Matt Warshaw's unpublished interview with Michael Tomson was recorded in 1995, when Tomson was 41.

Joel Cooper is your partner at Gotcha. We never hear about him. What was his role early on?

Joel and I have been friends since college. We dated a pair of sisters for a while. After college I went off to surf on the IPS tour, while Joel went into business, but we always kept in touch.

No. Which is great. Every surf company, if they expect to make it, needs a non-surfer to help run it. It's absolutely necessary. All the stuff I didn't know about business, Joel knew about. Setting up an office, getting the bank stuff sorted out, getting the production in line, and actually making the whole thing run.

The company concept was mine, yes. I didn't know jack shit about production, operations or administration. I had a few things going, though. I knew something about design and I understood a little about advertising. I knew the right people. I'd saved a few thousand dollars. And above all that, I could take off in the pit at Sunset.

We rented a little house in Laguna. The garage was the warehouse, the living room was the office.

Gotcha's first trunks looked really different from everything else out there.

Quiksilver was up and running, but not huge, not yet. Mostly it was still Op those little Op cord shorts. We were going for kind of a New Wave, punk thing. The Sex Pistols were still big news. Everything else the market was solid colors, panels. We put angles into the design, sharp angles. We did that first; just took that late '70s New Wave thing and brought it to the beach. A lot of Gotcha's design ideas were inspired by music. The garment had to be functional, of course, but it also had to take into account what else you did in life; the music you listened to, for example. The clothes we were wearing didn't really reflect the way we were living. So for me that was 

and the radio station KROQ, out of LA. spontaneous, young, tongue-in-cheek, edgy stuff.

Then you guys did those plaid Bermuda shorts, those were a big hit.

The first Bermudas shipped in 1981. It changed the entire industry. For almost a year, we were the only company doing Bermudas. I'm a millionaire because of that design. Really, that was what launched our business. For awhile, it was just insane. Stores would would call in orders, not caring about size or color, just saying "We need 500 pair of whatever you can get here fastest."

Calling it Gotcha was my idea, and it's a fuckin' lame name. But, you know, it's no lamer than the Beatles. But do you know why I chose it? The real reason? This didn't occur to me until much later. But that name came about because I didn't grow up with television. In 1976, during my first trip to America, I was blown away by . . . everything! TV and billboards and multilane freeways. But TV especially. There was a time there when I would've rather watched TV than go surfing—that's how incredible it seemed to me. So I was in Santa Cruz for a surf contest, in a hotel room, watching TV, and this ad comes on, a guy is onscreen shaving, he cuts himself, and these letter light up the screen saying "Gotcha!" And I thought, What an unbelievable perversion of the language. And here it is on television. It offended me, in a way. But it also seemed so audacious, and novel, and I kind of liked it."

Where does Gotcha, and surfwear in general, fit into the larger world of fashion?

This is how the rest of the world sees America, in terms of fashion. First, jeans and denim; that whole sort of western look. Then there's beach. That's mostly a summer look. Street fashion—that's a latecomer. That's just over the past five years or so. And the fourth and final part would be the preppy look; the Kennedy look. So those are the four American fashion icons.

Street has been doing really well the last few of year. Will surf come back around?

Surfers are cool. Surfers have a kind of purpose in that they know what they want to do. The idea behind grunge, between street, that whole nihilistic, we've-been-screwed, I'm-dropping-out thing -- that has a built-in limit to how long it can hold anyone's attention. Grunge and punk, what they really are, for most kids, are just conscious efforts to dress stupid. With surfers, there's a kind of mystique that goes a deeper than that, and I think it's because, while surfers also reject a lot of the mainstream, they don't just tune out—they have a substitute, a viable alternative, a way to live and be happy. And that's attractive.

Gotcha's advertising was always different and interesting.

We had to find ground that nobody else yet lived on—which turned out to be pretty easy. We never really created any kind of advertising philosophy. It just came up, naturally, from where the company was coming from. The other guys were doing lots of surf shots. Or showing people on the beach, relaxed, smiling. Or showing their famous team rider standing next to his board. I wanted to do something with a bit more edge. My theory was more hip; more sex. And it worked! Right away, it worked. Gotcha's advertising was really alternative for the time, and it changing things. Everything since then has come from the place we were at years ago—it should be different, it should have an edge. We did black and white before anybody else. We did the rip-and-paste thing. We did that "If You Don't Surf, Don't Start" campaign, which ruffled a few feathers. Not everything worked. We made mistakes. But most of the ads, like most of the clothes, came out the way we wanted.

