The Wire ep. #13 - Look inside Billabong and Volcom with Firewire Co-Founder Dougall Walker; CEO of Volcom Australia

Without Dougall Walker you might not be surfing a Firewire Surfboard and Kelly Slater might not own a surfboard company. Before he became CEO of Volcom Australia, Dougall Co-Founded Firewire. But this story doesn't begin there. In 1980 he was the first person ever to surf a thruster in Hawaii. And in 1986 he was tapped by Billabong Founder Gordon Merchant to join Billabong as Sales Manager. Dougall spent the next 18 years helping to grow Billabong, eventually retiring from his post as General Manager of Billabong Australasia in 2004, a year that Billabong earned hundreds of millions in revenue. Not bad for a brand that started out making board shorts on a kitchen table. It was difficult for Dougall to leave his staff of 300 people but he wanted to surf more and wanted to hang more with family. And now he's excited to hang with you in this episode of The Wire Podcast.