Y’know, waves, ocean, surfboards - all that kind of stuff. Because I have a little business idea here that you might be interested in.

And here’s the huge problem it solves…

The problem

Surfers buy surf magazines. It’s a fact. Virtually every country with a coastline has at least one surf magazine - and I’m pretty sure that there are a couple places without a coastline, too.

However, the single most popular ‘complaint’ by surfers reading those mags goes something like this:

“Boo Hoo. Why do you never feature my local beach in your magazine? Or any local surfers? Not fair!” Etc, etc, etc…

I read that kind of thing almost every month. The answer is that no single surf magazine can possibly cover the thousands of beaches, or the millions of surfers that are out there. So, all you’re left with is the common denominator of featuring Hawaii, So Cal, The Gold Coast in Oz, with cameo appearances from France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and a bunch of other places.

Granted, these are great feature articles and the photography is generally mindblowing, but it does get kinda tedious once in a while.

The solution.

Blogging. Simple. Imagine a huge network of ‘micro’ surf magazines that each focus on a local beach, include interviews, pix, and news of local surfers, and feature write-ups and results of local contests.

And all written exclusively by the locals themselves.

We’d still get our fix of big blue Hawaiian beasts in the magazines, but we’d also get what we really want - and that’s the local interest stuff that no one current surf magazine can possibly offer. That includes local environmental stuff (a popular topic), local resources, local surf shops and surf clubs, and a lot more.

After all, which surfer wouldn’t want to see their pic, or read their interview in a bona fide surf magazine?

And you’d have a tough time finding a bunch of people who are more passionate about their sport than surfers.

The structure.

This one’s pretty easy. I envisage a network of blogs (or we can call them online magazines) that’s structured in much the same way as the wurk network.

So, we’d have a surfmag.com* aggregator site that features a ‘river’ of top line news and features from the rest of the network, then however many local sites we can create: tynemouth.surfmag.com, croyde.surfmag.com, bells.surfmag.com, etc, etc, etc.

Then, for each local site, there’d be a Local Editor/Producer who’d be responsible for keeping things moving at their end, for drumming up support from local surfers, and for co-ordinating all material/pix/words/news/videos from the local surf community, and turning that into decent copy.

The revenue.

I can think of two reliable sources off hand. Firstly, I’d speak to the big surf companies - the Billabongs, Quiksilvers, and RipCurls. They work on pretty big marketing budgets, and I’m sure they’d love the chance to speak to the heart of local surf communities across the world, rather than take the top level approach that the big surf mags offer.

Secondly, there are thousands of local surf shops, surfboard manufacturers, wetsuit manufacturers, hire companies, hostels, hotels, pubs, bars, etc, etc, etc, that all market to surfers. This is a great opportunity for them, too.

Lastly, there’s always a little room for some Adsense ads. Heh.

The next steps.

Ok, I’d like to talk to a bunch of surfers from around the world and get their views on this. I’m a surfer myself (here’s the break at the end of my street - no surf today, though [March 21st 2006]), and I think it’s a f*cking great idea. But then again, I’m biased.

I’d like to talk to one of the big three surf companies, to see if they’d be interested in sponsoring or backing this thing initially - to get it off the ground. C’mon, it’s a great opportunity for you guys to get a little more involved at the grass roots level.

*And I’d like to talk to whoever owns surfmag.com, to see whether they’d be interested in doing something a little more worthwhile with that domain name.

Whadderyathink? If anyone’s interested, give me a shout at info@wurk.net.