TOP TO BOTTOM The trip to Tahoe during March of 1991 to hang with Nathan Fletcher, Mark Gabriel and friends where the idea for Volcom was born. Photos: Woolcott Collection Spring boarding at Mammoth Mountain, CA, 1991. I was just getting into snowboarding, and I’m not sure what I was thinking with the backward visor and no eye protection. Those days were full of adventure and making new friends. A big thank you to all the early Volcom family for helping get the brand off the ground. Photo: Ken Hermer He was super-depressed. We started talking about snowboarding— he’d just gotten into snowboarding too, and neither of us had ever ridden powder. I said, “I’m going snowboarding in two days to hang with these guys. Jon Freeman’s working on this movie—do you want to come?” It ended up being an insane week of snow. We got a taste of powder, rode Kirkwood every day, met all these snowboarders. The Tahoe scene was so different from the SoCal scene. The surf industry was doom and gloom. The fluorescent fashion phase had faded, business was bad, people were getting laid off and there were no new trends in surf—it felt dead, stagnant. Then we got up there and you’ve got Shaun Palmer, the Hatchett brothers, Tom Burt, Dave Seoane, Steve Graham, Shawn Farmer, Chris Roach, Noah Salasnek—this whole mix of skate and snow. It was happening. Throughout that entire week Tucker and I were talking about life— “What are you going to do, Tucker?” He was throwing out all sorts of ideas. Then he said, “Maybe I’ll start my own company. I want to make outerwear.” And I’m like, “Tucker, it’s so hard to make outerwear. Maybe start with T-shirts and sweatshirts.” Then I started thinking about it. “Wait a minute, maybe this is a good time for me to do something new.” Quiksilver had raised me, and they were so good to me, but I want-ed more. By the end of the trip, we were sitting in the parking lot at Kirkwood going, “Let’s start our own company based on this new energy. There’s something going on here and maybe we could take the snow/skate and mix it with the surf and put it all together…” And what if we did it from the start of a company? No other brands had the three sports in their DNA from the beginning. Especially from America—most of the big companies were from Australia like Quiksil-ver, Billabong and Rip Curl. We kept getting snowed in, so I called Danny and said, “I need a couple more days up here. I’m stuck.” We rode out the whole storm and I quit my job two weeks after I got back from the trip. I was thinking, “I’ve got to start my own company and I’m going to do it with this guy Tucker that I don’t even know, but he’s a sales guy and I’m a marketing guy, which is what you need.” Tucker’s an awesome salesman. We had different connections and ran in different circles. Tucker was living in Huntington. He became good friends with Steve Graham, which was an entrance into the snow scene. We were friends with the Anderson brothers—Billy and Jeff—and Ron-nie McCoy in Mammoth. We just wanted to snowboard. My friends were going, “Dude, you’re crazy! You’ve got a great job at Quiksilver.” I’d just gotten a little raise. I had an Isuzu Trooper that was paid for. But by starting a new company, I could regroup and be creative; I could go snowboarding and start from scratch. I’d gone straight from college to Quiksilver, and this would allow me some time to decom-press. I wasn’t married, barely had a girlfriend, and didn’t need much money to live—there were no attachments. 072 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.4: Page 74
