Shop Profile: City Surf, Cardiff, Wales

Surf/skate/snow

CitySurf

Cardiff, Wales

Contact: www.citysurfshops.co.uk

Moving into our fourth week of our Online European Shop Profile here at Source, we stop off in Wales at City Surf for a look into the legendary boardsports store.

What percentage of your sales are from online business compared to your in-store sales?
The percentage of online compared to in store sales is probably 15% online to 85% in-store.  The online side of our business is the area we are expecting to grow quite considerably in the foreseeable future.

What are the benefits of having a physical shop over simply having an online store?
We feel the benefits of having a physical store are that customer can actually make a more informed decision by actually feeling and touching the product and gaining our expertise and product knowledge before making that purchase.  By being a physical independent store you become the hub of the scene in your area.

What makes your store different and in what ways does your store excel beyond your competition?
We feel we are different to the more corporate competitors within our area because everyone involved with CitySurf; from the directors to the Saturday bitch are passionate about surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding and participate in one, two or all three of them, and get stoked on selling the kit knowing they have given the best advice for that customer to have the best time riding,

What trends do you see upcoming in surf?

Surfboards are continuing to develop from shapers like john purton who continues to come out with some sick new shapes and is constantly pushing his current shapes like the sx rx and gx, which he offers as a five fin option.
 
What kind of advice can you give other independent retailers who are trying to compete against the big box megastores?
I think the only advice you can give independents is to continue to support your scene at grass roots level; whether it be by hooking up the local shredders, sponsoring events or putting on video nights.  Also sticker the fuck out of your local city!

Which up and coming brand do you hope to stock in the future?
For next season we have taken on Rome snowboards which we hope will be a good one for us.  In skateboarding we feel Polar could be a good one alongside other British brands like Killcity, Crayon, Death and Palace which are all killing it at the moment.

What are you doing to pull people into your store?
We are doing a lot of social networking, by alerting people when new stock arrives and also when we are putting events on.

How confident are you for the coming summer? 

We feel the upcoming summer season could be a god one especially on the surfing and skateboarding side; we got a couple of events happening that we are going to be heavily involved in so really looking forward to that.