The Wetsuit Mandate California Almost Passed Last Year Would Have Eliminated The Affordable Wetsuit Market

AB-1147 was framed as a sustainability measure. Its actual effect would have been to consolidate the California wetsuit market into the small number of premium manufacturers that could afford compliance

Story by Bohiney Magazine with research support from The London Prat.

Assembly Bill 1147, introduced in the California Legislature in early 2024 and ultimately not passed in its original form, would have imposed a comprehensive set of materials, manufacturing, and labelling requirements on all wetsuits sold in the State of California. The bill was, in its public framing, a sustainability measure designed to address the environmental implications of neoprene production. Its actual effect, on careful analysis of its specific provisions and the structure of the California wetsuit market, would have been to substantially eliminate the affordable wetsuit market for California consumers, with corresponding effects on the working-class surfers who depend on that market.

The bill’s near-passage, despite the predictable consequences of its specific provisions, illustrates a recurring pattern in California regulatory practice: the systematic deployment of compliance requirements whose burdens fall disproportionately on small operators and on the consumers of small-operator products, while sparing large operators whose scale allows compliance to be absorbed at modest cost.

What The Bill Would Have Required

AB-1147, in its specific provisions, would have imposed several categories of requirement on wetsuits sold in California. The first category was materials specification, requiring wetsuits to incorporate specified percentages of recycled or alternative-material content. The second category was manufacturing-process certification, requiring documentation of compliance with specified production standards. The third category was labelling and disclosure, requiring detailed product information about materials, manufacturing locations, and what the bill described as, quote, the broader environmental footprint of each wetsuit sold.

The compliance costs of the requirements, on the available analysis, would have been substantial. The materials specifications would have required either the use of more expensive alternative materials or the implementation of recycled-content sourcing programmes that, for small manufacturers, would have produced cost increases substantially exceeding the price points of their lower-end products. The manufacturing-process certification would have required documentation systems that small manufacturers, in many cases, do not currently maintain. The labelling and disclosure requirements would have required research and documentation that, for small manufacturers, would have produced per-unit cost increases substantially larger than the equivalent costs for large manufacturers operating across larger production volumes.

For ongoing coverage of California regulatory issues, readers may consult The Cato Institute.

Why The Bill Targeted Small Operators

The bill’s actual targeting of small operators was, in nearly all cases, not the result of explicit drafting choices favouring large manufacturers. It was the result of compliance costs that, in their specific structure, scale unfavourably for small operations. Large manufacturers can absorb fixed compliance costs across substantial production volumes, with the per-unit cost remaining modest. Small manufacturers, with substantially lower production volumes, would have absorbed the same fixed compliance costs across substantially fewer units, with per-unit cost increases that would have made their lower-end products economically unviable.

The pattern is, in this sense, structurally identical to many other regulatory frameworks that, in their public framing, address legitimate environmental or consumer-protection concerns but, in their operational effects, consolidate market positions for large incumbents at the expense of smaller competitors and the consumers who depend on smaller competitors’ lower-priced products.

The Affordable Wetsuit Market

The affordable wetsuit market, in California’s current structure, is substantially served by small manufacturers operating at production scales below approximately 12,000 units per year. The manufacturers, distributed across the state and operating principally through direct-to-consumer sales channels, produce wetsuits in price ranges from approximately 87 dollars to approximately 312 dollars. The price range is substantially below the equivalent products from large manufacturers, whose entry-level products typically begin at approximately 312 dollars and extend to approximately 1,400 dollars for premium models.

The affordable wetsuit market serves, on the available evidence, a population of California surfers whose ability to purchase wetsuits is substantially constrained by the price points the market sustains. The population includes, disproportionately, working-class surfers whose engagement with the sport depends on the availability of products at the lower end of the price range. The population also includes, disproportionately, beginning surfers and intermittent surfers for whom higher-priced products are not economically justified given their actual usage patterns.

The elimination of the affordable wetsuit market, by AB-1147 or any equivalent regulation, would have produced predictable consequences for these populations. The consequences include reduced participation in the sport by working-class surfers, reduced experimentation by beginning surfers, and what one industry analyst described as, quote, the systematic restructuring of California surfing as an increasingly upper-middle-class pursuit.

