Ozmosis moves in at Rip Curl’s HQ

TORQUAY-based surf label Rip Curl has had a busy start to the year in Torquay, creating about 20 jobs at its headquarters through a restructure of its warehouse space to allow the Ozmosis warehouse in Melbourne to be moved in.

Ozmosis (purchased by Rip Curl in 2011) previously had its office and warehouse in Keysborough, and Rip Curl began discussions to consolidate the two labels in Torquay about four months ago, completing the warehouse move over the weekend.

The Ozmosis head office is now in Port Melbourne.

“A lot of people were entrenched in Keysborough – kids and school, for example – and we were able to relocate two staff, and we’ve had to go out and hire an entirely new warehouse team,” Rip Curl group general manager of crew Bec Christian said.

“A lot of the product for Ozmosis comes from Rip Curl, we have a lot of shared services here, a lot of global functions based here, so we were able to get economies of scale here and integrate the businesses a bit closer.”

She said there would also be benefits for cross-training between the Rip Curl and Ozmosis labels.

“We were excited about having an opportunity to create some jobs in Torquay – I feel like the surf industry has only heard about people losing jobs over the past 10 years.”

Rip Curl chief operating officer Lachlan Farran said the Rip Curl warehouses had been renovated and repurposed to fit in Ozmosis, quipping that the space now holding Ozmosis’ inventory (previously used to store wetsuits) was “a bit of a historic monument to warehousing of 1970s vintage”.

“It’s a more efficient use of the existing buildings.”

As well as replacing the roof of that warehouse, a large solar array has been installed on the roof of warehouse three.