Come along with five superstar reps for a behind-the-scenes look at what a typical day on the road looks like.

Reps are the lifeblood of our industry. In fact, in many places of the country a company is only as good as its rep. It ain’t easy, either. A rep’s day can be a long one, full of countless highway miles, number crunching, and looking for new business.

But what’s it really like?

Surf Expo tagged along with five superstar reps as they went about their average day back in late October: O’Neill’s Lance Crouch (Florida), Billabong’s John Gilli (Northeast), Quiksilver’s Eric Brown (Midwest), RVCA’s Paul Kane (Mid-Atlantic), and Santiki’s Ginny Popper (East Coast).



John Gilli (6:30 a.m.): Up to help get my three kids (all girls) ready for the day. My oldest is 6 and we have twins that are 3. Leave the house to start my day; I always have to leave the house to get the day going, at 6: 51 am I am in the car listening to sports radio on my way to Dunkin Donuts. Get my coffee and some bagels for me and my girls. It is 46 degrees out but is supposed to warm up, should be a nice day on the road.
 

Eric Brown (6:30 a.m.): Today started off bright and early. Grabbed a little cereal and juice with my partner in crime my nearly two-year-old daughter Juliana. She’s great motivation to get rolling early, hustle and take care of my accounts the best I can.
 

Paul Kane (6:30 a.m.): I wake up 6:30, skate Sara the dog, make a pot of Starbucks and check the Crackberry. I make my checklist for the day, and confirm my appointments. (I try to show the line at least three times a day.) I roll into the office a few hours later. Meanwhile, my office assistant Jenny Yorgey makes some calls with help from Sara the dog.
 

Lance Crouch (6:45 a.m.): Luckily we had some surf this morning. After a flat Fall, I was ready to get out a catch a few waves before I started visiting shops.
 

Ginny (6:45 a.m.): My path to becoming a sales rep included 18 years of department store buying experience and several years as director of import replenishment for Staples, Inc. Those experiences are a great asset to me in the sales rep position in understanding buyers’ issues including open-to-buy, timing and sales analysis. They also taught me how to create and maintain a database that tracks many aspects of our business by customer, trade show and season, including sales, shipments, commissions due and commissions received. This is very useful in managing our business. Six years ago, my husband, Elliot, and I decided to relocate from New England to South Carolina. This was strictly a life-style and weather-related decision! I joined his sales repping business as we expanded our product lines and territory. Together we represent several swimwear vendors and Santiki Trading Co. Elliot handles the swimwear and I focus on Santiki. Our territory covers the entire east coast from Maine to Georgia, plus Alabama, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky!

John Gilli (7:10 a.m.): Turn on the laptop, the laptop is not as important as it once was because I am constantly plugged in due to the I-phone. There are typically ten to 20 e-mails from the night before that I want to get back to (the three hour time difference with CA makes for a long day) even if I work until 6, 7 or 8 there are always more e-mails that come throughout the night.

Ginny (7:30 a.m.): Although most of our business is driven by the regional and national trade shows, we are constantly pursuing new customers. In the past three weeks we have traveled over 3,000 miles in our minivan as we covered trade shows in Ocean City, MD and Boston, MA and worked with individual customers in Alabama and Tennessee. Next week we will work with additional customers in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York City as we navigate our way to another trade show in Atlantic City, NJ and add another 1000 miles to the odometer!

John Gilli (8:00 a.m.): Some of the e-mails were about summer projections or trying to find out how much spring paper is still out there to get. No real fire drill to deal with, so it was time for my shower. Help clean up breakfast and bring my oldest to the bus stop which is conveniently located at the top of the driveway. At 8:00 the bus comes and I hit the road. The odometer reads 102,592 and I am guessing I will do about 200 miles today.

Eric Brown (8:15 a.m.): I hit the office around 8:15am and clocked in a couple of hours knocking out emails, setting appointments, submitting promo and packing event promo boxes, checked in on a couple key accounts and their latest selling reports. Spent a few on the phone with Quik and Roxy East Coast VP Rick Banta. While reviewing appointments for the next couple weeks and planning for a trip through the Midwest. Rick also treated me to some great stories about Steve Fisher… which I’ll save for the Rosen in couple months.
 

