Sanuk Relocates to Goleta

Surf-inspired, Irvine-based sandal maker Sanuk announced Tuesday its plans to relocate to Goleta, where its parent company Deckers Outdoor Corporation is headquartered on Coromar Drive. As the Orange County Register first reported, Sanuk’s consolidation will bring some of its 42 employees to the Santa Barbara area. Others — in positions and numbers unspecified by corporate personnel — will be laid off.

“We believe this will streamline brand operations and reduce infrastructure costs,” Deckers’s senior communication manager Mary Oeffling told the Register in a Tuesday statement. “By moving the brand to the corporate headquarters, the brand will be able to leverage our back-end resources more efficiently.” The company similarly relocated running-shoe brand Hoka One One from the Bay Area to its Coromar Drive headquarters back in October, reported the Orange County Business Journal. It may do the same with San Francisco-based hiking footwear brand Ahnu.

In 2011, Deckers bought Sanuk for $120 million from its founder, Huntington Beach surfer Jeff Kelley. In three years, the sandal maker’s sales jumped from $20 to $70 million. For the third quarter of its 2016 fiscal year, however, the brand’s revenue fell 17 percent — from $20.5 million in the same period last year to $17 million. In the same period, its parent company reported a 1.4 percent revenue increase at $795.9 million.

Deckers plans to realign its six lifestyle footwear brands into “fashion lifestyle and performance lifestyle” groups, according to a Business Journal article. Sanuk, Hoka One One, and Teva would join the performance lifestyle brands.