Business Q&A: Maritime Surf

Mike Flammer, co-owner of Maritime Surf for the last four years, sat down with Patch to discuss the ins and outs of catering to Long Beach’s devout wave seekers of all skill levels.

How long have you been surfing?

About 17 years, so since I was pretty young. I was around 11 or 12 years old. I tried getting in the water as much as I could. It gets addicting after a while.

Is there any advice you can give to people that are thinking about getting into surfing for the first time?

Best advice is to really get the right equipment to start off with and that takes talking to people. We have a lot of boards for beginners here and we're really up front about what’s going to work best for people.

A lot of people want to get short boards because that’s what you see in the contests and magazines. If you get something that’s more appropriate for a beginner then you get better faster and it’s better in the long run.

What makes Maritime Surf unique to some of the other surf shops in Long Beach?

Probably the biggest thing that we do here, that a lot of other shops have kind of turned away from, is that all of the boards we carry are handmade, hand-shaped surf boards made in the US. We don’t do any imports. You go into 99 percent of stores, and they’re going to have some type of imports on the rack; whether it’s from China or Thailand, just cheaply made surfboards. So we focus on quality because it’s great to see somebody get their fist surfboard, but it’s better to sell them their second or fourth surfboard. They know if they get boards that are good, high quality surfboards, they’re going to get what they want.

What makes Long Beach appealing for your type of business?

I’ve lived in Long Beach my whole life, worked in town in different surf shops over the years, and being you’re at the beach for our type of business; [selling] custom, hand-shaped surf boards, wet suits and that kind of stuff, you have to kind of be right at the beach. It’s where you want to be when the surf is coming in, and it’s just home. We know the lay of the land better being down here.

You get to know the customers more, and because were more hard goods, or like surf-specific goods-driven, that really lets you focus on the surfing end of things, because while the clothing’s a nice amount of your business, it’s something that’s not as unique to surf shops as they used to be. So the surf board is what we really focus on.

What are things you are looking forward to this summer without Quicksilver Pro at the beach this year?

Well, that was a big disappointment I think for everybody, everybody that has a business especially in Long Beach, but it also got a lot of people that didn’t surf or that wanted to surf for a long time but never tried to, you know, it got it going. It's a benefit for business but it makes it harder when you’re in the water.

We had guys that hadn’t surfed in 30 years coming in here asking about boards and what they need to get back in the water. And for people that moved to Long Beach for the ocean, that just never taken the jump and bought a board, it was enough of a push for them to say, “Ok I’m getting a board, I’m getting a wet suit and I’m going to learn how to surf.” That would be the one thing I would look forward to, is any kind of residual benefits from the contest spilling over into this year.