Creatures of Leisure and
Taj make nice 0
Yallingup, Western Australia — Western Australian based surf accessory company Creatures of Leisure, are pleased to announce a resolution of the recently reported dispute between Taj’s management company, and themselves. Taj will continue to ride for Creatures of Leisure until at least 2010 which marks the expiry date of the most recent 4 year agreement between the two parties.
Creatures of Leisure has sponsored Taj for the past 16 years which encompasses his entire professional career, partnering with him since he was 14. In May 2009 Taj’s management company, TB Endorsements, issued a statement that it would no longer perform its sponsorship obligations for the final 10 month period of the existing sponsorship agreement with Creatures of Leisure.
“It appears that there was pressure being brought to bear on Taj and his management by a third party”, a Creatures spokesperson stated. “We would have been willing to work with Taj’s management if possible to facilitate an early release, however there were no surfers of a similar caliber available, the Creatures International catalogue had already been distributed and there were tens of thousands of Taj’s signature grips in stock, in production and on the water to over 20 distributors around the world – it was simply not commercially possible to release Taj from his contractual obligations at such short notice.”
“The decision to hold Taj’s management company to the contract, which is now legally binding, was necessary for reasons we believe they were unaware of.” “It was unfortunate the way in which the issue was initially reported in the media, suggesting that Creatures was suing Taj directly for not having a logo or similar on his board – that was totally incorrect.”