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Clyde Aikau said he is upset about Quiksilver’s decision to terminate its sponsorship of the big-wave contest known as “The Eddie,” but he vows that the event will go on if the minimum 30-foot waves arrive.
“There will be an Eddie this year if there’s waves,” he told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Monday. “I’m going to repeat myself: There will be an Eddie this year.”
Aikau said there were two main sticking points among several others in negotiations among Quiksilver, the Aikau family and Red Bull, which handles the media portion of the annual event, which runs only when consistent, 30-foot, ridable waves hit Waimea Bay. It has been held only nine times since its creation in 1984, with the last one in February 2016.
“Quiksilver insisted on control of the Eddie for five years on terms that the family could not agree upon,” said Aikau, brother of big-wave surfer and lifeguard Eddie Aikau, who the contest is named after. “It was an attitude of take it or leave it. It got so nasty that the family felt that we were being squeezed like a rat.”
“They (Quiksilver through Red Bull) never chose to come back and make a deal. I’m the kind of person who will keep on working on something until it can be worked out and at the end of the day have no regrets. We’ve been negotiating over the last six to eight months.”
The two biggest obstacles that the Aikau family could not agree on have to do with the trademark of the petroglyph logo used in marketing and what Aikau termed Quiksilver’s demands to increase merchandising and other marketing at the event.
“Quiksilver wanted control of that trademark,” Aikau said. “And Quiksilver also wanted all rights related to the Aikau family’s intellectual property. When I read that in the (proposed) contract, I went nuts. I told my lawyer, ‘You gotta clean this thing up.’”
Clyde Aikau said he wanted to compromise and asked Quiksilver — that if it makes any money on the selling of goods at Waimea Bay on the day of the event — to donate a small percentage of the profits after expenses to the Eddie Aikau Foundation, but Quiksilver declined.
Quiksilver also wanted to sell alcohol at the next Eddie, but the Aikau family was completely against it, according to Aikau.
Glen Moncata of Quiksilver, who has helped run the contest since it began, said Monday he feels bad that an agreement could not be reached. When asked to respond to Aikau’s assertions about the sticking points, he said that he hadn’t seen the contract.
“The attorneys were going back and forth on it,” Moncata said. “We can’t prepare to do a proper contest with no agreement signed. The opening ceremony is 40 days away. It’s quite a production. We’re basically building a minicity in Waimea. By this time every year (in the past), we’ve been meeting to set up the food, the scaffolding, meeting with the mayor’s group, the transportation and bus guys, trying to get everything in order. We usually have the list of competitors out by Oct. 1. None of that has been done yet. It’s too late to do it now.
“It saddens me because I’ve been with it from the beginning. People everywhere are watching and it’s being talked about. The people of Hawaii are proud of it.”
Aikau’s assertions that Quiksilver is demanding too much was news to Moncata.
“We’ve never sold alcohol at any Quiksilver event … never had a beer sponsor,” he said. “As far as the commercial side of things, we make product for the event, and it sells well in Hawaii. We give the Aikaus a royalty on that. I hope it’s not that (the main sticking point in Clyde Aikau’s mind).”
The holding period of “The Eddie” runs each year from December through February. Aikau will look for new sponsors, and said it’s possible Red Bull could take on more of a role.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Clyde Aikau asked Quiksilver for future money made on the event’s petroglyph trademark to go to the Eddie Aikau Foundation.