by Chip Wilson
Atlas Shrugged was my first major introduction to the idea of elevating the world from mediocrity to greatness through individual creativity, dedication, and vision. I did not understand then what kind of a theme this would be for me in the years to come.
Atlas Shrugged also brought into focus the many inefficiencies of the unionized labour system. I had a union job on the pipeline—which was exactly why I had so much time to read. But there were times in Alaska when I saw a simple task being performed by three people because the union required one guy to drive a machine, a different guy to flip a switch, and a third guy to make sure the machine didn’t run out of gas.
There was no room for innovation or individuality. I saw socialism at its worst. I saw union bosses ensuring work was mediocre, so the company could hire more people, so the union could collect more dues. I saw an underside of lazy people who would rather strike than work. People who wanted others to create, invent, and risk and still pay the union workers untold amounts for mediocre work.
This was a valuable lesson as a young man because finding out what I wanted in life was sometimes distinguished by finding out what I didn’t want—another concept I wouldn’t fully understand for several more years.
At any rate, I was saving money, and I was focused on training and developing my brain. It occurred to me to start laying out some goals for the years to come, knowing I would not stay in Alaska forever.
For one thing, I recognized that my work on the pipeline was me trading my life for money. I was working eighteen-hour days, not meeting any girls, not experiencing the things my friends were doing, and not playing sports. I wasn’t living in a city—I was in a camp with two hundred other men, getting up in the morning in sub-zero weather and going to work and back, day in and day out.
Swimming had given me a decade of goal-setting experience. For each age group, there was a definable record time I had to beat, and I had to beat it by my birthday before moving into the next age group.
Looking further into the future, I set the goal of owning my own house by twenty, running my own business by age thirty and being retired by forty (meaning I would be 100 percent in control of my whole life). Running my own business was in my blood because I was creative, stubborn, stupid, and unstoppable. At the very least it would mean I wasn’t trading my life for money on someone else’s terms.
This might seem like the daydreams of a nineteen-year-old working in the middle of nowhere, making good money for the first time in his life, but to me, my goals were a serious, authentic way of envisioning the years to come.
Back to Civilization
I left the pipeline almost eighteen months after I’d arrived, and by then I’d made about $150,000 (over $600,000 in today’s money).1 With the opportunity to earn that kind of money, it’s natural to wonder why I didn’t stay in Alaska longer.
The reality is, I was grinding my teeth. Plus, the longer I stayed on the pipeline, the longer it would take me to reintegrate into society. I had to learn not to swear with every second word, and I didn’t know how to have a conversation without bringing up some pipeline story.
I recognized it took many—if not most—other people to work until they were forty to earn a nest egg like the one I had. If I could start off at nineteen or twenty with that money, what could my life be like? I found that question fascinating back then and still do now. If everybody in this world was given what I had and didn’t have to work until they were forty to get it, would they later have the same successes, as I did?
Was I really anyone special in this whole thing, or was I just lucky to have met that woman at the airport who’d turned me on to the job on the pipeline?
Meanwhile, I’d achieved one of my goals—I’d bought a house, sight unseen.
The house had three suites. Even though I had money in the bank, I took out a mortgage at nineteen percent, not yet understanding how I should have paid that mortgage off with my money in the bank that was collecting 3 percent interest. My first lesson in cash flow. I was a homeowner, and I was only nineteen. All I needed to do now was find some tenants.
Leaving the pipeline camp was as big a day as I could imagine. It was like driving home from the hospital with your first child. I drove to Fairbanks and got on a plane to fly home. Most of the other men there would work eight weeks and then take two weeks off and go home for a visit, but I’d worked for eighteen months, often eighteen-hour days, with only a few days off. The only way I could keep myself motivated was knowing every hour I worked would mean I could stay two days in a bed-and-breakfast on Accra Beach in Barbados.
