in Narragansett.
Company: Warm Winds
Owners: Tom and Susan Hogan
Location: Narragansett
Employees: 8
Type of Business: Surf shop
Annual revenue: WND
Web: www.warmwinds.com
Back when Tom and Susan Hogan began making surfboards in their Wakefield garage
in the 1970s, the sport was mainly the preserve of long-haired beach bums.
“Surfing wasn’t a mainstream sport back then,” says Tom Hogan, co-owner of Warm Winds surf shop in Narragansett. “It had sort of a bad image.”
That didn’t stop the South County natives and diehard surfers from opening Warm Winds in 1983. Two decades later, their business is riding a wave of surfing popularity, driven by “Generation Y’s” insatiable thirst for extreme sports.
“Parents are actually pushing their kids into surfing,” Tom Hogan says. “It’s a more wholesome sport now than it was in the 60s and 70s.” He stops short of calling it a family surf shop. But it’s close.
The Hogans, in their early 50s and still avid surfers, don’t design surfboards anymore. And although Warm Winds boasts one of the largest selections of surfboards in New England, Tom Hogan says the shop really is in the business of slaking a thirst for the surfing lifestyle.
“The big companies have done a good job promoting the lifestyle, and that’s really what we sell,” he said. “The actual surfboards are probably our lowest-margin product. Accessories are where you make your living in this business.”
That’s readily apparent upon stepping into the shop on Kingstown Road, just a few hundred yards from Narragansett Town Beach, one of the most popular surf beaches in New England. The store’s main floor is a dizzying array of accessory displays: surf shorts, flip-flops, wetsuits, board-repair kits, sunglasses, watches, hats and T-shirts emblazoned with marquee surf brand names such as Billabong, Quicksilver and Body Glove.
Surfboards? Oh yeah. There are a couple hundred of those – new and used – in the shop’s basement.
Warm Winds also does its part to attract and keep the next generation of Rhode Island wave riders. It organizes surf camps that teach hundreds of young kids how to catch their first wave. Each year it donates boards to the Narragansett Parks Department for lessons.
As it turns out, many of those parents who are encouraging their kids to paddle out into the surf are the grown-up versions of the same scruffy surfers whom the Hogans were selling boards to 25 years ago. And some of them are rediscovering the sport along with their kids.
“There have been a lot of guys who used to surf but dropped off because of their careers,” Tom Hogan said. “But now their kids are surfing and they come in and say, ‘Yeah, I can do this again.’ A lot of times the parent ends up sticking with it more than the kid.”
The return of middle-aged weekend warriors has been nurtured by the resurgence of old school “longboards,” 9- and 10-foot platforms that fell out of favor for much of the past two decades while shorter boards were the rage.
Another burgeoning new customer segment for Warm Winds: young girls. Last year’s surfer-chic movie, “Blue Crush,” fueled a surge in interest among 12- to 19-year-old girls, according to Board-Trac, a market researcher that studies the buying habits of young people involved in “board sports.”
The firm counts 150,000 female surfers in that age group and nearly 500,000 female surfers of all ages in the United States.
“In the last five years or so, there have been so many beginners getting into surfing,” Tom Hogan said. “We’ve found ourselves with a pretty diverse customer base.”
Of course, surfing’s popularity brings with it competition. There are plenty of retailers that sell Billabong T-shirts and QuickSilver shorts. “Mall stores,” as Tom Hogan calls them, which peddle the surfing lifestyle, if not the required gear.
For those retailers, though, surfing is just a fad – a way to make money while the sport is hot, or cool, rather. But the Hogans have been in the business long enough to know that the sport’s popularity comes in waves.
“We ride the waves too, up and down,” says Tom Hogan. “Surfing is a funny business, and your heart’s really got to be in it. In the next downturn those stores will be gone. But we’ll be here forever.” He pauses. “Or at least until we retire.”
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