Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) International announced today the appointment of Michael Lynch as its Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer. Lynch joins ASP shortly after the organization announced Paul Speaker in the role of ASP Chief Executive Officer. Together they will work to build surfing’s new global sports league.

In his new role, Lynch will be responsible for helping the organization optimize its growth potential worldwide and specifically manage all ASP marketing, communications and sponsorship activities for professional surfing’s governing body. As 2013 is a transitional year, Lynch and other ASP executives will use this season to focus on data-gathering, analysis and preparation as they build toward the 2014 ASP World Championship Tour (WCT) launch.

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The Right Collective, a Boston-based startup founded by two former Reebok executives, is aiming to take its line of cold-water surfing gear and apparel to retailers around the Northeast in coming months.

The company launched its first products — including rash guards, long-sleeve t-shirts and hooded sweatshirts — in December at the Nor’Easter Surf Shop in Scituate.

The products, under the brand name Surf Right, aim to capture the mood of surfing in New England in the winter, say the company’s co-founders, Michael Schaeffer and Marcus Wilson.

“To put on a wet suit and surf when it’s 15 degrees outside — you must really love surfing, or be a little crazy — or both,” Wilson said. “There’s something very, very powerful about having that kind of passion.”

read more at bizjournals.com

Economic correspondent Paul Solman reports on an American-born product hit hard by globalization: the surfboard. In Southern California, U.S.-based manufacturers fear they will soon be wiped out by competing, foreign companies due to discrepancies in labor costs and duty taxes.

Watch Is Globalization Wiping Out the American Surfboard Industry? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

originally seen @ pbs.com