Back in Calgary, the first thing I did was to inspect my new house. I soon found myself looking at one of the ugliest, oldest buildings I’d ever seen—an original farmhouse now in the middle of the city. The house was on a hill and had great views of the surrounding city, but the views and a small stand of fruit trees (some of the only fruit trees in the city) were the only things the house had going for it.
I’ve always been a very non-materialistic person, but I also love quality. In 1976, it was not American quality that impressed me, but German or Japanese. On my return to Calgary, as soon as I’d recognized the house I’d purchased was anything but quality, I bought a Mercedes Benz as a present to myself. At the time, there were very few Mercedes in Canada, but those vehicles were the epitome of the quality with which I wanted to surround myself.
Now I found myself with these two possessions. Both were a lesson in business. My house was basically falling over, costing me massive amounts in cash flow just to keep it standing. And then, I had this beautiful car. Despite the high-quality nature of the car, any time one little thing went wrong with it, the dealership would have to fly in a piece from Germany, costing me hundreds and hundreds of dollars for some routine repair.
From then on, I only wanted to buy cars I knew were reliable, would seldom break down, and wouldn’t cost much to run. A Honda Civic, for example. I also promised myself I would only buy houses I knew were built with solid craftsmanship. I would always make sure the windows were double-paned to keep winter heating expenses down.
A short-term tenant at my house was Frank Troughton, a new friend I’d made on my return to the university football team. Frank was twenty-one and newly divorced.
“Chip didn’t really have a penchant for football,” says Frank, “because as big and as strong as he was, he just wasn’t mean enough to be a football player. He was stubborn but also incredibly easy going. He was a tall, blonde surfer who walked around Calgary in shorts, flip-flops and no shirt once the temperature got above freezing. I always knew Chip was a little bit different. He was the entrepreneurial type, and I was sure he’d find his way in life.”
Frank also has one especially funny recollection that sums up our life in that place. “I was actually living at the house Chip had bought with the money he’d earned up on the pipeline. I was working security at a bar downtown during Stampede Rodeo Week. Well, I was a bit of a wild man back then, and I ended up getting into a confrontation with a couple of biker guys. I must have pissed them off good because they followed me back to Chip’s place and let me know that they’d be back with a bunch of guys from their gang.
“The bikers took off, and I ran upstairs to wake Chip up—it was around three o’clock in the morning by this point. I said: ‘Hey, we have to we have to get prepared. We’re going to have a situation on our hands here.’ I grabbed my shotgun and went downstairs to the porch. There was Chip walking around the house, stark naked, brandishing a golf club. This is how he would greet a motorcycle gang that was ready to unleash hell.
“The situation was serious enough that a SWAT team was dispatched to the scene and, as luck would have it, those guys arrived at around the same time as the bikers. And there’s Chip, still naked, a golf club in his hands, ready to go down swinging.”
When I look back on my early life, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. As things turned out, I lived in that house until 1985. Still, these events were just prepari
ng me for the next phase of my life.
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1 “Value of $200,000 in 1976.” Inflation Calculator, Saving.org, accessed August 16, 2018, https://www.saving.org/inflation/inflation.php?amount=200,000&year=1976
Chapter 3:
Fine as Wine
Finishing University
As I moved through 1976 and finished my second year in business school, the faculty politely suggested that, perhaps, business school was not for me. I couldn’t pass accounting.
By then, I was so tired of school I took the easiest courses I could just to finish quickly. Despite my struggles with accounting, I majored in economics and got near perfect marks without very much effort. I was a creative business student, and economics is an art. It is a subject in which there is never a right answer, so I succeeded. Economics seemed a relatively easy way to bullshit my way through. I concluded that everyone should take the easiest courses they could because what comes easiest will ultimately be the most fulfilling in life.
Having transferred to the University of Calgary, I played football (a sport in which I was mediocre), wrestled (quite poorly), and swam (only on relay teams). In 1979, after a two-week stint with the local pro football team, I quit to learn how to distance run and to get my two hundred fifty pounds down to two hundred ten.
