Brian Smith Founder Ugg Boots
At 29, Brian decided that a life in Public Accounting was not for him! He quit his job and went to California to look for a new business idea and to surf all the legendary breaks such as Rincon, Malibu, Dana Point and Windansea. He soon noticed that there were no sheepskin boots in California, so he and a friend brought six pairs from Australia to test and so, “UGG” was born and over the next seventeen years Brian built it into a national brand and solidified himself as a business expert.
The business grew too big for Brian to finance, so he sold it to Deckers Outdoor Corporation. The new team built upon the “casual comfort” theme and through style development, merchandising and great marketing, established UGG as an International fashion brand, with sales exceeding one billion dollars for each of the past five years. In 2000, he founded Prefast, a company that provided pre-cast concrete walls in a two-story configuration for California schools.
