Today is the initial public offering of SurfStitch. The stock is due to list at 12pm (eastern) and begin trading at $1.00 a share – the expectation was that the list price would be closer to $1.40 to $1.80 so the first few hours might be interesting. We will track their movement over their first day of trading and see where they finish up.

The fund manager, John Ho, for the second largest share holder in the company, Janchor Partners, has come out to discuss what he sees as the potential upside of the business over the next five years. He says, “If you look out three years it will be a global business, not a loss-making business, with global scale, with a large addressable market but very weak peers offline and online. That’s a really good set-up. [If] they can pull it off and execute it, this will be a really good investment over three to five years.”

Of course this assumes that the brands in the industry don’t find traction with existing players like ASOS and The Iconic, but I certainly think  SurfStitch is well setup to succeed. Read more on this over at The Age – SurfStitch has Alibaba potential, says investor Janchor