Extreme Retail
“Mini-anchor” combines action sports and retail entertainment for a unique destination.
Susan H. Fishman

Adrenalina’s store at The Florida Mall in Orlando.

Adrenalina, an extreme sports multi-media and manufacturing company, recently opened its first retail store, “Adrenalina: The Extreme Store,” targeting the Y generation and action sports enthusiast. The new retail store is based on the “Adrenalina” television show airing on Fuel TV and Fox Sports En Español in the United States and Fox Sports Latin America, CDN and Caracol in Latin America. The show is produced by Adrenalina, an extreme sports multi-media and manufacturing company that produces a wide range of entertainment focusing on the action sports community.

The Adrenalina retail store stocks a variety of hard-to-find clothing and equipment for sport enthusiasts. The store includes equipment for almost every extreme sport, including skateboarding, BMX, mountain biking, surfing, wakeboarding, paintball, Moto X, skydiving and more. The Adrenalina store carries its popular, easy-to-wear clothing line along with other extreme sportswear produced by top-name companies like Billabong, Roxy, Volcom, Quiksilver, Element, Vans, Oakley, Reef, O’Neil, Rip Curl and Fox Racing.

In addition to selling the experience, Adrenalina also sells goods related to BMX biking, surfing, wakeboarding, paintball and other extreme sports.

The newly opened store, located at the Florida Mall in Orlando, features the world’s first-ever FlowRider within a retail store, a cutting-edge wave ramp machine that uses compact wave technology to create in-store surfing and boarding experiences for patrons. The specially constructed wave ramp pushes water up the ramp at over 60 miles per hour creating similar conditions to surfing or boogie boarding.

Adrenalina president Jeffrey Geller joined executive producer and T.V. host Zalman Lekach and associate producer and T.V. host Pablo Lanatta to develop the retail concept. Before joining Adrenalina, Geller served as president and COO of Perfumania, a nationwide chain of more than 240 stores in over 39 states.

Adrenalina carries a variety of apparel and shoes.

“We started talking about how we could bring action/extreme sports to more customers and how to target them in more ways than just a T.V. show,” remembers Geller. “The FlowRider idea was brought to our attention, and we knew we just had to add it to the store. Besides wanting to offer hard goods and soft goods, we knew we needed a few other attractions. We had the idea of a big screen showing the sports from our T.V. show, as well as an interactive listening station where customers can view the shows, and then we decided to add the big attraction — the FlowRider.”

The ride, which is designed to mimic a bit of snowboarding, skating, surfing and wakeboarding — all at once — takes up 1,200 square feet of the 7,500-square-foot store.

Exterior of Adrenalina.

The store was designed by Otto Design Group, who also designed Urban Outfitters, and was built using raw materials, including wood and galvanized steel. Large glass windows allow the shopper to look all the way through the store and see the FlowRider, which is also enclosed in glass due to the water and humidity. The flooring is a skate-park plywood, and natural trees pop up in the middle and at the front of the store.

“A lot of the design is based on travel through Latin America, like the T.V. show,” notes Geller. “The whole blend lends to the slight relationship to the show.”

Geller says the company will be looking for a little more square footage (closer to 10,000) in the new locations it’s currently negotiating with major developers like Simon, Taubman, The Mills and General Growth. A second Adrenalina store has just broken ground at Miami International Mall and future locations will be spread across the country.

The FlowRider, as seen through the surf department.

“We’re not necessarily focusing on any region,” says Geller. “ Our first two stores are in Florida because that’s where our offices are, and it was easy to develop and fine-tune the operations. But we are looking at leases across the country in high-traffic, metropolitan malls.”

At the end of this year, Adrenalina hopes to open at least two more locations and would like to sign five more leases for the following year. After that, a growth of about eight units per year is on the wish list. With such an interesting concept, such growth seems inevitable for the one-of-a-kind retailer.

“There’s really no one who covers the full spectrum of extreme sports that we do,” Geller says. “From paintball to skydiving to wakeboarding, we’re really the first to get everything under one roof and make it entertaining. It’s a destination that is a mini-anchor. We only take up 10,000 square feet and, so far, we bring a ton of people.”


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