Private Equity Gutted Surf Brands — Is Fishing Next?

Living in Southern California, I’ve watched passion-driven surf brands like Quiksilver, Volcom, Billabong, Hurley, and RVCA collapse under the weight of private equity deals, complicated licensing agreements, and Chapter 11 filings. Less and less of their product can be found in core surf stores. Instead, it’s often now sold at Costco, JC Penny’s, and off-price channels that have nothing to do with surfing.

The powerhouse surf brands I grew up on are losing relevancy at a striking rate. While there are several reasons for that, Private Equity has certainly played a role in their current stage of demise. The recent bankruptcy of Liberated Brands, the discreet parent company formerly behind many of the most well-known surf brands, is just the latest chapter in an all too familiar story. Customer service lines at these brands are far too often silent, blown-out seam taping on wetsuits go unrepaired, and overall product quality has fallen. While new companies have stepped in to pick up the licenses for these brands, much of the damage is already done.

What began as aspirations for growth spiraled into a cycle of overexpansion, debt loads, declining purpose, and a lack of authenticity. The surf industry that once defined youth and counterculture became the paper pushers they initially sprung up to rebel against.

Thankfully, there is a new wave of surf brands. Not coincidentally, many are founder, independently, or family led. While that should give anyone who loves surfing hope, the lessons for the fishing industry are clear—and hit close to home.

Private Equity Comes Knocking on the Transom Door

The COVID-driven outdoor boom didn’t just bring new anglers—it brought with it an influx of cash. Private Equity-backed companies, some you’ve heard of and others you haven’t, began collecting brands in the fishing space. Private equity takes many forms, but in its simplest iteration it is investment capital aimed at buying, reshaping, and flipping companies for profit. Many of your favorite fishing brands are now part of this structure, awaiting their future.

The Good

Private equity, like most things, can be good. It can be a lifeline for business owners, spark innovation, and provide support to small brands that can feel lost in an increasingly consolidated retail environment.

Private Equity firms can also unlock potential scale. Private Equity helped propel YETI from a small fishing cooler company into a billion dollar publicly traded giant. What was a niche brand, launched as part bear-proof cooler and part added mini tower to your flat’s skiff, is now a household name.

Finally, with the baby boomer generation aging into retirement, Private Equity can also give folks a clear exit plan. It is often the Private Equity firms willing to offer the highest bid, or at least the grandest story for what “one day could be.” As a full-throated capitalist, it’s hard to fault either the Private Equity firms or the sellers for exercising the free market muscle that has served our country so well.

The Bad

While YETI’s success story shines, the reality is that the brand landscape is littered with companies that have fallen victim to Private Equity’s financial manipulation. Private Equity does not always build, it also extracts, and usually that’s what it does best. It strips away identity, leverages companies with debt, and prioritizes short-term profits over long-term customer benefit. In contrast, independently run businesses often demonstrate greater longevity, arguably because their focus is on the customer. A Harvard Business School study corroborates this, showing higher post-acquisition bankruptcy rates for Private Equity-backed firms, particularly during economic downturns.

One strategy some Private Equity firms employ is the creation of holding companies, layering operations within a complex web of licenses and Intellectual Property holding entities. In some of these arrangements the brand itself has little to no say over what is produced, ensuring a decline in product quality. More notably, this model means that the company can more easily file bankruptcy, sticking their vendors and debt holders with the bill, while protecting their own IP.

The Brand Journey In Three Phases

• Phase 1: The Origin Story – Passion-fueled brands are built from sweat equity, fish stories, and wild ideas. Most great companies start here. Some manage to stay here.
• Phase 2: Private Equity – Many brands opt for this for the reasons explained above. The fishing industry is currently deep into this cycle, nearing the date when the holding companies start to exit their positions.
• Phase 3: Exit the Off Ramp or Crash – Some will leave the private equity phase to become part of larger businesses or venture out on their own as standalone publicly traded companies. However, many will fail. The question facing the fishing industry today is, what is the fate of our brands?

What We Can Learn from Surf

First and foremost, the next generation of the surf industry is already deep into a rebuilding phase. There’s a new wave of brands – a combination of startups and smaller heritage ones – that young consumers and independent retailers are excited about. But that resurgence came at a cost: a painful era of lost jobs, unpaid debts, and shuttered businesses. In the fishing industry, our goal should be brand newness without the level of bloodletting surf had to go through.

For brands considering the Private Equity route, there’s something to be learned from the failures of the past. First, build cultural protection into the transaction itself. If you care about supporting trade organizations, offering strong employee benefits, manufacturing in a specific region, or one of many priorities that may be important to you—codify that. Make those commitments binding. Don’t assume they’ll survive post-deal on goodwill alone.

Second, go into the experience wide-eyed. Private equity can be a high-risk strategy. Private Equity firms are not incentivized to fully spell out those risks, and if their bet on your business goes awry, they’ll turn to one of their many other investments while your employees and others are left holding the bag. It’s not uncommon for Private Equity to ask sellers to buy back into the new company. You, or at least your former business, are now making a bet on that entity, its strategy, on its values, and on the conditions of the market. Be clear about what you’re gambling with, especially when large debt loads meet a high interest rate environment.

Why It Matters

Because in the fishing industry, when profit eclipse’s purpose, something’s lost. The purpose of this article isn’t to call out brands, it’s to make folks in the fishing industry aware of what may be ahead.

We need strong brands. We need a strong fishing industry. We need companies willing to invest not just in their products and people but back into the industry that fights against over regulation, and fights for open and responsible fishing access. The fishing industry in its current form is special. It’s worth protecting. We need companies, Private Equity-backed or otherwise, willing to invest in future anglers and put aside their differences to jointly fight for fishing-friendly policies.

In a few years, AFTCO will celebrate 70 years of business. My family has had the privilege to steward it for more than 50 of those years. I care about the recreational fishing industry, it’s all I know, and I know there’s thousands of other people in our industry like me. While I don’t have the answers to what’s ahead for our industry, I do know it starts with a conversation—and a choice. It’s about supporting independent brands, local retailers, and media that reflect the heart of our community.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the July 2025 edition of Fishing Tackle Retailer.