Nike is reportedly considering selling off Hurley as shoppers abandon surf style. We found the brand is already hard to find in stores.

Shoshy Ciment/Business Insider

A Billabong display in the Paragon Sports in New York City.

• Nike, the leading athletic-wear retailer in the US, is reportedly considering a sale of its surfwear brand Hurley, according to Reuters.
• The first challenge of shopping Hurley merchandise is finding it. We went to a few different department stores but we were surprised when we couldn't find a single Hurley item on the racks.
• Eventually, we found a tiny selection of Hurley merchandise at a local sporting goods store in New York, and saw why selling the brand might be the smart move now.
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Nike is considering selling its surfwear line Hurley, sources told Reuters last week.

According to people familiar with the matter, Nike is considering different options for its surfwear brand that it acquired in 2002 back when surfwear was all the rage. The company said it would not comment on what it called rumors and speculation.

Read more: We visited a Hollister flagship store that's closing soon and saw why the brand needed a new strategy

We decided to check out the brand's merchandise to see why Nike might be considering selling it - but we had a hard time finding it anywhere. We called up different Macy's, Nordstrom, Dick's Sporting Goods and Nike stores in the New York City area, but none of them seemed to offer Hurley brand products in stores.

A Kohl's in a Jersey City, New Jersey mall claimed over the phone that they did indeed carry Hurley merchandise, but we had no luck when we visited the store.

Hurley still sells its merchandise online, of course, but the brand's lack of presence in brick-and-mortar stores likely says a lot about the brand's current appeal among consumers.

Read more: We visited Nike and Adidas flagship stores to see which brand is better at serving women. The winner was obvious.

In general, the appeal of surfwear is waning. Billabong, one of the world's largest surfwear brands, may have started the downward spiral of surfwear in the early 2010s amid declining sales, but other brands were quick to follow.

Quiksilver filed for bankruptcy in 2015 and was subsequently acquired by Oaktree Capital Management, a private equity firm. Abercrombie & Fitch, which owns the surf-themed Hollister brand, announced store closures as well as some openings in 2019 that will result in less net square footage.

Eventually, we found a tiny selection of Hurley merchandise in Paragon Sports in New York City. What we saw made it clear why Nike might be considering selling the surfwear brand.