FROM THE TRUNK OF A CAR It took time to get the product off the ground while we were trying to open retail accounts. We scraped together whatever money we could and drove from Southern California to San Francisco visiting accounts along the way. In San Jose we stayed at this warehouse, skated all night and woke up in a dark room at noon, went to Daly City and saw Nir-vana, Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Cow Palace on New Years Eve, 1991. The next year we drove north again, this time to Seattle for a meet-ing with Snowboard Connection. Tucker’s saying, “I got this! We’re going to get this account.” So, we’re talking to SnoCon owner John Logic in the parking lot of his apartment on the river. Tucker pulls out a blanket, puts it out on the pavement and lays down our product. Tucker’s talking clothing, I’m talking about the company, and John said, “Guys, I’d really like to help you out, but I just can’t do it right now.” We were crushed. We had driven all the way up there to the premier account in the Northwest and we didn’t get in. Later, they became a great account of ours. But at that time, it was hard to get denied. I went to Hawaii with little money, made it to Maui, and our new rep Clint Moncata said he had a place for us to stay. It ended up being in a house that was under construction. There were no windows, noth-ing. He pulled some blankets out of the bushes and we slept on this dirty floor with nails and sawdust all over it. The next day, we went to a shop called High Tech and the owner, Kim Ball, said, “OK, I’ll try some stuff.” Some of it was too edgy for him, but it worked. Those early days were bare bones—I had another trip where I went to Hawaii with just a duffel bag full of T-shirts to sell. It was crude, and we really didn’t have great product. It was all made locally, though. The T-shirts were from Costa Mesa. We made our first real cut and sew product—a skate short that had the “horny toad pocket” on the back—in Oceanside at the Sewing Company. One day I was driving down with Tucker to get the shorts so we could deliver them to our accounts. Suddenly, all the cars stopped on the 5 Freeway. Military tanks were heading north because of the Rod-ney King riots, when L.A. went crazy and started burning down. We got our product and we made it back home; people were panicking even in Orange County. We had just rented a 250-square-foot office in a warehouse with one rack and five people working in it. We were talking to our landlord, this big, bearded NRA supporter. He went, “They’re burning the house down. It’s over here in Santa Ana.” The guy had his rifles out with a bunch of ammunition. He goes, “We’re going to war!” And I’m thinking, “This probably isn’t a good time to be delivering the shorts to our L.A. and Orange County accounts. I don’t think they are going to want product right now.” There was the Gulf War in Iraq, the riots in L.A. and the recession while we were trying to build our company. There were so many things that were out of our control and we just had to roll with it. LEFT ;OLÄYZ[=VSJVTHK ^OPJOHWWLHYLKPU Beach Happy Magazine HZ\YMZRH[LZUV^aPULV\[VM6YHUNL*V\U[`  *(PU 0THKL[OPZI`OHUK^P[O;\JRLYHUK;OVT 4J,SYV`;OLKLZPNU^HZPUZWPYLKI`J\[HUKWHZ[L W\URYVJRHY[ BELOW =VSJVT»ZÄYZ[VɉJPHSVɉJLPU*VZ[H4LZH *( JPYJH  -YVTSLM[[VYPNO[!;\JRLY/HSS TL HUK4H[[ 7H[LYZVU HSVJHSZ\YMLYHUK[LHTYPKLYMYVT5L^WVY[ 7OV[V!>VVSJV[[*VSSLJ[PVU There were times when I second-guessed myself. Once, early on, we drove a U-Haul to a trade show in San Diego. We didn’t have enough money for a booth, so we decided to walk around the show with our T-shirts, then take accounts across the street to show them our little line of clothes in the U-Haul. It ended up being a big party in the U-Haul for two days. All the snowboarders showed up and all the samples were given away. By the end of the show, we had one big Volcom sign on top of the truck but nothing inside of it. I was sitting on the wind-shield looking across the street thinking, “Man, I really wish we could be in there. Is this even going to work?” We only showed a couple of accounts the line. Everybody was stoked, we had momentum, we were doing something cool, but at the end of the day it’s a business and you’ve got to make it work. RICHARD WOOLCOTT 075
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.4: Page 77
