Fernando Aguerre, 55, the co-founder with his brother Santiago of the iconic surf brand Reef, has reached the statesman stage of life.
The Surf Industry Manufacturers Association named him Waterman of the Year, one of only two times in 24 years that a business guy, as opposed to surf legends Greg Noll, Kelly Slater and Rob Machado, has been picked.
But Aguerre, who still kicks it nearly every morning from the back of his house fronting the south end of Windansea Beach in La Jolla, bridges many worlds.
He has become the “Ambassador of the Wave,” getting 77 countries so far behind his push to get the International Olympic Committee to add surfing to the Games. He believes it would bring about “the largest paradigm shift in our industry since surfing moved from Hawaii to California, or since the arrival of the foam boards, or since the International Surfing Association was founded in 1964 and started running World Surfing Championships.”
In turn, the Olympics would get a second blush of youth.
The first was snowboarding, which brought millions of dollars and millions of new television viewers to the Winter Games. Surfing would do the same for the Summer Games.
Surfing plays as well as snowboarding on the 52-inch screen, especially with the new high-tech wave pools being built in more than dozen countries. It’s a democratizing device like a portable inner-city basketball court that he believes will bring surfing from the upscale coasts to the Fresnos and Guangzhous of the world.
Aguerre doesn’t need the money, although he says he sometimes misses the game, with the brothers having sold Reef for about $100 million to devote more time to surfing and family.
“You think because someone is rich that their life is easy? Nothing is easy,” he says. “Go and look at the history of some of the richest families in the history of the world, and see how easy it has been for them.
“Financial strength is not a guarantee of spiritual happiness. Often, they run as opposing currents. Money can sometimes suck from the time you need to devote to your personal happiness, to pursuing the dreams and happiness of the family around you.”
Questions of life and balance are important to Aguerre, which may explain the classic Reef slogan: “Life is short. Don’t waste it. Go surfing.”
This was the dictum, with full-page pictures of be-thonged Brazilians above EVA foam sandals, and perseverance, that made Reef into a game-changing brand.
“Hard work is not enough!” says Aguerre, explaining how he and Reef did it.
“Perseverance and hard work, together, are what you need. You can build a ladder of success in business, but if it is someone else’s ladder, they may hammer you in the face. We built our own ladder. Who were we? Simple Latin immigrants who brought Latin passion, beautiful women, surf stars and celebrity to a stalled industry. We didn’t go to marketing school! We didn’t need a cook. We were the chefs.”
Legend has it that Aguerre arrived in San Diego with less than $4,000 in savings, and his brother was waiting tables at an El Torito restaurant in San Diego. But Aguerre came north with a law degree, speaking four languages.
His mother is a retired lawyer and psychoanalyst, and the brothers had survived the awful desaparecidos decade in Argentina in which tens of thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the military dictatorship. Sometimes military officers called in the teenage Aguerres from the waves by firing a pistol into the air.
But we stray from business. In San Diego, greatness follows many paths.
At the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach, at the Waterman’s Ball, Aguerre told the crowd of more than 800 ecstatic and depressed action-sports millionaires — there have been ups and downs in the Orange County/San Diego fun community since 2008 — the following, as excerpted in a shop-eat-surf.com post:
“Our industry is an industry that has gone through 20 years of up, up, up. But as you know, there is no magic, only magicians in life. The current crisis has been the hardest; it has lasted the longest and been the most difficult.
“Luckily for us, there is a lot of new energy, and we have some new people arriving in our industry to help some of the bigger brands. I think that those people are going to help us, and I think we need to help them. They bring a way of doing things that may be foreign to us, but some of them have spent decades at Nike, for example, so I want to learn from them. I want to understand how they do things.
“But at the same time, it’s all about partnerships. We have 30 and 40 years in the business. We have the soul, the flame. We have the thing that makes you go to bed at 2 a.m. after three beers, and you still wake up semi-drunk at 6 in the morning to go surfing. That has to have value. It does.
“I believe that the return to health of the bigger brands is a must for all of us, because if the big dinosaurs are healthy, all dinosaurs can grow and be healthy.”
To quickly give meaning to this, what Aguerre told an audience richer than many in Silicon Valley (and with better tans) is that authenticity counts, but change is inevitable. Cut the fat but not the muscle, because muscle does not grow back. It’s a balance, says Aguerre.
But when you have a Formula 1 race car, you can’t put a student driver behind the wheel. The skills to pilot off-the-beach startups may be quite different from the business acumen needed to run a publicly traded international corporation.
The new guys from Nike and Disney may help the surf industry out of its doldrums, so long as they hire people who know what it means to sleep on the beach and wake up to the growl of Teahupo’o gathering mana across the reef. Otherwise, they could end up with just another apparel company, and sameness is hard to brand and branding is the key to everything. Coca-Cola, Apple, Reef.
Now we are down on Aguerre’s front lawn, the crash and foam of a northwest swell rising. It’s a beautiful La Jolla morning with the diffuse clarity of crisp autumn light.
“People talk of luck,” he says. “I am not in the luck side of life. Bad luck does not exist unless you are standing in the street and a plane lands on your head. Luck is understanding your surroundings, being alert to the opportunities.”
“I am a practical idealist,” Aguerre says. “I look at the dreams of other people, and I want to facilitate them. The more that people achieve their dreams, the happier society is, and the more prosperous, too.”
Fernando Aguerre sleeps with a copy of the Declaration of Independence beside his bed. His favorite line is about the pursuit of happiness, happiness as an inalienable right.
“Life, liberty and the freaking pursuit of happiness. What other country says that?”
