Jack O'Neill (businessman)

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Jack O'Neill (2010)

Jack O'Neill (born March 27, 1923 in Denver , Colorado - † June 2, 2017 in Santa Cruz , California ) was an American entrepreneur . He is often referred to as the inventor of the wetsuit , although this invention goes back to the physicist Hugh Bradner (1915-2008), who was friends with O'Neill . In 1952 he founded the O'Neill company , which today is best known as a manufacturer of surf clothing and equipment, as well as sports and winter clothing.

life and career

Jack O'Neill was born on March 27, 1923 in Denver, the capital of the US state of Colorado, but grew up mainly in Portland , Oregon . He then moved with his family to Southern California and discovered his love for surfing as early as the 1930s . After initially working as a stable boy and lumberjack, he joined the United States Army Air Corps for a few years and then moved to San Francisco in 1949 . Here he initially earned his living as a commercial fisherman and then sold aluminum for the construction industry, fire extinguishers and roof windows . In his free time he preferred to spend time on the beach and was a regular surfer. Since he was only wearing swimming trunks and was often very cold, he experimented with different materials to develop a suit that could protect him from the cold. At first he stuffed his swimming trunks with flexible PVC , which he got from the now defunct Sutro Baths or the also defunct Fleishhacker Pool . After he was able to record his first successes, he started a family with his wife Marjorie, called Marge. With his friend, physicist Hugh Bradner , who gave him a neoprene foam showed he developed the wetsuit . Today the invention is not awarded to O'Neill, but to Bradner, who approached O'Neill with the neoprene foam. Around 1952, O'Neill founded one of California's first surf shops , which he simply called the Surf Shop . This business started out in a garage on the Great Highway in San Francisco, not far from his favorite place for body surfing . O'Neill, who until recently had the original license of this shop, sold surfboards made of balsa wood , paraffin wax and the first, not yet fully developed neoprene vests and suits to the few surfers on the beach and to tourists, for which he initially still did was ridiculed because surfing was not very popular at the time. When the business began to flourish, he had the talented surfer and surfboard builder Phil Edwards flown in to make surfboards for him. The use of wetsuits and vests increased the number of surfers who could now spend longer periods of time in the water. This made Northern California a year-round surfing region. Then the first surf spots opened in Oregon, Washington and even in Canada . Over time, the wetsuit not only caught on among surfers, but was also worn by divers , water skiers , skiers and later also windsurfers .

In 1959 he moved his company to Santa Cruz , about 90 miles south , where the company is still based today. When business was booming in the 1960s, O'Neill and his company settled in the southeast of the city, where there was now space for a large production facility. His six children, whom he had with Marjorie, who died in 1973, also came to work here. In 1964 he founded the O'Neill Surf Team in Santa Cruz , where he made surfboards available to the best surfers in Santa Cruz and thus appeared as a sponsor for the first time.

In 1971 and 1972, respectively, he lost sight of his left eye as a result of a surfing accident caused by the nylon leash, invented by his son Pat a year earlier, to connect the surfer's leg to the board while he was doing The Hook in Santa Cruz, where he had lived since 1959, surfed. As a result of the accident, Jack O'Neill wore an eye patch from that time , which was his trademark until the end and contributed to the popularity of the O'Neill brand . O'Neill's bearded face, reminiscent of a pirate with its black eye patch, became the company's new logo.

By 1980 Jack O'Neill's former surf shop had grown into a flourishing and internationally active company. At that time, O'Neill was already recognized as the world leader in the wetsuit market and one of the leading beach lifestyle sportswear companies in the United States, Japan and Europe . In 1985, after leading the company for decades, he handed it over to his son Pat, who is still running it as CEO today (as of 2017) . From this time on, O'Neill had more time for his beloved leisure activities, such as surfing, sailing and numerous environmental projects . In addition to a great interest in saving the great white shark from extinction, Jack O'Neil founded the non-profit organization O'Neill Sea Odyssey in 1996 . As part of this project, students learn about marine biology and the relationship between the oceans and the environment in an active class . The award-winning project received the Conservation Champion award from Senator Barbara Boxer in 2005 .

Jack O'Neill, the company continued to be heard after the handover of the CEO office to his son as CEO, is considered among others (but probably wrongly, see beach sailing ) as the inventor of the so-called sand Sailer , a sailboat on wheels, which primarily through Sand can drive. In addition, O'Neill, always referred to as an adventurer, is one of the first to produce foamed surfboards instead of balsa wood surfboards. In addition to water sports, his greatest passion was hot-air ballooning throughout his life , and he was one of the first to do this as a leisure activity. In addition, in 1965 he is said to have been the first American to own a privately owned hot air balloon. From 1968 he combined his two passions and started his balloon flights from boats. Since he often ended up in the water, he came up with a new idea and in 1970 he invented the so-called SuperSuit , a wetsuit that the wearer of the suit could inflate himself and thus prevent drowning. Almost 50 years later this idea was taken up again by the United States Navy ; Since then, she has been using such suits for outdoor swimming activities and training.

In Santa Cruz he opened, among other things, a 780 m 2 yacht center and helped salvage sunken ships. Furthermore, he was always involved in social projects, among other things he became the patron of a school for dyslexic children, as he was a dyslexic himself. Awards O'Neill have received over the years include induction into the International Surfing Hall of Fame (1991), a place on the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame (1998), and election to the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association Waterman of the Year (2000) or receiving the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Northern California region (2002). In 2002, his company was the first major surfing company in the world to celebrate its 50th anniversary. He also helped his hometown Santa Cruz to be named World Surfing Reserve , one of now (as of 2017) eight such regions worldwide.

O'Neill, who suffered a stroke in 2005, lived in his beach house in Pleasure Point , California , not far from Santa Cruz and died on June 2, 2017 at the age of 94.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jack O'Neill in the Surfing Encyclopedia. In: surglich.com. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b Surfing whodunit. In: latimes.com. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b Senator Boxer Gives "Conservation Champion" Award to O'Neill Sea Odyssey. ( Memento of December 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: senate.gov. Accessed January 15, 2016
  4. ↑ Amy Larson: Jack O'Neill, Santa Cruz surf wetsuit pioneer, dies. In: ksbw.com. Monterey Hearst Television Inc., June 2, 2017, accessed June 3, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME O'Neill, Jack
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Denver , Colorado , United States
DATE OF DEATH 2nd June 2017
Place of death Santa Cruz , California , United States