The First Patagonia Surf Shop
The first Patagonia Surf Shop is due to open this month in Cardiff. I was by there a day ago though, and I don’t think they’ll make it. According to this article at Transword, they’ll be trageting ‘watermen and women’ with the surf and ocean related products the Malloy brothers have had influence on for 2 years now. The EPS/Epoxy boards by Yvonne’s son Fletcher Chouinard will keep the “Surf Shop” signage fully legit and the store’s gear will be rounded out with a mix of stuff from other companies they feel have similar philosophies as thier own.
One of their first offerings is a board bag you can upgrade to a travel bag with a padded insert. Seems like a sturdy bag, but it may be a bit too reflective for my tastes.
There is a wealth of articles and essays on their site supporting the move to surfing. Keith Malloy has written a mission statement of sorts and Chris Malloy penned an essay called “The Cleanest Line” about the link decades long link between Patagonia and surfing. If you want to go one step further and actually read a book about the company, I highly recommend “Let My People Go Surfing”. It’s not as surf stoked as the title implies, being mainly about Yvonne as a reluctant business man, but it’s a great read.
My favorite of their online offerings though, is the Bend to Baja site I posted about previously.




May 10th, 2006 at 6:46 am
It will be interesting to see how this goes, I wish them luck.
May 10th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Me too. These guys have a love for the environment and they show it with their contributions and business practices. I think the key things will be how big of role the Malloys are taking in product dev and how surf stoked designers are.
May 27th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
[…] See also… http://www.70percent.org/blog/the-first-patagonia-surf-shop/ http://www.70percent.org/blog/bend-to-baja/ […]
July 5th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Looks like a great shop. The wool lined wetsuits look to be the most comfy thing on earth, but ya can’t pee in ‘em I bet.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
i just popped in searching for surfing stuff and google lead me here, interesting read nice one from the UK