A prominent pro surfer and one of the long-time faces of Roxy said she is cutting ties with the brand over a contract dispute with the company’s new owners.
Kelia Moniz announced the news to her Instagram followers Tuesday, alleging a contract her team struck with Huntington Beach-based Roxy was terminated a year early after the brand’s sale to Authentic Brands Group was finalized in September.
Authentic paid about $1.25 billion for the Boardriders group, which also consists of RVCA, Element, Quiksilver, Billabong, DC Shoes, Element, Honolua and VonZipper.
Moniz, who runs Honolulu Pawn Shop, said in her video Authentic offered a deal to end her relationship with Roxy for what equated to a 90 percent pay cut.
“After years of fighting for fair pay and equality, there’s just no way I was signing that deal,” Moniz said in her video. “Especially knowing that I wasn’t the only athlete that this happened to. I’m not about to be strongarmed by some corporation who not only knows nothing about the sport but doesn’t give a shit about it.”
Moniz said signing Authentic’s offer could result in a chilling effect on how future athlete deals are structured.
“The surf industry has been consolidated by two large corporations who don’t care that there’s been a dismantling of the monetary value of a whole generation of surfing happening right now,” she said. “And I refuse to play a part of this because it looks pretty on your spreadsheet.”
Moniz is the latest to publicly step away from a contract with a Boardriders brand, while pointing to the change in ownership as the reason for leaving.
Surfer Billy Kemper said in November he declined to renew his contract with RVCA given the brand is no longer being led by founder Pat Tenore. The founder left as part of a round of layoffs in the fall that impacted RVCA and other Boardriders divisions as a result of the sale.
Athlete relationships and sponsorships are seen as key to brand equity, serving as a seal of approval for authenticity. The more recent public criticisms by some athletes and even some industry executives over how the Boardriders brands are being handled under the new ownership could hold implications on market perception and even sales.
In more recent years, shrinking budgets have made it difficult to continue funding large rosters of sponsored athletes, particularly as companies get acquired and new ownership groups implement different marketing philosophies on an organization.
In Authentic’s case, the company has said little publicly since the close of its Boardriders purchase on the specific plans it has for each brand, outside of corporate press releases.
One known aspect of the transition: The business units are undergoing a structural change to licensing deals that place licensees in charge of executing on product design, development and how they’ll be sold to consumers.
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