently rapping. 

I thought: super weird, not friendly kid. 

The next day, I paddled out at Greenmount and saw him. He looked right at me and smiled. His relaxed posture and body language were that of a completely different person. 

He smiled at me and said, “What’s up, Jamie? Getting some fun ones?”

I had an idea then of what was going on with him. 

Strider Wasilewski had the closest contact with the Marzo family. I asked him to google “Asperger’s Syndrome.”  

His whole face lit up. “This is it! This is exactly what Clay has.”

On long carpool rides from L.A. to Huntington, we talked about how we could make a documentary about Clay and Asperger’s. The only problem was that Clay had never been diagnosed, and his mother Jill was dead set against labeling him with any type of condition. 

Most of the bosses at Quiksilver also didn’t see the commercial appeal of a PBS-style doc. Core surf kids wouldn’t want to spend $35 on the type of DVD they’d watch in school when the teacher was sick. 

“Fuck it, we’re doing it anyway,” said Strider. “I’ve got a budget and Bob’s on board. He loves the idea.”

So we did just that. Clay’s 40-year-old filmer Adam Klevin took Clay to all of the weird empty spots he liked around the globe. We filmed interviews with surfers, friends and family whenever we could. We got an hour with the world’s leading expert on Asperger’s, Dr. Tony Attwood, at his home in Brisbane.

Strider patiently talked it all over with Jill over the course of a year. Clay was finally diagnosed as having Asperger’s near the end of filming in May 2008. 

I oversaw post production and nearly killed myself in the process. I cherry picked over a hundred hours of raw footage in a million different formats. Then I realized I was in over my head. I hired Transition Productions, who had done a lot of big action sports films and webcasts for emergency professional help, and then I tore out my hair trying to piece together a coherent story with a very skilled editor, Shaun Peterson. 

Shaun had edited a few of the classic “Behind the Music” shows on VH1. He didn’t know much about surfing, but he clearly understood the story I was trying to tell, even more than I did. For a few months in the summer of 2008, I’d go to work from 9-5 at Quik, then drive to Transition’s post-production house in Santa Monica. I’d stay there with Shaun until 4am. 

The sleep deprivation hit me hard. I started having anxiety attacks while white knuckling it on the 405.

It was worth it. The resulting film Just Add Water, was the best thing I worked on at Quiksilver. 

The response in and outside the company was overwhelmingly positive. It seemed to ease Clay’s mind, and make him understand himself better. Looking back, though, I still wonder if we did the right thing by pushing so hard to get it made.  The Asperger’s diagnosis split the Marzo family in two, with Clay and Jill buying in, while Clay’s father Gino and half-brother Cheyne Magnusson felt it was inaccurate. 

I wondered myself if it lowered expectations for Clay’s career. The shelf-life for freesurfer, especially one making six figures, isn’t very long.  

At the height of his career, Clay asked me how much money he was making. No one had told him. 

“What is it, around, 20 grand a year?” he asked. 

I didn’t know the exact figure, but heard from a reliable source that it was more than 10 times that. 

Moreover, If he reached his full potential as a future World Title contender, he’d be pulling in millions. 

“All I know Clay, is you make more than I do,” I said. 

“No way!  Really?”

“Yes. You make a lot more than I do.”

“That’s sick,” he said.

I knew Clay didn’t like crowds or contests, but I felt like just by showing up for QS events the sheer enormity of his talent would move him past his challenges and he’d make the tour. 

Throughout the back half of 2009, that seemed to be what was happening. He won his first QS in Puerto Escondido, made the quarters of a Prime in the Canary Islands and looked poised to make the big leap in 2010.

In December 2009, Clay asked me if I could go with him to the upcoming World Juniors event the next month in Narrabeen. Clay’s filmer Adam was recovering from knee surgery and couldn’t travel. 

“Come with me, Jamie,” said Clay. “We’ll get ice cream at that spot in Avalon.”  

I asked my boss if I could go. I knew how important this contest was for Clay’s future. If he made the finals, he would have a plum seed into all of the Prime events in 2010.  

But I was turned down. I was working on the edits for a big boardshort campaign and that was a lot more important to Quik than hanging out with Clay for two weeks in Australia. 

Besides, they’d just hired a young team manager who was perfect for the gig. I met with the guy before he got on the plane. 

“You have one job,” I said. “Get Clay to his heats on time. That’s it. No promos, no signings, no photoshoots, nothing. Just get to him his heats before they start.”  

“Easy,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

Clay tore through the early rounds. In sucky little lefts at North Narra, he was unstoppable, clearly the form surfer of the contest. 

He reached the quarters, where he was matched up against a shy, skinny, 15-year-old Gabriel Medina. Medina was amazing, a freak, but he was seemingly no match for the full grown man power of Clay Marzo at 19.

But he didn’t get a chance to show that: The young team manager slept through his alarm on the morning of the finals. 

He and Clay drove so fast to the contest from the house they were staying in Avalon that they got pulled over by a cop along the way. Medina paddled out for the heat at 7am alone. 

