One Way To Help Your Local Surf Shop Right Now

As 40 million people in California are now officially on lockdown to hopefully curb the spread of the coronavirus, it’s going to take a team effort to stay afloat in these turbulent waters.

Non-essential businesses have been ordered to close throughout the state, and that means surf shops too. But thanks to creative solutions like the ones proposed by our friends at Corkcicle, we can get through this together.

A surf-adjacent company that supports surfers like Brett Barley and Cory Lopez and is a former sponsor of Stab High, they’re doing their part to help local shops during global isolation.

They’ve launched a new program designed to supplement revenue for stores by providing customers the opportunity to write in the name of their favorite local retailer at checkout. Corkcicle will then credit that store for the customer’s purchase as if it had been purchased directly from them. 

“Local retail is a part of what makes our communities so unique. They give our cities charm and character, and have helped build brands like ours,” says Stephen Bruner, the Co-Founder of Corkcicle. “In light of recent events, we’ve been asking ourselves: how can we help? We recognized that we had the opportunity to make our biggest store, our website, their store for a few weeks. This gives these incredible local stores the much needed ability to generate some revenue while their customers are limited in their ability to shop.”

Here’s how it works: they’ve created a section in their checkout process that reads “Support My Local Store.” Shop as you normally would on their site, and when you’re paying you can enter the name, city and state of the local Corkcicle retailer of choice. When the program ends—which is slated for April 10—retailers will be mailed a check with their total profits.

“Everyone is in a tough spot right now and we hope that our program can help our independent partners in this difficult time,” says Corkcicle President Eric Miller. “Our business was built through independent stores and we truly hope this can help them weather the storm.”

While we’re all hunkered down and hoping for the best, thanks to solutions like this it’s not all doom and gloom out there.