STORES:
Golden Breed Surf Noosa
15 Noosa Drive, Noosa Heads QLD 4567
07 5455 3722
Golden Breed Byron Bay
10 Lawson Street Byron Bay NSW 2481
02 6680 7944
The Golden Breed Story
The story of Golden Breed crosses oceans, generations and cultural divides. In a sense, it echoes the story of surfing itself, born out of a rebel streak, almost forgotten for a while, then emerging triumphant with an e
thos that celebrates the new freedoms of the sport and culture – ride ‘em all! Both were the creation of surfing’s first marketing guy, a former marine named Francis “Duke” Boyd. Back in the late ‘50s, fresh out of uniform, Boyd took to surfing while working in the advertising industry in California. Soon he had teamed up with wetsuit pioneers the Meistrell brothers, who manufactured wetsuits they branded Thermocline and sold them at their Dive ‘N’ Surf shop in Los Angeles. Thermocline sounded vaguely medicinal and wasn't setting the world on fire. “What’s the best selling point of your wetsuits?” Boyd asked the brothers. “They fit like a glove.” Bingo. Body Glove was born and was soon vying with O’Neill for the market leadership. In 1960 Duke designed a flannelette after-surf jacket and took it to garmento Doris Moore to see what she thought. “Never mind the jacket,” she said, “the money’s in the trunks you’ve got on under it.” Duke loaned her his trunks, gave her a few ideas about how they might be improved, and Doris went away and made a pattern. Soon they had a little range going and Duke peddled them at the surfwear shops along the coast. They were called “Doris Moore of California” and no one wanted them. Duke told Doris they needed a new name. “What’s the surfing equivalent of a hole in one?” she asked. Hang Ten was born with a simple but effective logo showing two feet in the sand. By the mid-1960s Hang Ten was the biggest surfwear brand in America, and Duke and Doris licensed it to textile giants the Don Rancho Corporation. But then its all-American cleanskin image began to seem out of synch with the youth-led cultural revolution that began in 1967. Duke was by then working with magazine publisher Richard Graham inventing advertising campaigns for surf clients. For Bing Surfboards he came up with a classic line to accompany a photo showing sun-bronzed Bing with a couple of his team riders…”The Golden Breed”. Film-maker Dale Davis grabbed it for his 1968 surf flick “Golden Breed”, but when the Don Rancho execs realised they needed a new and hipper brand to sell alongside Hang Ten, Duke trotted out the Breed, accompanying it with some sketches of a surfer with angel wings and a symbol that combined the sexes. “We had no idea,” said Duke. “An ex-marine trying to be a hippie! We just threw all this weird s**t out there and the kids seemed to like it.”
Golden Breed backed its out-there imagery with a commitment to supporting the sport’s leading athletes in a softly-softly way that typified the innovative marketing approach of Boyd and Dick Graham. As the 1960s closed, Duke signed a deal with emerging super surfer Jeff Hakman to become Golden Breed’s brand ambassador. This was a deft stroke, since not only was Hakman revered as a diminutive teenage big wave rider who had won the first Duke Classic at 16, but he had just emerged from a drugs importation trial and was considered an undesirable by most of surfing’s hierarchy. Ergo, Hakman was cool and he was cheap! And by 1971 he was the leading pro surfer in the world. Hakman came up with the concept for the Golden Breed Expression Session, but it was Duke Boyd who sold it to the media and made Golden Breed the coolest brand in surf. While cash-rich companies like Smirnoff were throwing large sums of money at the nascent pro tour, Golden Breed avoided such crass commercialism by inviting the grooviest surfers on the planet to just go surfing on the North Shore for a fee of $200. No judges, no results, just a feel-good session with the cameras rolling. To celebrate this initiative, Hakman invited all of the surfers taking part to a Good Karma Party at his North Shore house. The beer flowed and Boyd and Graham bro’d down with the surfers until a posse of uninvited Hawaiians arrived and turned the place upside down. Dick Graham copped a black eye and Hakman’s renter was trashed, but the attendant publicity only made Golden Breed even cooler! GB Down Under
John Arnold was a South Aussie surfer who traveled widely in the ‘60s, made some good surf world contacts, went into surfboard production with a Wayne Lynch model before anyone had really seen the sales potential of the Lorne prodigy, and then picked up the license for O’Neill Wetsuits in Australia. At a time when Rip Curl was still a surfboard company, the well-made and heat-keeping O’Neill suits were an immediate hit. From his Adelaide base, Arnold became a mini-mogul overnight, and soon he was looking to expand into apparel. On his next trip to California he met with Boyd and Graham. What happened next is in dispute. Duke and Dick say Arnold taught them an invaluable lesson in trademark protection. Arnold has always maintained he was granted a license. Either way, he took the Golden Breed brand to Australia and used his Midas touch to launch it. Duke Boyd had created the brand’s ethereal imagery, but in avant garde artist Peter Ledger, Arnold found the perfect translation for the Australian market. Vivid Ledger centerfold posters became prized tear-outs in every issue of trendy surf mag Tracks and Golden Breed is now bigger in Australia than Hang Ten was ever in the US. And there was another parallel with Hang Ten. In the 1970s Dick Graham was largely responsible for taking the Hang Ten brand outside of surfing to kindred spirits in extreme sports such as skiing, dirt-biking and motocross. Teaming with advertising agency Harris Robinson Courtenay’s dynamic young creative team, Arnold did the same for Golden Breed, a full generation before most surf companies moved their focus from surfing to all board sports. He also created dual distribution channels into surf shops and department stores. Golden Breed went from strength to strength. By the mid-1970s, as an Australian pro surfing tour became a reality, John Arnold had leading lights Jeff Hakman and Gerry Lopez promoting his brands at every tour stop. And, in a classic coals-to-Newcastle scenario, Golden Breed started exporting its wildly successful “silkies” and motocross shirts back to the US. As a 1975 Golden Breed ad in Surfer Magazine proclaims: “Aussies have their own way of doing things.”
But time was catching up with John Arnold’s fast-growing empire. Unable to fund its own growth, O’Neill Wetsuits Australia (which owned Golden Breed) borrowed money from the South Australian government but still recorded a $1.2 million loss in 1977 and was placed in receivership. The SA government partnered with the American Richton Corporation in a rescue mission amidst howls of protest in the parliament. By 1980 the government had run for cover and Richton battled on alone. In 1984 they sold the brand and moved on.
