Images courtesy of Surf Expo

The recent For Surfers, By Surfers panel that took place at Surf Expo brought together CJ Hobgood, Kolohe Andino, Kekoa Cazimero and Jamie O’Brien for a candid conversation with SIMA Executive Director, Vipe Desai, about the rise of athlete-led surf brands and what it could mean for the industry.

This discussion explored their transition from sponsored athletes to founders, the reality of building a business, and the importance of staying connected to the people and culture that built surfing. A common theme emerged: showing up matters. Whether supporting young surfers, spending time with retailers, building community or surrounding themselves with great people, these founders see an opportunity to bring more authenticity, creativity, risk and personal connection back into the surf business.

Their message was not about replacing the legacy brands that helped build their careers. It was about carrying those lessons forward and creating something new.

As Jamie O’Brien put it, “There’s plenty of room for everybody, but I think the movement is going this direction, and I like the direction.”

Below is the full Q&A from the discussion, in their own words.

What's something you believed about the surf industry when you were a sponsored athlete that you now realized was completely wrong after becoming a founder?

CJ: I had a rep, Rick Sapone, one of the best sales reps to ever live. I'm sure there's retailers in here that can second that. But he just looked at me. I think I was 12 years old. He just looked at me, he goes, 'Dude, if you love what you do, it will take care of you.' And straight up. And he's kind of wisdom guy, doesn't really say that much. And it sort of blew me back. And I believed that then and I still believe it today.

Kekoa: I think when I was younger, I just thought pro surfing was going to last forever. I mean, that was something I believed in. We love surfing so much. Surfing is the foundation in everything that we do. So when we're younger and all we want to do is chase perfect waves, get barrels and just be surfing the best waves possible, you kind of deserve this state of mind of I'm going to do this forever. And you know what I mean? These brands and companies that we grew up riding for that supported us, it felt like that was going to last forever. But in reality, that time is obviously going to come to end. So being on the other side of the fence and being in a position to actually sponsor the youth, sponsor other athletes, take care of them, send them a box of clothes, it sort of gave me more of a full circle moment and realization that this kind of does last forever. We just love to surf, you know what I mean? But you realize that career is not going to last forever, but we built this life and we live in this culture.

Jamie: I would like to say that I remember back in the day and it was something that we all believed. We could be world champion, you're going to qualify. There was one direct way on how to make it and he's made it. And what you don't realize is that it's such a hard journey and so much time and in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people. And I felt like someone was like, 'That's how you got to do it.' And now when I look at it, there's so many different ways to do it and I chose not to do that direction. So I just was a believer in myself at an early time of content is king. And I went the Bruce Irons route where it's like, 'All right, yeah, that's cool, but this works for me.' I think there's a lot of different avenues that professional surfing can provide to surfers or kids growing up nowadays to have way more opportunity to make surfing a career and obviously turn it into a business.

Kolohe: A lot simpler. I felt like when I was younger, I just kind of wanted to rip and I felt like everything would work out. And now it feels like being on the other side of things, feels like showing up is the most important, not how good anyone surfs.

You've all come up in an era when the dream was to get sponsored. At what point did that change for you and you started thinking maybe I should build something of my own?

Kolohe: I was sick of posing on beach trails with medium sized shirts in front of coconut trees and holding my surfboard on a trip I didn't want to be on, selling to someone who didn't surf for a brand that was owned by non-surfers.

CJ: It changed for me when I no longer was sponsored. So it changed for me when I was on tour and I was like, oh, I'm pretty solid in the top 10 and I don't have a sponsor. So yeah, I think I was the necessity, that correct answer. No, it was more a necessity was a mother adventure for me. When they say timing is everything, the writing was on the wall. I did the tour for a little bit with a nonprofit at the top of my board. And I was like, 'Well, that's fun for a minute.' I was pushed in that direction and so I just accepted.

