|
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
During the march dumps of 1991, Richard Woolcott and Tucker Hall set off
on a snowboard trip that would forever change their lives. Tucker had just
been laid off of work and jumped in the car on a routine Tahoe trip to visit
Nathan Fletcher and Mark Gabriel... |
|
...After riding four days of fresh, Richard called work with the excuse
that they were snowed in and extended his stay. For more than a week,
they awoke every morning with two new feet of snow. It was their first
real experience riding powder and the new obsession wouldn't stop.
Two weeks later Richard quit his job to take some time off and snowboard.
He and Tucker had also talked of starting a clothing company during the
Tahoe trip but nothing was really final. Later that spring, the two came
up with the idea of starting a riding company based around the three sports
they enjoyed. With $5000 from Richard's dad, they started the process.
First the name and then the stone . Volcom was born.
The Volcom idea would incorporate a major philosophy of the times, "youth
against establishment". This energy was an enlightened state to support
young creative thinking. Volcom was a family of people not willing to
accept the suppression of the established ways . This was a time when
snowboarding and skateboarding was looked down on. The U.S. was in a recession,
there were riots in LA and the Gulf War. Change was in the air. Nirvana
and Pearl Jam expressed it the best.
For the first two years, Richard and Tucker traveled around the world
on wild journeys with friends riding whatever they could. The business
side of things was minimal. The headquarters were set up in Newport in
Richard's bedroom and all sales were run out of tucker's bedroom in Huntington.
The two knew nothing about how to make clothes but that didn't matter.
It was all about spirit and creativity. Clothing sales for the first year
were $2600.
Since those wild beginnings, the Volcom Stone has spread slowly across
the world. The Company has matured internally but continues to run off
the same philosophy it started with. The Volcom thinking now flows through
its art, music, films, athletes and clothing….
The Story of Featured Artist Tees by: Neil Harrison
I remember the exact time the Featured Artist series was inspired. Jamie
Lynn and I were in Seattle floating around some shopping area (like an
outside mall) and a guy was there with his portable cart selling t-shirts
with Salvador Dali paintings printed on the front. First it was Dali's
art that caught our eyes and then it was the soft feel of the the screen
print and the reproduction of these detailed paintings. During this time
Jamie and I were spending a lot of time drawing and painting together
and then seeing these Dali t-shirts hit us with thoughts of creating artist
t-shirts and what better person to start this project then Jamie Lynn.
So we bought the shirt, I still have it in the Volcom archives, and when
we got back to Volcom Jamie went to work on a water color of a guy sitting
in the corner of a room playing the bass guitar with all these colors
flowing around the room inter-twining into the stone. We printed the art
using a 4 color process, which was new to us at the time, using water
based inks for the soft touch. It's still one of the best t-shirts we've
ever made and was a truly defining moment in Volcom's history.
That was in 1995.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