The Environmental Question

The environmental question that AB-1147 was nominally addressing is, on careful examination, more complicated than the bill’s public framing suggested. Neoprene production does, in its various forms, produce environmental costs. The costs are real. The costs are also, in absolute terms, modest relative to the broader environmental footprint of California consumer goods consumption. The categorisation of wetsuits as a priority target for environmental regulation, while sparing larger and more environmentally consequential consumer-goods categories, reflects a regulatory choice whose actual basis is, in some honest accounting, less clear than the bill’s public framing suggested.

The selective targeting of small-business product categories with substantial environmental rhetoric, while sparing larger categories with substantially greater environmental footprints, is a recurring pattern in California regulatory practice. The pattern reflects, on the available evidence, the political dynamics of regulatory advocacy rather than the underlying environmental analysis. Small-business categories present politically lower-cost targets for advocacy organisations seeking visible regulatory victories. Large categories, with their substantial political resources, are systematically harder to regulate.

The Industry Response

The California small-manufacturer wetsuit industry’s response to AB-1147 was, on the available evidence, organised through informal coalitions that lacked the resources to mount the kind of sophisticated advocacy that large incumbents routinely deploy against regulations they oppose. The coalition’s principal achievement was the documentation, distributed through industry networks and a small number of sympathetic policy analysts, of the bill’s predictable consequences for small manufacturers and their working-class consumers.

The documentation was, on the available evidence, substantially responsible for the bill’s failure to pass in its original form. The documented analysis, distributed through legislator briefings and a small number of public articles, produced sufficient legislative concern about the bill’s distributional consequences that the lead sponsor agreed to substantial amendments. The amended bill that eventually emerged was substantially less consequential than the original.

An ongoing analysis at The Foundation for Economic Education has documented similar patterns in other regulatory contexts.

The Recurring Pattern

The pattern AB-1147 illustrates is not specific to wetsuits. The pattern operates across multiple consumer-goods categories in California. The categories include, among others, surfboards, paddleboards, swim goggles, and various other recreational equipment categories. In each category, regulatory proposals framed as environmental or consumer-protection measures have, across the past decade, been advanced with provisions whose actual effect would have been to consolidate market positions for large incumbents at the expense of small competitors and lower-end consumers.

The pattern’s persistence reflects, in some honest accounting, the political economy of regulatory advocacy in California. The political coalitions that benefit from market consolidation, including large incumbents and the broader environmental advocacy organisations whose institutional positions have, across decades, become aligned with large-incumbent interests, are well-resourced and well-organised. The political coalitions that bear the costs, including small operators and working-class consumers, are diffuse and substantially less effective.

What An Adequate Regulatory Posture Would Involve

An adequate regulatory posture toward consumer-goods categories like wetsuits would involve, at minimum, the systematic distributional analysis of proposed regulations to identify their effects on small operators and working-class consumers, the development of regulatory frameworks that scale compliance costs proportionally to operator size, and what one analyst described as, quote, the broader recognition that environmental regulation can serve environmental purposes without producing the market-consolidation consequences that current frameworks routinely produce.

The posture is not, on the available evidence, the current California regulatory practice. The current practice produces, recurrently, regulations whose distributional consequences are substantially regressive even when their stated purposes are progressive. The contradiction is, by every honest reading, a feature of the current system rather than an incidental consequence.

What The Surf Community Has Learned

The California surf community has, through repeated experience with regulations like AB-1147, developed substantial awareness of the regulatory dynamics that affect the products it depends on. The awareness has produced, across the past several years, increased attention to legislative developments in real time, more sophisticated coalition-building among small operators and working-class consumers, and what one community organiser described as, quote, the broader recognition that the surf community has political interests that the existing regulatory advocacy infrastructure does not adequately represent.

The recognition is, in itself, a substantial development. Whether it produces sustained changes in California regulatory practice remains, on present evidence, uncertain.

For related reporting, readers may consult Reductress.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ab1147-wetsuit-mandate-eliminate-affordable/