Jamie: I mean, I remember back in the day, guys would be like, 'All right, when you're 25 and your career's done, it's over. So you got this 10, 15 year window to get it done.' I'm 43 now, thriving, life's good. But I think the hardest. I mean, one of the things that, and it was great, riding for the big brands and still lucky to be able to do so now in this day. But I think one of the hard things to do as an athlete is walking away from a contract that there's money ready to go. It's all turnkey. You don't have to do anything. I always say it's like you're working for these people that don't surf, that don't understand that they can't even do a cutback. They can't do a floater and they're running this multimillion dollar business and you realize that you sell product and this is something that we all strive for. We're all lightly becoming businessmen and like, 'Hey, why not start a cool, fun brand and sell my own boards and sell my own clothes?' Because that's what we were doing. We started Stay Psych and it was just some fun random thing where we got a hundred t-shirts and blew through them.

Kekoa: For me, it was the decision to make the jump and do my own grinding. It came from inspiration in the sense of when I was riding for early, I'll never forget this one part of my career where I did my own signature board short... We sold out in less than a day on the board shorts. The hat, people waited in line for two weeks and it ended up on Hype. And for me, that was a highlight in my career that I didn't forget... That for me stuck out and that's where it clicked for me that one day, this is 100% what I want to do.

So CJ, it sounds like it wasn't really your decision. It was something of a situation that happened when you became without sponsors, you're like, "I got to pivot. I got to do something else.

CJ: Yeah. I think it just was like, 'Wow, okay.' I felt like I was. If it was happening to me, it was going to happen across the board. And it did feel that way. You would walk these floors and it would feel like a graveyard. It was like, 'What are we doing? Oh my gosh, really this, that.' The writing was on the wall. It wasn't some genius sort of. At the time it was good. That's what I'm saying.

What did you see missing in the surf industry that made you believe there was room for something built by surfers for surfers?

CJ: It's funny. Everyone's got a lens that they sort of look through... for me, my aha moment was we have action sports. I remember action sports. It was skating, was it BMX? So for me, my understanding was, so there's kids that were born and all they grew up on was action sports. Action sports, action sports, snowboarding, surfing, all these things were just sort of. So that wasn't frontier for them. That wasn't rebellious, right? So I was like, 'You know what, man?' I mean, in my head I was like, 'Well, they've had a fish on shirts forever.' I mean, Jesus has been doing this forever. So it wasn't nothing new, but for me it was like, 'What's going to feel frontier for the next generation? What going to feel frontier for the kids?' I just was like, 'Hey, you know what? There's a new generation that haven't had these things shoved down their throat and it will feel frontier for them.

Kolohe: "Mine's kind of blunt, but I was just walking into all the surf shops and I didn't like any of the clothes. I felt like there was nothing for kids that were cool or wanted to be cool. All felt pretty homogenized and very outdated.

Jamie: I think one of the cool things for me that really hits home is when we're going to these surf shops, I'm Jamie O'Brien, the owner of Fun Day Surf. These are the team riders that I got to sponsor. These are the kids I believe in that I think will take us to the next level. And being there as an owner and going to the shops and making these decisions and understanding how a board really works, I feel like I bring so much value to the next generation that I'm sponsoring, but also understanding that I am there. All these other companies you ride for, the owner's not there. There's a rep cruising with you trying to fulfill orders and that's all you're really getting. At least as a surfer-owned brand, you could walk into these shops or wherever you go and you're like, 'Yeah, this is my company and it's surfer owned.' And it's very impactful.

Kekoa: We're fired up. You know what I mean? We're amped up, we wake up, we love this, we love what we do, and we're out there pushing it... The number one question I got asked from all the retailers when I walked in the shop, they're looking at me like I'm crazy. They're like, 'How is your brand different from everybody else?' I had to go out on a mission on my own to figure out what that lane was and how AVVA was different from every other brand that's sitting up on the shelves. And fortunately, organically, authentically through a lot of heartache and bad decisions and tough days and long roads and bumpy roads, we found who we are.

Being a great surfer and building a great business are two totally different things. What has been the biggest reality check since becoming a founder?