I watched in horror online as it all went down. Clay and crew finally arrived at 7:15am. He threw on a jersey in the parking lot and ran down to the beach.  I can’t remember if he even caught a wave.

He lost and quit surfing contests.

Clay’s manager Mitch Varnes, was so pissed he wanted the team manager fired on the spot. 

“Jamie, the simple fact is, that if you or Adam were with Clay, he would have been on time.” 

“You’re right,” I said.  “I feel like I let Clay down.” 

Today, I honestly feel like had I been able to go with Clay on that trip, he would have gotten that seed. He would have qualified in 2010. Honestly, I think he’d still be ripping on tour today. He still surfs well enough to be top 10, maybe even top 5. 

Quiksilver kept Clay for a couple years after that, but the writing was on the wall. He sealed his fate by turning down parts in Kai Neville’s Modern Collective and Lost Atlas. 

By 2012, the powers at Quik decided Dane Reynolds and Craig Anderson were much more marketable than him as freesurfers, which was true. They declined to renew Clay’s contract or negotiate a new one for less money.  

Four years later a shady bookkeeper on Maui stole his Clay’s savings of $400,000, most of which came from his Quik contract years.

Tragic. 

The end for me at Quik came before Clay’s. 

2010 and 2011 were great years for me there—the calm before the storm. I hired the Brain Farm crew—who made the famous snowboard movies, That’s It That’s All and The Art of Flight — to shoot Kelly, Dane, Julian and Jeremy in Mexico, with a super slow motion Phantom camera. 

The resulting images were nothing short of amazing. We saw things no one had ever seen before in the footage like boards flexing during the landings on the airs and crystal clear water shots where you could see every individual drop of spray.  

We felt like we were able to completely reinvent boardshort campaigns with that one.

In the spring of 2011, I teamed up with Michael Crawley, who went on to found Valley Eyewear in Australia. We organized a series of low budget strike missions around the world for Kelly, Dane, Ando and the crazy amount of grom talent we had in Jack Robinson, Mikey Wright, Kanoa Igarashi and Leo Fioravanti.  We employed the photographic brilliance of Todd Glaser and Morgan Maassen. I got to shoot on an incredible trip to mainland Mexico with Kelly and Stephanie Gilmore. 

For a moment, it seemed like things were back on the rise.

The late great Pierre Agnes, boss of Quiksilver Europe, saved the brand from bankruptcy by securing a hefty line of credit from a European private equity firm, Rhone. Quik slashed budgets, sales slowly grew and the stock price went with it. Everyone sensed the makings of a comeback. 

The optimism, though, was premature. The Rossignol debt, an $800 million anchor, hadn’t gone anywhere. 

Some hard decisions were made at a board meeting in October of 2011. More than 200 jobs were cut from the HB office alone and the marketing department was basically sliced in half.  For just about everyone who had been there a few years and was making decent money, it was time to go.

I got the call, karmically I suppose, while I was in France.

I was on a legitimate vacation this time. I came in from a surf on one of those picture perfect October 80 degree Indian Summer days in Hossegor and saw I had a voice mail. My last boss sounded grave on the message, so I called him back and got the ax from 6,000 miles away.

By 2013, 99 percent of the people I knew at Quiksilver had either left or gotten clipped. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2015. 

The surf industry has never been as big as it was when the Mountain and Wave was at its peak. It might never be again.

The surf industry has never been as big as it was when the Mountain and Wave was at its peak. It might never be again. Nike is still Nike and I wonder if anyone dreaming through salt water crusted eyes will ever challenge them. It’s not easy to turn a fun pastime into a multi billion dollar brand. It’s incredible that McKnight and crew managed to do it once.

Until Covid hit, surfing was locked tight in the vise of a niche. Those of us who loved it bought a few boards, wetsuits and trunks and got the best “bro deals” we could find. But we didn’t exactly support an “industry.” Now, though, with parking lots full of surfers new and old trying to escape quarantines, lockdowns and boredom the best they can, it remains to be seen if the surf brands will be able to monetize them in a meaningful way.  Makers of wetsuits and surfboards sure aren’t hurting for sales right now. The proliferation of wave pools around the world can only help core companies as well. 

Today Quiksilver — now wholly owned by Oaktree Capital — operates in the converted warehouse of the old Death Star in HB alongside former arch enemy, Billabong. The various brands under the Boardriders umbrella all still make surf gear and apparel. Bob McKnight still roams the halls and the classic boards are still on the walls. Quik still sponsors athletes and events. They figured out a way to stay afloat without becoming a house brand at Walmart as OP did. Give them credit for that. 

When I put on a pair of Quik shorts or see an ad online, I remember how fucking awesome the place was. The mid 2000s were a remarkable time in surfing’s history — a golden era of sorts that should be fodder for retrospective books and documentaries. For a second there it felt like surfers were taking over the world. Everyone in their lives should have a chance to work at a company when it’s booming. The energy fills you up like a balloon till you think you’re going to burst.  

And then either you, or it, inevitably does.