Billabong's Early Years: Garage Start to Global Surf Brand

calendar Jun 7, 2026 / · 5 min read · Billabong Brand History Surf Culture Australia  ·
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The boardshorts came first, and they came out of a home workshop on Queensland's Gold Coast. In 1973, Gordon and Rena Merchant began cutting and stitching board shorts at home and selling them to local surf shops along the coast. Gordon, a keen surfer and board shaper, had a specific complaint with the trunks available at the time: the seams gave out. His answer was a triple-stitched construction durable enough to survive real surf use, and that durability — not a logo, not an advertising campaign — is what built the early business. Billabong's later move into skate-adjacent streetwear, including the Bad Billy's sub-label launched in 1987, only makes sense against this origin: a brand that grew out of the water and the retail network that served it.

A brand born on a global surf coast

Billabong did not appear in a vacuum. It arrived inside a surf culture that was already international, and understanding that map is the key to understanding everything the company did next.

Surfing's modern taproot is Hawaiian. The sport was carried into the twentieth century by figures such as Duke Kahanamoku, and the Hawaiian Islands — especially the North Shore of Oahu — remained the spiritual and competitive center of big-wave surfing. From Hawaii the culture moved to California, where postwar beach towns turned surfing into an industry of boards, wax, films, and fashion, and where the phrase "sidewalk surfing" would soon describe the skateboarding that grew directly out of it. And it moved to Australia and New Zealand, whose long, consistent coastlines and deep beach-going tradition made them a surf mecca in their own right rather than a satellite of California.

The Gold Coast, where the Merchants started, sat at the Australian end of that transpacific axis. Points like Burleigh Heads and Kirra were — and are — world-class waves. A company founded there was founded at a genuine center of surfing, not on its margins, which is part of why an Australian boardshort maker could credibly grow into a global brand.

The beach ecosystem that fed the business

Billabong's early customers were not an abstract market. They were the people who filled a particular coastal economy, and that economy was broadening fast through the 1970s.

The hardware of surfing was itself in flux. The late-1960s shortboard revolution had compressed boards from long, heavy logs into shorter, lighter foam-and-fiberglass shapes that changed how and where people surfed. Around the same time, the water filled with new kinds of riders. In 1971 Tom Morey built the first Morey Boogie bodyboard from a scrap of polyethylene foam; by 1977 he was producing tens of thousands a year, and bodyboarding put a wave-riding craft within reach of anyone who could swim. Beneath all of it sat body surfing — the oldest, equipment-free form of the same impulse — and the lifeguard culture organized around it.

In Australia that culture had institutional weight. The Surf Life Saving movement dates to 1907, when the Surf Bathing Association of New South Wales formed and clubs like Bondi began organizing patrols; by the late twentieth century it counted well over a hundred thousand members across hundreds of clubs. The beach was not just a place people visited. It was a place with its own organizations, uniforms, rituals, and retail needs — boardshorts, wetsuits, boards, fins, leashes, wax. A brand that made gear good enough for that world had a ready-made audience, and a reason to keep expanding the catalogue.

From kitchen table to distribution machine

What turned Billabong from a cottage operation into a company was distribution. The Merchants sold to surf shops first, and as the durable-boardshort reputation spread, that wholesale network widened — first across Australia, then internationally through the late 1970s and 1980s as the global appetite for branded surf apparel grew. Licensing and export arrangements carried the label into the United States and Europe, plugging it into the same surf-retail channels that already moved boards and beachwear in California and beyond.

That network is the single most important asset for the story this site tells. By the mid-1980s Billabong was not a boardshort maker hoping to be noticed; it was an established surf brand with relationships, shelf space, and sales representatives across multiple continents. When skateboarding's late-1980s boom created demand for a harder, streetwear-leaning aesthetic, a company in Billabong's position did not have to build a path to market. It already had one.

Why the founding story matters to Bad Billy's

Bad Billy's, launched in 1987, was a skate and streetwear sub-label — and a sub-label is only as viable as the parent that stands behind it. The reason a separate skate-oriented brand could exist at all was that Billabong had spent more than a decade building the production capacity, the retail relationships, and the credibility that a new label could draw on from day one.

The founding years explain the rest of the catalogue. They explain why an Australian surf company had the standing to address skaters; why it could reach shops on three continents; and why its move into skate culture came through an established surf brand rather than a startup. The Bad Billy's story does not begin in 1987. It begins with two people stitching boardshorts strong enough to last, on a coast that happened to be one of the great centers of an international surf culture.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who founded Billabong?

Billabong was founded by Gordon Merchant together with his then-partner Rena Merchant. Gordon, a surfer and board shaper, designed the company's first board shorts; Rena was part of the operation from the outset, making and selling the early products.

When and where was Billabong founded?

The company started in 1973 on Queensland's Gold Coast in Australia. The Merchants made the first board shorts at home and sold them to surf shops along the coast before the brand grew into a national and then international business.

What was Billabong's first product?

Board shorts. The brand's early reputation rested on durable, triple-stitched seams that held up to real surf use — a practical advantage that drove word-of-mouth and wholesale orders well before any large advertising effort.

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