Employee Spotlight: Bobby Owens

The first time I met Yvon Chouinard was in the spring of 1995 on Oahu. A friend of mine, Rhonda Seymore, who was an employee at Patagonia Haleiwa set up a little surf session for the three of us at Chun's Reef on the North Shore. At the time I was managing a surfboard factory called Blue Hawaii and had recently gone through a divorce. I had heard from the manager at Haleiwa that Patagonia had plans to have a store in Santa Cruz Ca. My Ex moved to Nevada with our 7 year old son around that time and by June of 1995 I had left Hawaii and moved to Santa Cruz.

By October of 1995 Patagonia had signed the lease and by December 15th we were opening our doors for the first time. Prior to that Jenn Wass, who was the regional manager at the time, had me come down to Ventura to interview. Because of my background in surfing and management experience they thought I was a good match for the job. The Patagonia surfboard concept was brand new and Santa Cruz would showcase the new surfboard technology.

What was interesting about the new store opening in Santa Cruz was that it was viewed by the community at large as a very positive sign that Santa Cruz was in recovery mode from the destructive earthquake that had happened a few years earlier. It was also a surfing town, not to mention being a sailing town, music, mountain bike riding, boardwalk, you name it Santa Cruz had it going on. And it was right on the cusp of being one of the more environmentally minded communities. From that point on, for the next 10 years, I drove 600 miles round trip twice a month to see my son Stephen and take him Snowboarding at resorts like Kirkwood. I was surfing in Santa Cruz and snowboarding in the Sierras. I had a renewed interest in photography and some of my photos of Stephen appeared in the Patagonia kids catalogs. Stephen, who was 7 years old when we first moved there, is 35 years old now and is a doctor practicing in Reno Nevada, along with his wife Marja who is also a doctor. They are both getting ready to relocate to Monterey California to practice as we speak.

During this time, with the Patagonia Surfboards being a new thing, I was competing once a year in the Masters events in places like Mexico, Fiji, France and Ireland. Yvon thought it was a good idea and supported it as in his words "would bring some publicity to the surfboards". My regional manager at the time Jenn Wass was also supportive. In fact from time to time she would call me and ask me if I was surfing enough! Imagine that. Pictures of me appeared from time to time in the Patagonia Surf Catalogs surfing exoctic spots like Cloudbreak, Puerto Escondido, and Hossegor France.

Although Patagonia has always had the environment at its core, back then the fun hog spirit really permeated our company's culture. At the Santa Cruz store we had a couple of climbers, several surfers and a few hikers. In general everyone on the staff was pretty active. It was around that time that Patagonia defined our company's core values and that the use of the word "crisis" was at the core of how we viewed the environmental situation.

At my first managers meeting in Ventura, 1996, the Atlanta crew was there, as was Hiromi Hasegawa from Haleiwa who is my manager now here at the store. The organic cotton thing had just been introduced, and the company bussed all of us out to these chemical laden toxic conventional cotton fields out in the San Joaquin Valley. And in the same area we visited an organic cotton farm, one of the first of its kind back then. It was a huge commitment for Patagonia to commit 100% to organic cotton. Being the manager of a store, that made a huge impression on me!

I had a career in Professional Surfing from 1976 through the late 80's. I placed in the top 16 four times in the World Ratings. I placed 10th in the world in 1982, which actually was my last year competing on the world tour. Back then I usually had a camera with me and documented much of my career.

As of lately, I had a feature profile in FreeSurf magazine (local magazine here on Oahu) last year that highlighted my surf photography. From time to time my surf photos are featured on the Patagonia Haleiwa store instagram. Recently

At the January 22, 2023 Eddie Aikau event, held at Waimea Bay, Kelly Slater gave up his slot for my brother Chris to compete in what is now regarded as the largest surf the Eddie has ever seen. In a TV interview for a local news station Kelly was expressing his feelings about not being in the right mindset to compete that day and went on to mention that Bobby Owens was one of his earlier surf heroes! Needless to say, it was really cool to hear him say that and especially since I had competed in the same event just a few decades earlier.

Since 2013 I have been documenting beach erosion on the North Shore and specifically in the Sunset Beach area. We can see the acceleration of adverse effects from climate change right here in our backyard surfing playgrounds.

Most oceanfront houses are built on ecologically sensitive sand dunes which is slowly but surely turning out to be a disaster as we have seen at least one slide into the ocean. Sunset Beach also happens to be the place where I made a name formyself surfing its large shifty peaks back in the 80's. The Owens family also took up residence there from 1979 to 1992.

I have been back in Hawaii working here at Patagonia since 2005. The store has a close connection to the Kokua Foundation which is located just across the street from us. This is where most of our staff members work on the sustainable farm to put in their activism hours. The staff also participates in a lot of beach clean ups at nearby Mokuleia. As for fun, Alii Beach is just down the road from the store, and this is where our manager and assistant manager go surfing—our regular locals go there too. Haleiwa has become a very busy tourist town and our little store thrives as we are located right in the middle of the North Shore Marketplace. Our customer base is made up of mostly tourists, locals and military personnel. It is nice to have a great work environment so close to some of the world's greatest surf spots.

That's all for now, Bobby.