I graduated in 1979, seven years after I’d started university. I hadn’t blown all my Alaska money just yet. There was one more thing I would spend a lot of money on.
Chip Wilson, Global Person
I still had five free airline tickets anywhere in the world each year. I took full advantage of the opportunity. Although the tickets were free, I spent a lot of money on the trips outside of airfare.
I was very fortunate to have seen as much of the world as I could by my early twenties. On one trip, I had a four-hour layover in Rio while on my way to Cape Town, South Africa. I got off the plane, walked around, and within an hour I had decided Cape Town could wait, maybe indefinitely. At that moment, Rio seemed like the most fantastic place in the world.
It helped, I suppose, that it was New Year’s Eve. I knew nothing about places with names like Copacabana or Ipanema, but everywhere I looked the Brazilians were dressed up in their best. I loved the Latin flair of the culture and how everybody was so expressive, especially when I contrasted Rio against the conservatism of North America.
On another trip, I went to Barbados. I finished my last exam and got on a plane the next day. I told no one I was going. In all these travels, I learned how small the world was. Imagine getting on a plane and going anywhere.
It was 3:00 a.m. on my fourth day in Barbados, and I was at a disco called Alexandria’s. After a few drinks, I turned around and saw someone that looked like my dad. I went up to the man, thinking that perhaps every person really did have a doppelganger, and asked, “Are you my dad?”
He replied, rather matter-of-factly, “Yes,” then asked me if I wanted to go surfing the next day.
I laughed and politely declined. The last place that I had ever wanted to meet my dad’s doppelganger was in a disco in the Caribbean, so we went our separate ways. The moment was surreal.
Towards the end of 1979, my university days were finished, and my free travel perks had come to an end. I had about $85,000 left in the bank and was thinking about what was next.
California Wrap Shorts
As with many other things in my life, the answer turned out to be in California.
In the fall of 1979, on a trip to visit my grandmother in San Diego, I noticed Ocean Pacific (OP) making men’s surf shorts in corduroy for men to wear when not surfing. At the same time, I saw girls wearing wrap shorts that were tied on one side, then brought up underneath and tied again in the back. They came in bright, bold colours and patterns, often safari- or Hawaiian-printed fabrics.
From what I knew about sewing and tailoring—from watching my mother over the years—I noticed how simple, comfortable, and functional these shorts were.
Since I visited California annually, I knew this was a new style. I knew the critical mass of people and trends in California had a way of eventually influencing what people would wear everywhere else. I brought a pair of the shorts back to Calgary as a present to my then-girlfriend, Cindy Wilson (no relation).
I showed her the wrap shorts from California, and she loved them. So did her friends. This was the first positive sign of the demand for the shorts.
My initial thought was for us to make them ourselves. The pattern seemed simple enough, and Cindy and I had learned a thing or two about sewing from our mothers, such as making the first pattern from newsprint. It turned out I’d overestimated my abilities somewhat, and even though I sewed a few pairs after I’d cut the pattern, I don’t think anyone would have wanted to wear them.
I reflected on my mom’s hobby. I believed there had to be other great seamstresses like her that would love to make extra money. I put an ad in the newspaper and quickly got replies from perhaps a dozen women. This was an encouraging response, but I wanted to narrow the field further, so I could ensure high-quality work.
To do this, we cut bolts of fabric—all of it 100 percent cotton and brightly flowered or otherwise boldly patterned—and delivered the fabric to each seamstress who’d answered ads. I asked them to make ten of the wrap shorts. From there I narrowed it down to the five who did good work.
Of those five, one woman produced significantly more than the other four. Her name was Josephine Terratiano. Josephine, a wonderful Italian woman, was sharing the work with her relatives, who, like her, were all highly-skilled couture tailors. This became my own Italian connection.