John Gilli (8:15 a.m.): I get to my office about 8: 15 and pack some Pop, run some open order reports, open to sells and the all important comparison reports. I learned a long time ago to be over prepared, most stuff will never come up, but if it does I want to know what’s up on the spot. Each account I plan on seeing is down compared to last year in some category or division, they are my accounts, I work for them, so sometimes it is hard to bring up they are down, especially when most of my guys are real salty east coast abrupt people (like myself) that if they didn’t buy something there was a really good reason why they didn’t buy it, at least that is what they think and say. I also have to follow up with my sub reps to make sure we are all on the same page. Who still owes paper, what are we doing the next two weeks.

Lance Crouch (8:30 a.m.): Breakfast with Mike Mann, owner of The Longboard House. He's always good for a few stories and some bad jokes.
 

Ginny (9:00 a.m.): I am at regional trade show in the northeast. Elliot and I share a 25’ x 10’ booth at the regional trade show; signs throughout the booth show all the lines we represent.
 

John Gilli (9:15 a.m.): Time spent in the car I am listening to Howard Stern or Boston Sports radio, I would be screwed without either one of them never mind both. I also spend most of the time on my mobile phone, I used to call it a cell phone but it truly is mobile. I talk to Brother B, my counterpart in the mid Atlantic, Andy Webb the Element rep in Florida, Glen Garland the Rockies rep for Bong and Ron Gould the LA rep also of Bong and Element before I get to Warm winds my first stop. We are comparing notes on what is selling out there and trying to figure out what we can do better to do more business. We talk Sports, family and fun.

Ginny (9:30 a.m.): Photo #2 – Part of the Santiki set-up includes a constantly changing slide show of many of the various color groupings possible within the Santiki line. Santiki retail sales are best when presented in color stories and this provides examples to the buyers on how to pull it together.
 

John Gilli (9:30 a.m.): Traffic can be brutal in my chunk of dirt, so something that should take an hour can sometimes take three. I leave my office at 9:00 and get to warm winds at 11:00, after stopping for gas and then looking for a place to pee. The Burger King I stopped at had an out of order bathroom that I did not believe, so when I went in a locked the door I wasn’t totally surprised that the manger was banging on the door and yelling at me. Luckily I had not done my business but the scene it caused made me forget to take a picture of the sign on the door which would have made this story way more fun.

Eric Brown (10:00 a.m.): Franz Lyons, an Embassy Boardshop team rider and employee and full on local scenster, stopped by my office for an unexpected promo poach mission…
 

John Gilli (10:00 a.m.): I end up going the bathroom about a half hour later than I was hoping to go at a Holiday Inn, all hotels have strangers in them, the daytime people don’t know who checked in the night before and 99% of the time there is a bathroom near the front desk that usually doesn’t require a key to get in (unless you are in NY especially Manhattan (but in NY all bets are off anyway). Hotel bathrooms are typically much cleaner than the fast food options we have, I am not George Costanza from Seinfeld, but I am just stating the facts.
 

Lance Crouch (10:30 a.m.): Stopped by to see Chris Warren at The Goods. He was super stoked with our 2010 Hyperfreak boardshorts.
 

Ginny (11:00 a.m.): A new account, Rosemary from Resort Services, considers a strong reorder style dress called “Lillian”. The body style is also available in a top named “Estelle”.
 

