Dive Brief:

• UPDATE: Quiksilver Inc. filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, after failing to turn the company around in the last two years. The company plans to transfer control of the business to its senior lenders. 

• The surfwear and gear brand founded in 1969 in southern California has had a difficult year, with earnings and sales tanking to the point that it was warned that it could be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The retailer saw a 13% sales decrease last year, and a net loss of $309.4 million.

• UPDATE: In the bankruptcy filing, CFO Andrew Bruenjes said that the company suffered from "a fragmented enterprise with regional brand inconsistencies" and a organization that was too spread out.  

Dive Insight:

Quiksilver is a decades-old surfing clothes and gear company that took off in the nineties when surf and skate styles became popular even among those who never had their feet on a board of any kind. The company has a story much like Australian surf retailer Billabong, which was founded in 1973 and expanded rapidly in the nineties.

Both retailers overextended themselves, buying up companies only to sell them later at a loss when the economy tanked. And both companies, by expanding that way and orienting themselves so much to the non-surfing consumer, lost some of their credibility with top athletes, according to Business of Fashion. 

And they, like so many others, have also thrown been by the growth of inexpensive, on-trend fast-fashion retail, which has troubled many storied retail institutions for a while.