The Becker Surf store on upper Pier Avenue has been emptied and moved to a building in Manhattan Beach, to clear the way for a sweeping remodel and a more open, airy look. The Manhattan building, on the corner of Artesia and Aviation boulevards, is serving as the temporary Becker store until the remodel is finished, sometime around the holiday season.
“We’re pretty much gutting the whole thing and starting over again,” said Darin Bradley, general manager of Becker’s four brick-and-mortar stores and its online shop.
The old Pier Avenue store will be given a higher ceiling and a more customer-friendly layout, but its dimensions will not be drastically altered.
Heavy cabinetry and merchandise such as surfboards, clothing and sunglasses were emptied out of the Pier Avenue store and restocked into the Manhattan store in 24 hours, by employees working eight at a time in shifts, said John Leininger, one of the managers. The temporary store was up and running this week, after a mere one-day closure.
“Everyone’s beat-up tired,” said E.L. Huante, another manager.
The temporary store is in a tall, window-heavy building on the northwest corner of Artesia and Aviation, in a space that used to contain smartstore, which was billed as a modernized and more efficient type of convenience store.
ET Surf recently completed an expansion that doubled its two-story building on Aviation Boulevard in Hermosa Beach, annexing a former auto shop next door to create one 7,000 square-foot store.
“The expansion’s done, we’ve been stocking it, we’ve been loving it,” Manager Daniel Del Castillo said. “Just adding a whole new era in ET surf. And for the first time ever an ocean view. We get the sunset, lots of natural light – it’s even more of a happier place.”
The highlights of the shop remain the same, including wood racks and a ceiling display of vintage surfboards.
The merchandise from ET’s long board shop to the east has been moved into the new, expanded shop.
“It’s all under one roof,” Del Castillo said.
Another remodel completed about a year ago at Spyder Surf on Pacific Coast Highway opened up the floor space and raised the ceiling from 10 to 20 feet, making way for stock boards to be placed up high and wetsuits to be displayed distinctively on a wide, encircling dry-cleaning carousel.
“We went vertical,” co-owner Dennis Jarvis said.
The changes allowed Spyder to greatly expand its inventory, including quadrupling its wetsuits.
The remodel spiffed up the rest of the store as well, with new cabinets, surfaces and paint.
Inside a 550-square-foot board display room, the ceiling was pushed up to a 25-foot height. In the room stands a work station at which Jarvis, an award-winning shaper, can custom design boards for surfers, who can watch the design develop on a 55-inch wide, wall-mounted monitor.
In addition, Jarvis said a “50 percent remodel” at the Spyder shop on the Pier Plaza rearranged the interior to allow a better traffic flow. ER