John Gilli (11:00 a.m.): I get to Warm Winds at 11:00 a.m. It's a great shop, husband and wife team. We talk about business and some future plans, measure some fixtures for images and discuss a summer appointment and that they may need some more goods for Holiday. When we booked Holiday in June, it had rained 25 out of 30 days so they were not really ready to commit to Holiday, I don’t blame them, it is easy for me to say it will be Ok by Holiday but I know my Crystal Ball is not always right and it is not my money they are spending. June was brutal, July was good and August was all time. They were bummed that Surf Expo was in August, it is the busiest time of year for them and all of our specialty shops, the weekend of surf expo turned out to be the best weekend of business all year so they were glad they didn’t go to the show, they wish the summer show was in November and then a Fall show in March. We took some pictures talked about the good old days and now it is 12:30 and 66 degrees.
 

Eric Brown (11:30 a.m.): Around 11:30 I headed up to Lewis Center, Ohio to see the guys and girls at Aspen Ski & Board. I wanted to hit them up with some promo t’s, some POP and give them a pop-quiz on the many features of Quik and Roxy outerwear. Brian and Kevin learned about hand panties and how they keep snow out of your gloves… Gil Harris runs a solid operation.
 

Lance Crouch (12:00 noon): Went by Ron Jons to set up a new wetsuit display. I never knew that it was so hard to get a wetsuit on a mannequin!
 

Eric Brown (12:30 p.m.): I got to Embassy Boardshop about 12:30 and helped them merchandise some new Quik Holiday Threadline product. Joe Chorlton was super hung over, so I heckled him and messed up all the t-shirts so he had to refold them. Sometimes the best relationships are built through heckling your best accounts. Eric Barkow and his staff have had a quarter super glued to the sidewalk in front of the shop for 7 months now and hundreds have injured a toe or two… hilarious.
 

John Gilli (12:30 p.m.): The drive to Newport is cool. It can take over an hour at the height of the season but today it only takes a half hour. I have to stop and get gas, $65.00 later and then a toll to get over the bridge (which I don’t know the cost because I have an easy pass and don’t pay attention until tax time) I reach Sid the package at Water Brothers. The man and the store are all time. Water Bros Surf skate and Rock and Roll say it all. He greats me with a smile and was stoked about the potential article. He thinks he wants some Element Flannels and heavy weight fleece but we should follow up next week. Cash is tight and trying to be cautious. After paying my respects I leave the shop at 1:40, back in my car one of my bigger accounts didn’t pick up an order from Bong, I have two messages from Bong because it is the cancel date on the order, I call and text the buyer and go to my next stop, Island Elemental.
 

Ginny (12:45 p.m.): Another new account, Janice from Adirondack Cotton Co makes the trip to the show specifically to see Santiki! Here she considers a new Santiki style, the “Gia” cover.
 

Eric Brown (1:00 a.m.): Shortly after 1pm, I gassed up the rig and headed towards Indiana. I had about 5 hour drive ahead of me with only two accounts in between. I’m one for back roads, 9 times out of 10 you’re gonna get their faster without construction. But today was an exception, lots of rain and big semi’s full of corn ballin me up all day.
 

Ginny (1:00 p.m.): Santiki does well with numerous “Outfitter” accounts throughout the country. Here, Denise & Brad from Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters checks out the various colors in the “Estelle” top.
 

Lance Crouch (1:30 p.m.): Visited Roy Scafidi, owner of Ocean Sports World. He's applying to be a new O'Neill dealer and I was helping him fill out his paperwork.
 

Paul Kane (1:45 p.m.): Me and Tom Brown (on right) of 17th Street check out the 17th Street wagon before I run through my checklist at his store: check sell through, restock, organize, merchandise, make sure the RVCA racks are looking good, spread love.
 

John Gilli (2:00 p.m.): There is road work going on so the five minute drive takes 15 minutes. In these 15 minutes I get a call that my wife is feeling like shit and one of the twins is sick. It is not going to be a good night at my house. I get into Island Elementul about 2:00 p.m.. Business has been Okay but all they are selling is wetsuits and surf boards. Great news but low margins, at least on the surf boards. They want to sell more clothing, and I want to sell it to them but their big apparel sales don’t start until June. Symon, the owner and I run some reports to see where we may have some opportunities to grow. We figured out a few things and he wants to run them past his business partner, Exum.
 

