How much is a city's brand worth?

It’s a typical morning at the Huntington Beach pier. Surfers are catching waves, buskers are busking, and Brian Deliz is walking off breakfast with a few friends. All of this, Deliz said, is part of the city’s brand.

“It is Surf City USA,” he said, referring to the city’s official trademarked brand. “This is the sun, the beach, the weather. You can't beat it.”

That is exactly what’s for sale at its official store on the pier here: Surf City T-shirts, sweatshirts, postcards, mugs. “We try to have products for all different price points,” co-owner Sally Wescott said, so that even a kid with $0.50 to spend can get a souvenir.

Wescott and Tina Viray are the private side of this public-private partnership. The store gets cheap rent for its coveted pier location, and the city gets 5% royalties on all sales of the store’s city-branded merch.

They serve mostly tourists but also some locals, and former locals. “We do get a lot of people that come in and they say, ‘Oh, I used to live here, but now I live in fill in the blank, and they want to rep their hometown,” Wescott said.

Viray jumped in: “I've had it where they start crying and wish they could come back, and then I start crying at the register.”

Wescott and Viray said they felt under fire when a consultant hired by Huntington Beach suggested the city could do a lot more to maximize its potential to generate income from the city’s “brand ecosystem,” including the branded merch sold exclusively at the city store. The consultant, Tyler Wolff, recommended the city establish a creative media department, a film commission, and a merchandising program that would lock down the city’s intellectual property.

The main goal was more revenue for the city. Huntington Beach Mayor Casey McKeon loves the idea.

“ Like every city, we're facing structural budget issues where our reoccurring expenses exceed our reoccurring revenues,” McKeon said. “There's not a lot of ideas out there how to fix it other than a sales tax increase or a hotel tax increase.” Or building a lot more housing to increase the tax base, which McKeon does not want.

For the merchandising program, McKeon envisions digital vending machines around town where you could order city hats, T-shirts and other swag. He also wants to sell that swag directly to local stores, or create licensing agreements with retailers.

“When you buy it through us, now the money's coming back to the city where it should,” McKeon said, “to help pay for our public safety, to pay for our infrastructure, to make the community clean and safe."

Ryan Short, co-founder of the company Civic Brand, a consulting firm that helps cities and regions define their identity. Short said generating income is one aim of a city brand, but shouldn’t be the only aim.

“The way I think about it is, it's more of a North Star,” Short said. “It's like a shared vision.”

His favorite example is Costa Rica’s unofficial brand/motto “pura vida.” The phrase, which literally translates to “pure life,” is all over souvenirs. But it’s also a vibe.

“ It's so ingrained in the culture,” Short said. “Their locals buy into it, their tourists buy into it. And to me, that's like the end goal. It kinda raises all ships, right?”

At the city store, Wescott and Viray said they still follow the mission they were given more than 30 years ago when the store opened — to be frontline ambassadors for the city.

“I think the value, too, in the branding is to really get the message out about what your city is so that people are going to visit, move here, or live here, stay in our hotel,” Wescott said.

“Yeah,” Viray agreed, “anything that projects a positive image, and in these days we need a positive image, we're here to do our part. There is value in that.”

Huntington Beach’s brand ecosystem reboot is currently on hiatus while the city council takes a deeper look. So no digital merch machines yet. In the meantime, you can still get an official Surf City T-shirt at the official city store.