Kekoa: I think the biggest check I've gotten personally, just there's so much adversity in this business, right? It's kind of how you handle those losses and those challenges, those bumps, those hurdles, you're going to come across them at some point no matter what... Me and one of my close friends and consultants were making a joke the other day and were saying that they shouldn't call it retail, they should call it problems... personally for me, it's just having the realization that we are on the other side of the fence now and we're surfers at heart, but I think there's value there is that we grew up our whole lives competing... We're competitors, right? We take that with us on this side and we utilize that as a tool to push through every single day, wins, losses, hurdles, wake up the next day, one foot in front of the other, we got to just keep it moving.

Jamie: To be honest, I think the biggest reality check is when the waves are good, but you have a business meeting, you got to be in that business meeting so you're working your schedule around when pipe's firing and it's stressful. I've already committed to getting a booth here next year for Fun Day, and I already know that's in the middle of January during the backdoor shootout. So I'm going to have to explain to Uncle Eddie Rothman what I'm doing... it doesn't matter how hard you rip. It doesn't matter the next big pipe wave I get. No one cares. They already expect that. I already laid out the work there. Now it's like, okay, January I'll be here at the trade show.

CJ: A couple things that I had to grip these guys saying, what you have to tell yourself, right? The pep talk. When I first started out, I know getting people to believe I was all in was a tough one... first of all, just getting people to believe that this is what I do... I would sit there and I'd be looking at these spreadsheets and then I remember Sammy at the curl would be like, 'What's your best seller?' I would be like, 'Yeah, you need to load up on this.' And it's just like everything's tough until you do it. Once you do it, it's easy, but it did feel uncomfortable.

Kolohe: "I think you said they are different, but to me they feel really similar. I mean, traveling on the tour for 12 years and it felt like you just kind of grind and then you have random spurts of success and that's how it kind of feels. And the success never really feels as good as you think it's going to feel. Not to be satire, but yeah, I don't know. The fun is in the work really. That's kind of what you got to learn to love.

Brands have gotten bigger and ownership has changed. Do you think the industry has lost some of that connection? And if so, how do we get it back?

Jamie: I think personally, maybe the brands went so corpo that now they're selling, obviously we've seen it before, selling on the Costcos and selling them in places that they shouldn't and then selling clothes to surf shops and then going on their website a week later and then doing a cheaper discount than the surf shop. So they're just burning all their bridges and they don't really understand what they're doing. They're just trying to make money and they're crunching numbers and they're paying athletes less to make more money. And I just think they're burning a lot of bridges, which is good for new brands like us.

Kekoa: I think we've all come to the realization of you have this moment where you're taking on this new feat of you're the face and you're running, you're the founder, you're the biggest advocate of this brand, you've got to get out there and push it... When you first start off, you have the guys that gave you the good luck, question mark and you're like, 'Oh, right on, bro. Solid.'... eventually over time, you put in the work, you get out there, boots on the ground, you surround yourself with good people that believe in your cause... For us, it's like we have a saying, we leave with a love. We go out there, we do that and we take care of all the people on the shop floor... the people that are running the surf shops and the kids that are on the floor and the girls and the guys that are on the floor, they're a huge part of this process.

Kolohe: I think the surf industry needs a lot more risk. I mean, you buy one of these bikini things and you walk by it 20 times. It's pretty obvious. So yeah, I don't know. Risk, color, fun, make the surfers look like celebrities. When I grew up, Jamie always talks about Bruce, but he's the most marketable, raddest person ever, good looking. Every dude wanted to beat him, every chick wanted to get with him. And I think surf industry needs a lot more of that.

One of the hardest things for any founder is knowing when to trust your instincts and when to listen to the business people around you, how do you balance the surfer in you with the CEO or entrepreneur you now have to be?

CJ: You just have to surround yourself with your people. Everyone around you should do way better than you all time. So that's all you can do. You can always surround yourself with your people and then surf out.

Jamie: Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like at an early point in our business, you can make one mistake and it'll wipe your whole business out. So I think having those people on board, our CEO, Tom has been tremendous and amazing and bouncing amazing ideas. He's been there, he's done that. Great marketing. I'm great at marketing and I'm a great surfer, but I can't do this stuff without people like that. And it only makes us better. And yes, you got to trust it... Trust yourself and surround yourself with good people and stick to what you're good at.