Researchers Subin Ryoo and Elizabeth Li contributed to this column. Steve Chapple may be contacted at stevechapple.com
The Surf Industry Manufacturers Association named him Waterman of the Year, one of only two times in 24 years that a business guy, as opposed to surf legends Greg Noll, Kelly Slater and Rob Machado, has been picked.
But Aguerre, who still kicks it nearly every morning from the back of his house fronting the south end of Windansea Beach in La Jolla, bridges many worlds.
He has become the “Ambassador of the Wave,” getting 77 countries so far behind his push to get the International Olympic Committee to add surfing to the Games. He believes it would bring about “the largest paradigm shift in our industry since surfing moved from Hawaii to California, or since the arrival of the foam boards, or since the International Surfing Association was founded in 1964 and started running World Surfing Championships.”
In turn, the Olympics would get a second blush of youth.
The first was snowboarding, which brought millions of dollars and millions of new television viewers to the Winter Games. Surfing would do the same for the Summer Games.
Surfing plays as well as snowboarding on the 52-inch screen, especially with the new high-tech wave pools being built in more than dozen countries. It’s a democratizing device like a portable inner-city basketball court that he believes will bring surfing from the upscale coasts to the Fresnos and Guangzhous of the world.
Aguerre doesn’t need the money, although he says he sometimes misses the game, with the brothers having sold Reef for about $100 million to devote more time to surfing and family.
“You think because someone is rich that their life is easy? Nothing is easy,” he says. “Go and look at the history of some of the richest families in the history of the world, and see how easy it has been for them.
“Financial strength is not a guarantee of spiritual happiness. Often, they run as opposing currents. Money can sometimes suck from the time you need to devote to your personal happiness, to pursuing the dreams and happiness of the family around you.”
Questions of life and balance are important to Aguerre, which may explain the classic Reef slogan: “Life is short. Don’t waste it. Go surfing.”
This was the dictum, with full-page pictures of be-thonged Brazilians above EVA foam sandals, and perseverance, that made Reef into a game-changing brand.
“Hard work is not enough!” says Aguerre, explaining how he and Reef did it.
“Perseverance and hard work, together, are what you need. You can build a ladder of success in business, but if it is someone else’s ladder, they may hammer you in the face. We built our own ladder. Who were we? Simple Latin immigrants who brought Latin passion, beautiful women, surf stars and celebrity to a stalled industry. We didn’t go to marketing school! We didn’t need a cook. We were the chefs.”
Legend has it that Aguerre arrived in San Diego with less than $4,000 in savings, and his brother was waiting tables at an El Torito restaurant in San Diego. But Aguerre came north with a law degree, speaking four languages.
His mother is a retired lawyer and psychoanalyst, and the brothers had survived the awful desaparecidos decade in Argentina in which tens of thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the military dictatorship. Sometimes military officers called in the teenage Aguerres from the waves by firing a pistol into the air.
But we stray from business. In San Diego, greatness follows many paths.
At the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach, at the Waterman’s Ball, Aguerre told the crowd of more than 800 ecstatic and depressed action-sports millionaires — there have been ups and downs in the Orange County/San Diego fun community since 2008 — the following, as excerpted in a shop-eat-surf.com post:
“Our industry is an industry that has gone through 20 years of up, up, up. But as you know, there is no magic, only magicians in life. The current crisis has been the hardest; it has lasted the longest and been the most difficult.
“Luckily for us, there is a lot of new energy, and we have some new people arriving in our industry to help some of the bigger brands. I think that those people are going to help us, and I think we need to help them. They bring a way of doing things that may be foreign to us, but some of them have spent decades at Nike, for example, so I want to learn from them. I want to understand how they do things.
“But at the same time, it’s all about partnerships. We have 30 and 40 years in the business. We have the soul, the flame. We have the thing that makes you go to bed at 2 a.m. after three beers, and you still wake up semi-drunk at 6 in the morning to go surfing. That has to have value. It does.
“I believe that the return to health of the bigger brands is a must for all of us, because if the big dinosaurs are healthy, all dinosaurs can grow and be healthy.”
To quickly give meaning to this, what Aguerre told an audience richer than many in Silicon Valley (and with better tans) is that authenticity counts, but change is inevitable. Cut the fat but not the muscle, because muscle does not grow back. It’s a balance, says Aguerre.
But when you have a Formula 1 race car, you can’t put a student driver behind the wheel. The skills to pilot off-the-beach startups may be quite different from the business acumen needed to run a publicly traded international corporation.
The new guys from Nike and Disney may help the surf industry out of its doldrums, so long as they hire people who know what it means to sleep on the beach and wake up to the growl of Teahupo’o gathering mana across the reef. Otherwise, they could end up with just another apparel company, and sameness is hard to brand and branding is the key to everything. Coca-Cola, Apple, Reef.
Now we are down on Aguerre’s front lawn, the crash and foam of a northwest swell rising. It’s a beautiful La Jolla morning with the diffuse clarity of crisp autumn light.
“People talk of luck,” he says. “I am not in the luck side of life. Bad luck does not exist unless you are standing in the street and a plane lands on your head. Luck is understanding your surroundings, being alert to the opportunities.”
“I am a practical idealist,” Aguerre says. “I look at the dreams of other people, and I want to facilitate them. The more that people achieve their dreams, the happier society is, and the more prosperous, too.”
Fernando Aguerre sleeps with a copy of the Declaration of Independence beside his bed. His favorite line is about the pursuit of happiness, happiness as an inalienable right.
“Life, liberty and the freaking pursuit of happiness. What other country says that?”
Researchers Subin Ryoo and Elizabeth Li contributed to this column. Steve Chapple may be contacted at stevechapple.com