Ginny (2:00 p.m.): Past retail sales information is reviewed here with Nancy from Retail Therapy, DBA “Frugal Fannies”. We also reviewed her initial order and added several styles based on strong bookings.
 

Eric Brown (3:00 p.m.): I got to Outpost Sports in Mishawaka, Indiana only to find Volcom beanies on my Roxy Outerwear display. What do to? Well, in one full straight-arm sweep, I knocked em on the floor and redid the display. If you’re wondering, most of us reps are good friends here in the Midwest, so I picked them off the floor… might of dropped one or two on my way to the counter…
 

Lance Crouch (3:00 p.m.): The rest of my day was spent going over e-mails, doing a little order entry, and calling accounts.
 

Paul Kane (3:30 p.m.): Spreading more love at WRV with Tommy Houlahan and Neil Nacchio. I work with a great group of people in all the stores I sell to, and I’m always having fun and pulling shenanigans!
 

Ginny (3:30 p.m.): Diane & Carrie from Diane’s Beachwear are thrilled with the sales results and their new selections. Here we review their new 2010 initial order.
 

John Gilli (3:30 p.m.): We talk about a summer appointment and 80’s alternative music (the Smith’s, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunneymen and U2) we are old, his office has the music we like, the store is playing newer stuff. We take some pictures, give each other shit and then I have to get home, it is 3:30 and I have about an hour and a half drive, I was going to check out Great Eastern Surf but felt I should do the right thing and help out my wife. Last year I did about 100 overnights, between sales meetings, tradeshows and hitting the road to show the lines 4 times a year., when I am around I want to help. I grab a slice of pizza at 3: 45 and eat it in my car.

Eric Brown (3:30 p.m.): However, I made it up to Outpost Sports by helping out in the back of the shop, tuned some boards while waiting to sit down and work the line.
 

Ginny (3:45 p.m.): Ah, the “Destiny” dress! Rosemary from Resort Services ponders which color she will buy, they’re all good!
 

John Gilli (4:30 p.m.): While driving home I talk to my office about minor fires, people closing, bouncing product, still not sending in orders, follow up on the follow ups and is anyone looking for me. Both Andy and Chrystal, who work for me, they are both on the road this week and I am trying to coordinate what we have to achieve with each account.

Ginny (5:00 p.m.): The show is over; time to pack it all up! Everything in our 25’ booth goes into our minivan, except the table and chairs.
 

John Gilli (5:00 p.m.): I finalize our Summer travel schedule after talking to Paul Danchak from Volcom and Jeff Kelley from Fox.

Eric Brown (5:30 p.m.): When I’m five hours from home, I really like to get as much done. Outpost just opened a new location on Notre Dame’s campus in South Bend, Indiana. They had some killer pumpkins so I discretely smuggled them into my truck… since my dog ate three of them and sent me back to the pumpkin patch. Sue and JV Peacock have an amazing operation with two year round retail stores, and three beachfront seasonal stores on Lake Michigan.
 

John Gilli (5:30 p.m.): I get home at 5:30 and the odometer reads 102765, so 173 miles for the day. Time for Mr. Dad and check the e-mails

Eric Brown (6:00 p.m.): After hanging out with the Outpost crew for a little bit across the street at some beer joint, I headed towards a small lake town called Winona Lake. Had dinner with a new account. Enjoyed some killer sushi at Noa Noa with the Trailhouse guys. Believe it, in fact we can enjoy some amazing sushi in the Midwest… the ocean is only a couple hours away by plane as you all know.

Ginny (6:30 p.m.): All packed up and ready to head to the next sales opportunity!
 

Eric Brown (6:45 p.m.): And that brings me to my thought that day. What drives the Midwest scene? Skateboarding of course during the warm months. Snowboarding in the cold months. Wakeboarding when the water warms up. But surfing? Sure there is stand-up and wake surfing. But the Midwest is a very diverse culture, with the lakes; the major metro areas like Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis… but really all you gotta do is get a ticket and go. We’re a couple hours from the rest of the world.