Words Colin Wiseman and Richard Woolcott Captions Richard Woolcott t’s a mild late-July morning in Corona Del Mar, CA: 72 degrees, light drizzle. We’re loading up Richard Woolcott’s gray sprinter van—his “surf rig.” Next to it sits a Land Cruiser with a Mt. Baker Snowboard Shop sticker on the rear win-dow. Both are clean, neither too showy. They blend into this neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes. We’re at one of Richard’s two local houses, an airy ’60s-era beauty bathed in white. He and his family recently moved into something more modern a few blocks down. I Richard, who carries that California surf vibe in his stride, drives us to a seaside state park. There are porpoises a few hundred yards out. He says it’s a good sign. A cliff abuts the south end of this quiet strip of sand, and small waves roll off a corner of what he calls “Elevator Point.” Inland sits open country as far as the eye can see, a rarity in Orange County. “I’ve made every big decision in my life right here,” Richard says. “Going public, selling the company, marriage, starting a family—I sit down and look at this cliff.” By “the company,” Richard means Volcom, the DIY clothing proj-ect turned boardsports megalith he and Tucker Hall started in 1991 after a fateful trip to Tahoe. And this is ground zero in the develop-ment of the brand’s punk art visage of those early years. Richard lived in a trailer here for more than a decade. The trailers are gone now, replaced by a campground. Here he worked with Dave Seoane, Terje Haakonsen, Troy Eckert and others churning out iconic flicks like Subjekt: Haakonsen to support Volcom’s disruptive program, which tapped heavily into the restlessness of the 1990s youth movement. It’s a brand that defined snowboarding’s transition from the neon façade of the ’80s to the skate-driven, counterculture vibe of the ’90s. Under Richard’s direction, Volcom blew up, went public, then eventually sold to European luxury group PPR (now known as Ker-ing) for $608 million in 2011. After spending half his life at the helm, Richard finally left, on good terms, at the end of 2016. At 54 years old, Richard is still processing his departure from Volcom. He’s comfortable with his current day-to-day operations, which include regular trips to enviable locales like Mexico, Fiji and Montana, often with his wife, Cari, and their son, Wolfgang, along for the ride. But it feels like something’s still missing—like more ideas are waiting to explode out of this surfer-turned-CEO. Richard doesn’t seem close to done. We catch a few waves, grab breakfast to go, and return to Corona Del Mar. Cleansed by the ocean, we settle in. Richard tells me his story. The nexus is here, by the beach. EAST TO WEST My parents, Rene and Eloise, met in Europe then made their way to the East Coast, where I was born in New Jersey. I have a brother and sister—Rene Jr. and Susan—who are about 10 years older than me, and a younger sister, Rachel. My dad’s from Switzerland and he gradu-ated from New York University, went on to Harvard Business School, then entered the finance world. He was a big part of Volcom as an adviser, board member, investor and at times chairman. He is very business minded. We moved to Los Angeles when I was 5 years old and my parents divorced a few years later. I didn’t have any real connection to action sports yet. My mom, who is from Washington state, raised Rachel and me and we moved to Redondo Beach. My grandmother, Frances, moved to Redondo then, too. I started spending time at my grandma’s house and that was where I first saw this California lifestyle. It was the early ’70s and I was looking around going, “Wow! What are these guys doing? These surfers, they’re skateboarding, they’re dressed really cool.” That got ahold of me. I told my grandma, “I want to surf—I want to do what those guys are doing.” The music in the ’70s was also important to me. I couldn’t wait to get the new Led Zeppelin album; Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, the Rolling Stones—those bands had a huge impact later creatively. Volcom was rock ’n’ roll. You can see the influence of Pink Floyd in the early Volcom movies. My dad introduced me to the mountains. We traveled with him every summer to Switzerland. We’d go hiking in Grindelwald and take the train to the top of the Jungfrau. We moved inland to Anaheim Hills when I was 9. When it was cold and raining in the winter, I would wake up before school and hike up Noel Ranch Road for 20 minutes to where I could see the new snow on the San Gabriel moun-tains. They were like a magnet. The next question would be, “When are we going there so I can go skiing?” RICHARD WOOLCOTT 067
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.4: Page 69