Kekoa: I think just to touch on that exactly what CJ and Jamie said, it's about surrounding yourself with good people and people you can learn from. I work with people now that I have on my team, I go to them for advice. I know where I'm an asset to the brand and I've learned to sort of place myself in those positions so I can be the biggest asset in the brand because when I'm trying to control every piece and be here and be there where I'm not an asset, it hurts the brand... We're surfers. We've grown up handling things differently... you got to really put that away. This business that I'm building and this brand that I'm building, it's for my family... the most important thing is, just like you guys said, is surrounding myself with good people, people that I work with on a consistent basis that are so knowledgeable in the industry.

Kolohe: For me, it feels like similar to competing. You have your circle and your inner circle of trust. Hopefully they're good people like these guys said. And for me, it's also trusting your instincts. Yeah, let it rip really. Turn down the noise, don't listen, don't care about Instagram, no algorithm stuff, make stuff that's cool and go for it.

You've all got a personal following and credibility that took years to build. How do you turn that personal following into a brand without the brand simply becoming merchandise with your name attached to it?

Jamie: I think there's a lot of value that... building a following, a loyal following, I've been grinding out at YouTube for eight years now. We have 1.4 million followers and our average videos, 100 to a couple hundred thousand views were weekly. I think what I did there is I built this community of trust. I built this community of where I don't swear, we don't drink. It is a little cookie cutter clean, but we want the demographic like this. We want the grandpa, the grandma, the dad and the whole family to sit around and watch my show... I think what I learned is that anything that I'm putting in my videos is something that I believe in and it's truly on brand, then that's what I do... I try to stay on brand and my brand is my YouTube and what I do, whether it's fishing, surfing, kayak surfing, going down the. It's all on brand. So I'm in my gear already. It feels better as an owner supporting your own brand on your own social media. It doesn't feel weird. It doesn't feel like it's a brand. It's like, 'This is who I am. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

CJ: I think it's a super fair question... Kolohe, you see him, he's like, 'I'm working for this brand. I want this brand to go off, but how do I sit behind the curtain?' You're forward facing, but you're kind of sitting behind the curtain and it's a cell phone and it's like you sort of look at the sort of life or lineage and you're just like, 'All right, it's cool. I get in these doors and I use these, but then at a certain point you're like, I got to disappear because now the brand is taking on a life of its own and people recognize it for whatever they recognize it for.' And yeah, when you hit that spot, you really got to be mindful... at the end of the day, you really just are using your relationships and just going, 'Hey, you tell yourself I've earned this invite to come in their door and to have a relationship where they know you and then you let the brand do what you want to do.

Kolohe: "For me, it was good to get people who rode for me because maybe this is why I never won events or world title or anything. It was always hard for me to be in the spotlight and be like, 'Here I am and do my dance and buy my shirts.' That was really always hard for me. And that was why I always put my friends into my films and try to elevate them as much as possible, even younger surfers than me, because it was really easy for me to try to make it the best it could possibly be if it wasn't for me. So if it was for someone else, then it was. I feel like the brand, I don't really like that word, but would be the best it could be.

Kekoa: I think everyone's kind of got a different path and approach to things. It's tough because it's a slippery slope in the sense of, am I over promoting myself?... it's like you find that balancing act... I have these people that come up to me like, 'I love you. You're doing this.' And I'm kind of pulled back a little bit at this one point... I was walking around all in one mall about six months ago... this big group of kids were walking towards me and I was with my wife and they were rocking the heavyweight hoodie. They got the shorts on, they got the tees on the hands, this big group of kids. I walked by and was like, 'Yeah boys, sick gear.' And they're looking at me and they're like, 'Who the hell are you?' And I was like, 'Yes.' That was such a rewarding moment for me because it just was telling me the brand is getting its own legs.

