Lucky handshake leads to Gold Coast surfwear chain

By Graham Skellern

Fourteen years ago Aucklander Paul Botica travelled to the Gold Coast to surf. Today he and his North Shore-born wife Karlene are two of the leading suppliers of surfwear in Queensland.

Next Friday the Boticas open their sixth Byrning Spears store in Southport, near Surfers Paradise. With floor space of 1500 sq metres, it is the largest single-brand surfwear retailing outlet in Australia - definite proof of the dramatic growth in their business over the past five years.

The Southport store will employ 20 people, taking Byrning Spears' total staff to nearly 90. The Boticas make their own range of clothing - singlets, shirts, shorts and track suits - and now produce 10,000 garments a week.

The company is nearing annual turnover of $10 million, after Paul Botica - a former Auckland junior and schoolboy surfing champion who attended Marcellin College in Royal Oak - set up his own screenprinting business in his garage at home in Currumbin in 1988.

For 12 months he screenprinted T-shirts, mainly of surfing and music bands, and sold them at the Carrara markets during the weekends. He then he moved into a rented shed in Currumbin and his business took off. In November 1989 he was producing 300 screenprints a week; now his company is doing 20,000 a week.

Mr Botica's big break came when Allan Byrne, one of New Zealand's best-ever surfers, wandered into "his shed" one day and suggested he could use his Byrning Spears label on surfwear.

Mr Byrne, who once finished second in the Hawaiian Pipeline Masters (the highest placing by a New Zealander), has lived in Tugun on the Gold Coast for 20 years and become well-known as a board shaper.

That deal would change their lives.

"It was just a handshake agreement," said Mr Botica. "He gave me his artwork and I started producing the clothing." Mr Byrne would receive royalty payments equivalent to 5 per cent of the profit.

Later Mr Botica joined forces with Australian marketing and sales expert Rod Galt. With Mr Byrne as their frontman, Byrning Spears began expanding quickly.

Five more stores are planned within 18 months and expect to double the turnover to $20 million.

Byrning Spears did very little mainstream advertising, establishing a specialist niche market with "word of mouth" their main marketing tool.

By making their own garments and opening their "one-stop surfers shops", Byrning Spears kept prices down and undercut competitors.

One day last week Mr Botica visited a local school he was sponsoring and the teacher asked the children who had heard of Byrning Spears. All put up their hands up. A satisfied Mr Botica knew the word had spread on the Gold Coast, one of the surfing capitals of the world.

"It's unreal how it all worked out," said the 33-yearold Mr Botica. "When I first came over here all I wanted to do was surf. I would work part-time just to get some petrol money to go surfing.

"Now I'm married, have three children and my own lifestyle. It all began with a handshake. They say Australia is a lucky country."