The Boneyard

The Boneyard Surf Shop is a beloved clothing and board store on the island.  I would visit the store everyday in my youth, astonished by all the goods packed away in every nook and cranny.  The high-beamed ceilings opened up more space for skateboard decks and trendy sweatshirts resting overhead.  Surfboards hung from the walls and an old library ladder with wheels clung to the back wall allowing you to reach the items you really wanted.  Discovering brands and their newest skateboards, surfboards and shoes became a habit. I wanted to work there for as long as I could remember. I was hired on my fourteenth birthday.  My work experience progressed from raking leaves in front of the store, sweeping the floors, and then eventually calling company representatives from Patagonia, Oakley, and Vans. My goal was to find goods in the growth stage of the product life cycle.

The product life cycle is the series of stages a product goes through in the marketplace. If a product makes it through all stages, it will have experienced an introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. During the introductory period, sales and profit are slow as it may take time to penetrate the market. Our Boneyard hats went through an introductory stage although they seemed to sell themselves with enough time.  The hats reached the growth stage very fast in relation to our shirts and sweatshirts. I believe the hats matured quickly due to the popularity of the t-shirts. Customers came in for the shirt and then spotted the hat with its’ signature black band with the logo on it. It was priced right and began to fly out of the store all summer. During summer season, more often than not, customers enter the store saying, “we’re just picking out our annual Boneyard shirt.”  As for the hat cycle, it definitely declined in sales as the summer season wound down.

Brand loyalty is a large portion of the sales of our store merchandise and gaining recognition with the public. The brand logo was drawn by the store owner’s son and placed on the front and back of t-shirts. This shirt has become a classic icon for the store. Originally black and white shirts, the store has progressed over its’ 13 years providing customers with an array of colors and sizes as well as other products like sweatshirts, rash guards, hats, coffee mugs and more.  The more creative the Boneyard got with putting the logo on products, the more the customers wanted. Store display was also important for product turnover. As seasons changed, so did the demand for certain goods. The window display was our front line for catching the eyes of customers. Products like GoPro’s, Waboba water balls, and stylish Rip Curl bathing suits propped in the window worked to reel the summer herds into the store.

The Boneyard has done a great job in branding their business. Almost all of their well known goods are in the maturity stage of the product life cycle, backed with a large community of loyal customers. I myself no longer work at the surf shop but will continue to wear my Boneyard shirt around for years to come.