We're at Surf Expo. There's a lot of retailers here and they're deciding what deserves space on their floors. What can athlete founded brands bring to a surf shop that some of the larger established brands may not be able to bring today

CJ: Sales normally helps. The shirts going out the door. The register ringing. That helps normally. It's true. It does. Selfer.

Jamie: I think brand ownership. I think there's no better feeling than speaking to someone that owns the brand. It's very authentic, very real. It's not like you have a bunch of sheep in your store trying to sell you something twenty four seven. You're like, oh, Jamie Brian was here last weekend. Oh, Jamie O'Brien was for six months. Oh, they're going to come back. I think that adds a lot of value to the surf shops. It makes the kids psyched on the surf shop, makes that their favorite surf shop. It drives them to continuing to go there for the rest of their lives and they'll remember moments when Kalohe and the team showed up or CJ showed up or whoever shows up. It's the people that show up. So I think that's very important.

Kekoa: I got to agree on that. I can't express how important that is, showing up to the shops, making that connection with the team on the floor or that customer that walks in. That's one of my favorite parts about owning a brand and actually being in the shop... someone will come and buy a product and they're grabbing the product. They're like, 'Dude, do you own this brand now?' I'm like, 'Yeah.' I sit there and I end up talking to that individual that's going to purchase one of my products... He's like, 'Man, the time you took a talk to me and sit there and explain the product and what your brand meant and go behind the scenes and kind of give me a people behind the curtain. I'll never forget that.' So I think that connection is what's really important.

If you were running one of the legacy surf brands today, what would you change? What do you think the established industry needs to understand about where surfing and surf culture are headed?

Kolohe: Some of the brands do this all right, but I just take care of the youth. Seems like the last couple years everyone's been focusing on that, trying to do their tours and gram events and stuff. So they deserve kudos for that. Also, keeping their finger on the pulse of fashion. Are we making clothes here? We're not making vacation wears, so let's try to do that.

CJ: There's something that popped into my head, and you guys can tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the surf industry finding out that going public is not a good idea, right? Being traded on the stock exchange. We can all agree that doesn't work for surfing, so I think it's pretty high level.

Jamie: I think a lot of the brands got a lot of shit for doing that, and I think they're trying to find a way to bounce back. And they're big enough brands that they can, but I think it hurt them, but it also opened the door for guys like us too as well. So I think it's a win-win situation for the new guys on the block and obviously watching the moves that they make to not make ourselves.

Kekoa: I think one thing that was lost for a little bit, in my opinion, was I think we grew up in a time where the support we got, the events that were put on, the activations of premiers, it was so sick. I feel like a lot of that went away and a lot of the opportunities weren't there for the younger guys that are sponsored by the shops or competing. The opportunities like we got. So I think if I could be in that position and do something a little different, it would be to just stay on that. That's something that is super important for us. We're always going to support the future generations, the and do community initiatives.

Are we entering an era where surfers, creators, smaller independent brands become the ones defining surf culture again?

CJ: I just want to say I'm super grateful. The industry has given us so much. I grew up, and these guys did too, but I really grew up in the fattest time of surfing. The retailers were doing great. The brands were like, 'Where's the summit? We don't know where the summit is, it just keeps going up.' So I'm just super grateful in the time that I grew up and everything that this industry and surfing has given me.

Jamie: I think the people that brought us up, the Quiks, the Billabongs and all the big brands,  thank you.  Without them, we couldn't be who we are at this moment in time, but we've learned enough over time that we're now selling products. So I think the door's open and it's always been there and there's plenty of room for everybody, but also I think the movement is going this direction and I like the direction.

Kekoa: I feel like there's a lot of calculated risk being taken right now. I feel like there's a ton of opportunity for these smaller grassroots brands that these guys are keeping them authentic and they're really about this. Everyone up here is really about what they do. They believe in what they're doing. Every single day they wake up, what's the next move? How are we doing this? How are we building?... a lot of these shops, the cool part about it right now is they're giving us opportunity. They took the risk on us and it was a big risk at the end of the day, like what CJ said, at the end of the day, sell through and ring that register and that's really what matters.