As my mother, her husband, and my sister and brother had moved back to the States, and my dad spent more time at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, the Terratianos became almost a second family.
“My mom was a seamstress, and my sisters were seamstresses,” Josephine recalls, “but my only profession is sewing. I did all my sewing with all my heart. And Chip, he was lucky to find me!”
Josephine and her sisters made about three hundred pairs of the shorts, and I branded them Fine as Wine as a nod to Billy O’Callaghan, my old mentor on the pipeline. After Cindy and I sold the shorts to her friends, I took them to the major department stores in Calgary to see if they might be interested in selling them.
Nobody seemed to believe these shorts were viable or sellable on any level.
This was my first inventory problem. Lots of product and nowhere to sell, but I was confident if I could get past the store buyers, people would want the product. The idea was to get people living a kilometre above sea-level and a twelve-hour drive from the West Coast excited about Southern California-inspired surf wear. I couldn’t do it by selling wholesale to big department stores. That meant I would have to figure out how to get out of this inventory mess myself.
The more I considered the problem, the more I came back to one of the most basic sales concepts I could imagine—a lemonade stand!
The plan was simple. A nice-looking wooden booth and a three-month summertime lease in downtown Calgary. That was my plan to sell my stock of shorts and the genesis of a sophisticated vertical retail business. Cindy would work the booth all week. We would both work on weekends.
Assessing Career Options
A few months after making three hundred pairs of shorts and graduating from university, I’d received a letter from London Life Insurance, one of the biggest insurance companies in Canada. It was a wonderful letter, full of compliments. Apparently, these people knew who I was from my varsity sports.
“We have been following you and your esteemed athletic career at university, and we feel you’d be a great employee at London Life,” they told me. Here was one option.
I called London Life, and they invited me for an interview. When I arrived, I noticed how everyone was very prim and proper. The Calgary formal look: a Prada suit with alligator cowboy boots. But anyone who knew me back then knew all I ever wore were shorts and sandals
, even through the winter. That was how I dressed for the interview. I’d been so enamoured by their letter, I thought they knew me on some personal, intimate level—enough to know how I liked to dress.
In reality, London Life’s initial correspondence with me was more of a form letter, made to sound intimate and personal. They didn’t know me at all. I did not get the job at London Life.
I then applied for a job at Dome Petroleum, a Calgary-based oil and gas company. I wore a suit. With my economics degree in hand, Dome hired me on as a Landman. I remember getting dressed in a suit in front of the mirror and saying to myself, “Halloween, every day.”
Working as a Landman meant negotiating mineral rights, exploration rights, and various business agreements. I worked on the thirtieth floor of the Dome Tower in downtown Calgary, and my salary was about $30,000 a year—good money for a boy of twenty-five. I was terrible at my job, and I apologize to anyone with whom I had to work.
I had one of the first female managers in the oil business, and she was great, but I wasn’t the right putty out of which to make a decent employee. I was sent to many courses, but I couldn’t pay attention because my own mind was too busy. My mind was muddled with fundamental questions of life. Would I ever get married? Could I get a date for Friday night? Would I have enough money to retire? Would I ever have children? Could I pay for a family? What would happen if I got sick? Etc.
There were no courses that would develop my maturity. I couldn’t pile on work development courses until I had myself figured out.
Shortly after I started at Dome, I met a guy named Scott Sibley, who had just come to Dome through a merger. We’d both been at the University of Alberta at the same time. Some of Scott’s closest friends had been on the football team with me. We figured we must have been at dozens of house parties together (as I recall, Scott would have a cocktail in his hand and a girl on his arm, while I would have a litre of milk in mine and no girl), but we’d never formally met.
As much as I knew my job at Dome was a good one, I knew I was looking at the same trap I’d experienced on the pipeline in Alaska—trading my life for money. The goal of working for myself by age thirty gave me a tangible sense of something to work toward, particularly with Fine as Wine (now renamed Westbeach) just getting off the ground.
