Okay, so I know I’m a little late on this one, things have kinda been a little hectic for me lately, trying to get our act together with our “books”. I’m sure a lot of you know what’s up trying to organize a bunch a receipts. Anyway I wanted to get away from all of that and write a little about this cat Richard Woolcott who created the Volcom Stone brand, what a story!
There has been a Transworld Business article that I have been wanting to read for a little while now. I’m not a big fan of reading but when I saw "THE MAN BEHIND THE STONE" in big bold letters, I knew I had to read up on Richard Woolcott the CEO of Volcom! Article was written by Josh Hunter, photos by Gary Copeland.
I started reading this article and my eyes were glued from sentence to sentence! Richard back in 85 was in a crazy surfing accident, he bit it hard and crashed head first into a sandbar, somewhere in Baja! He snapped his c1 and c2 vertebrae in two places, which caused a fifth break in his c3 and fractured his c4. Woolcott had a 2% survival rate is what the doctors said once he got to them, he talks about how he was driven from Ensenada, BC in the back of an open truck into the states!
Woolcott is one hell of a strong guy not only pulling threw but making a full recovery! This dude was trying to be somebody in the surf world but now all he had was time on his hands…time to do what…”think”…he says “looking back at, breaking my neck was kinda cool, it made me change paths”
He couldn’t surf anymore, so once he healed up he went go to work for Quicksilver. He began to notice the opportunity that existed in the clothing brand arena. While working for Quicksilver he started to really miss competing in surf competitions so much that he had this strong feeling that he had to some how influence the sport, he also took on the nick name “Malcom” as in Malcom Forbes while working at Quicksilver. The year was 1991 (my birth year) and “vert” skating was starting to slow down and the whole street scene was starting to come alive! At the same time Snowboarding was starting to become popular too.
Right around the same time Woolcott ran into some cat named Tucker Hall, at a party, Hall had just been laid off from his job and was bumming big time. Woolcott told Hall that he was headed to Tahoe, and that he…Hall should come with him. In March of 1991, they both took a trip to Tahoe, and when they got there, Tahoe totally blew their minds, it was sick as far as all of the action and not to mention the attitude that everyone had, kind of a rebellious attitude, anti-establishment attitude. The cops were giving the skaters a hard time, cuz skating wasn’t allowed in public streets, the slopes didn’t allow snowboarders on their mountains, it was kind of like a revolution. Woolcott called his boss and told him that he was not going to be coming back to work for the next few days cuz he wanted to check out all of the action in Tahoe.
For the next few days, he rode fresh powder, taking it all in, and on that trip is when Volcom was born in the parking lot of Kirkwood Ski Resort. By the time Woolcott and Hall came back to So. Cal. the idea of a Stone, was already starting to take shape. The stone idea came from a book, where it looked like a diamond, only these guys flipped it upside down, next came the name Volcom…it came from the name “Malcom”, if you look at the “M” in Malcom there is a “V” there, they got rid of the “a” and added an “o”…in place of the “a” and boom…the rest is history.
Now get this…these guys started out by “sticker slapping” the Volcom logo everywhere in the Newport, OC area…they would visit their neighborhood surf shop, and drop off free stickers…they did this before they created one single article of clothing…once they began producing clothes, they stopped producing stickers…this created a frenzy as far as getting your hands on a Volcom sticker…people say that back then there were Volcom stickers selling on EBay for $100 bucks…talk about some sick marketing tactics…dude killed it!!
By 2004 Volcom had done $113 million in revenue, today it is somewhere in the $320 million dollar range per year! As of September 2010 it had a cash reserve of $105 million that Woolcott calls…the company’s “war chest”.
This dude is badass, I have a whole new look at Volcom, much respect to Woolcott, Hall and the rest those cats out at Volcom…they did it right, I for sure someday hope to be like them!
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