For years, SurfStitch followed a familiar online retail formula: Heavily discounted branded product, with a customer base conditioned to wait for the next sale.

Now, 10 months into a restructuring led by Olvera Advisors, the online retailer is attempting something considerably harder than cutting costs or rebuilding a website: It is changing why customers believe in SurfStitch.

The business has been relaunched as a pure-play marketplace built around Australian coastal culture, with a curated assortment spanning surf, street, outdoor and adjacent lifestyle categories. Behind that shift is a strategy designed to restore price integrity, give brands greater control and turn SurfStitch from somewhere people visit for a bargain into somewhere they return to even when they are not shopping. Into a community, even.

“We are moving SurfStitch into more of a trusted lifestyle platform that happens to sell product,” Damien Hodgkinson, principal at Olvera Advisors and lead on the restructuring and platform redesign, told Inside Retail.

SurfStitch’s reinvention follows a turbulent period. In March 2025, Best Markets Group acquired SurfStitch from Alquemie Group with plans to reposition the business. When it could not reach an agreement with its landlord and a major supplier to withdraw a winding-up petition, Olvera was appointed to undertake a formal restructuring through voluntary administration.

Olvera subsequently proposed a Deed of Company Arrangement supported by major suppliers, including petitioning creditor Nike, before redesigning its operating model and technology platform.

One of its biggest challenges was inherited, not technical. 7 million people with SurfStitch, but many had been trained to expect discounts.

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