Lightning Bolt Looks Back to Go Forward

Jonathan Paskowitz is standing on a busy street in the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, giving a quick history lesson about the surf and skate culture that blossomed there in the ’70s and ’80s.

Directly across the street is Zephyr, the alley that lent its name to the Z-Boys, the scrappy group of surfer/skaters that revolutionized skateboarding and made being bad look so good. The beach is a block away, and on it is the newly remodeled Venice skate park, which draws a mix of locals, amateurs and legends. But the highlight of the tour is 1510 Pacific Ave., the new home of Lightning Bolt, as well as the site of its first flagship store. It is here that Paskowitz, the brand’s president, hopes to launch a new era for the brand while getting even closer to its roots.

Founded in Hawaii in 1972, Lightning Bolt rode an early wave of surf culture and became an icon, paving the way for subsequent surf-lifestyle apparel brands before fizzling out in the ’80s after being over-licensed and diluted. Paskowitz partnered with the brand’s owner, Portuguese textile group TMG, to revive the brand in 2009 as a nostalgic apparel line for men and women.

“Lightning Bolt is about surfing; it’s about the soul funk brotherhood and riding the waves and gliding on swell,” he said. That feel-good vibe was apparent in the brand’s first couple of seasons.

To get started, the brand trolled eBay and thrift stores for vintage Lightning Bolt garments to build an extensive archive. Today’s Lightning Bolt T-shirt, boardshort and walkshort silhouettes are based on modified versions of the brand’s vintage garments. Original logos are kept the same or get modernized colorways, and everything features a soft, vintage-washed feel. Paskowitz and his team, however, also produced new garments that do not reference the Lightning Bolt archive. Now, after just more than a year since its Summer 2009 debut, Lightning Bolt is both paring back its offerings and growing its reach.

Focus on core

The line—which relaunched with a wide variety of categories, including swimwear, T-shirts, boardshorts, dresses, tops and sportswear for women—will discontinue its women’s apparel program as of Spring 2011. The men’s line is also being reworked to more closely align with Lightning Bolt’s original offerings of branded staples. Despite selling in specialty retailers such as American Rag, Atrium, Fred Segal Man, Revolve and Ron Herman as well as upscale surf shops such as Mollusk and Saturdays Surf NYC, the more fashion-focused pieces didn’t sell. After four seasons, core basics proved to be the winners, driving Lightning Bolt to focus on men’s basic T-shirts, knit and woven tops, corduroy shorts, and low-tech cotton boardshorts in 2011 and to eschew the more fashion-forward jackets and chinos for men and dresses for women of previous seasons, Paskowitz said.

“Women didn’t want to buy little feminine tops or dresses from Lightning Bolt. It’s not what they knew us for,” he said. “They wanted boys’ shirts. We launched with way too much, too fast. We had to pull back,” he said. Similarly, men reacted well to the uuml;ber-nostalgic basics and significantly less to pieces that didn’t appear to time travel from the ’70s.

Going forward, Lightning Bolt’s attempts to enter the women’s market will be limited to men’s T-shirts, which will be marketed as unisex. Eventually, Paskowitz sees slowly reintroducing some women’s basics—zip-front hoodies, sweats, possibly a windbreaker.

“We have to start by doing a few things really well. I’d like to evolve back into the women’s market at some point,” he said. Recently, a fan sent him a vintage Lightning Bolt pale-blue women’s cotton crop top printed with a palm tree and the brand’s signature gold bolt. “This is what I think we could do, and that would make sense for the brand. You can look at it and know it is authentic Lightning Bolt. It’s sexy and it’s surf and it’s what people remember us for.” Until he can use it, Paskowitz is stashing the top, and other similar finds, in the Lightning Bolt archive.

A focus on menswear will allow Lightning Bolt to focus on and expand on its successes, Paskowitz said. Strong-selling bodies will be offered in more fabrications, for example.

To accommodate interest from core surf and skate shops that like the brand’s T-shirts but can’t afford the $16 to $20 wholesale prices, Lightning Bolt launched for Summer 2010 a small diffusion line of basic T-shirts in a less expensive fabrication that retail for $25. Another growth opportunity exists overseas, where TMG has been producing Lightning Bolt–branded menswear for years. The European take on the brand has been steeped in youth culture and streetwear, but specialty boutiques have begun to sniff out the American line’s vintage surf-dude vibe, and they want it, Paskowitz said. The fashion focus in the men’s line will grow in subsequent seasons—but not until pants, jackets and the other garments that marry a vintage aesthetic with a modern surf sensibility are perfected, Paskowitz said.Museum, showroom, flagship store

Finally, Lightning Bolt’s first flagship store is set to open in November. Occupying a small storefront connected to Lightning Bolt’s new Venice Beach headquarters, the store will act as a marketing and retail space for the brand. “It’s going to be like a Lightning Bolt museum and a mini showroom,” Paskowitz said. Overstock, samples, in-season goods, hardgoods and possibly even garments from the European Bolt line will share space with vintage photos of and memorabilia from the brand’s original founders, Gerry Lopez and Jack Shipley.