 | | | | | | | | | | | Do you sponsor anyone?
Bruce: We do. We sponsor a young lad called Aaron Curtis and he's a 15 year old windsurfer.
Mark: We made a decision not to sponsor the sort of adult, established people. We're looking more for people who are in their teens and have kind of began to establish themselves but need some support. So it's more like up and coming youths who can't afford to really pursue the sport but have got the skills. That's the kind of people we like to sponsor.
Do you get lots of people approaching you for sponsorship?
Mark: Yeah, we get approached every week but most of them are just people looking for free kit you know [laughs]. But Aaron's very committed to his sport and he's getting increasingly good results in his various competitions and he came over as a very determined and focussed young guy so we've chosen to back him. We might take on another couple of guys but at the moment he's the only person we sponsor.
Is he Scottish?
Mark: No, he's English.
Where's he from?
Bruce: West Sussex.
Daahhn Saahhff?
Mark: [laughs] Although we're a Scottish company, we think of ourselves very much as a national and international company because most of our customers aren't in Scotland. We sell most of our products through the internet although we also get quite a lot of business through the shop. So we regularly ship all over Europe and to the 'States as well.
Do people ever come into the shop and ask for stupid, random things?
Mark: Well this shop used to be a shoe shop. A relatively old person's shoe shop and some of those people still come in here and they haven't looked at the window to see it's changed and they still come into this wetsuit shop saying 'Can I have a pair of brogues?' or whatever. One old couple even bought a pair of wetsuit shoes, even though I explained to them that they aren't the same shoes as they used to buy but they still bought a pair of wetsuit shoes each for sitting down and watching the TV at night.
Did you get any feedback from them as to how they performed?
Mark: Well they came in and bought another pair the next week!
Bruce: They were the most comfortable 'house slippers' they've ever had [laughs].
Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
Mark: I guess one of the things about the shop is that we're probably the best place in the city to buy watersports magazines. Most places only sell one or two but we've pretty much got every watersports magazine available so a lot of people pop in every month to get their mag. So we've got surfing magazines, windsurfing - you name it.|
Cheers, guys.
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