One year later, Matt Warshaw talked with Michael Tomson again, about professional surfing, and the amount of money pros were earning. Quotes from this interview were published in "Green on Blue: Kelly Slater’s Million Dollar Deal, and Other Thoughts on Surfing for Hire," which ran in the Fall 1996 issue of Surfer's Journal.

Why are pro surfers' salaries such a big secret?

Because most of the surf companies aren't publicaly traded, and as such don't have to disclose those kinds of things. That and, it isn't a big media event, what people get paid, the way it is in other sports it is. The salary caps in basketball is a huge deal. It's an intregal part of building your team. Everybody has to know what everybody else is making in that situation, that's how the whole system works.

Is it unseemly, to you think, to even bring up money?

No. Or it shouldn't be, anyway. People get rewarded for excellence, and who's to say that this kind of thing should be paid this much, and that kind of thing paid that much. It's a free country and it's a free market, and if someone's willing to pay for the service, why not take it? Take it and be proud of it.

When we talked a couple days ago you said you'd be willing to tell me how much your guys [at Gotcha] are making.

Fire away. I'll tell you whatever you want to know.

Okay, so let me back up a little. None of these numbers are completely, perfectly precise, okay? Salaries are never a fixed thing. Photo incentives, contest incentives, contract changes, everything goes up and down, it's always moving. But with Potter, yeah, his salary has just been reduced. I think he makes $60,000 from us, and another $30,000 from our Australian licensee, plus incentives for photos and videos and things.

How does that compare to his best year, earning-wise? [Note: Potter at this point was six years past his world title, and had just retired from competitive surfing]

I think Rob's at $185,000 this year. Between 185 and 200. Last year it was 150.

So, in your mind, when you're thinking about paying somebody $200,000, how does that translate in terms of the companies bottom line? How do you know you're getting your money's worth?

You never really know. It's a game. Does having Rob Machado on the Gotcha team earn the company $200,000 at the end of the year? Who knows? My theory is that 50% of all advertising and promotions are a waste of money, but nobody really knows which 50%.

But you'd never consider not having a surf team.

Not a chance. For anybody positioning themselves in the so-called hardcore surf market, having a kick ass team is one of the most important things

The Gotcha team, apart from Rob and Chris Ward, is getting older . . .

(Pause and a sigh) This is problem. The aging guys, and what to do with them when they're done.

After all those years, I hear Cheyne Horan is maybe no longer with the company, or no longer getting a salary? Something like that.

No, no, that's okay. Look, Cheyne got to a point where he was chasing something with his career that was going to impossible to obtain. And he was looking to us to support him in that chase, to an extent that I didn't think we could really afford. Plus his financial situation was just a mess which, you know, wasn't really my problem. Cheyne didn't spent his money wisely, back when he was making a lot. But somehow, invariably, with Cheyne, it ends up being my fault, you know?

Honestly, I don't know right now if Cheyne is getting an official salary from Gotcha. If he is, its very small.

He was in right at the beginning. Cheyne was your first team rider.

There was a time when I was paying Cheyne myself, out of my own pocket. Yeah, I mean, these are really hard decisions. In other professional sports, there's usually enough money left in the pot at the end of your career that you can live comfortably from then on. That's the case in surfing. The money isn't big enough in most cases, and when it is big enough, a lot of guys, most guys, don't manage it properly. So they end up hanging on longer than they should. And, for us, for the company, that becomes really difficult. There's a lot of emotion involved, a lot of history, a lot of sentiment. You're talking about somebody you've been with—and not just in terms of a paycheck, but surfing with them, living with them, all of that—for 10 or 15 year. So those are really, really tough decisions.

How do think Potts is going to do, as far as moving on to the next stage?

 problem with Potts. There's someone who really blew a pile of money. Way more than Cheyne. I mean, a 

 pile. On Peter Mansted [Potter's manager], on his entourage, on his own indulgences. And what's gonna end up happening is he'll wake up one morning as say, "Shit, I've got nothing left." At the moment, the guy still surfs well, but the kids are surfing better. And wait and see. What's gonna happen is, he'll come to us and say, "What have you done for me lately?" And we'll have to something like, "Look, we've gone as far as we can go. This is where you are in your career, and we've just signed Chris Ward, so . . . . "

Michael Tomson (1995)

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