People ask me about Willie before they ask me about the wax. Honestly, that's fair. He's the better-looking one of us.
So this is the story of how a 6-pound chihuahua ended up on every bar of wax I pour out of a garage on Pacific Coast Highway. It's not a marketing story. It's just what happened.
I started mixing wax because everything I bought kept melting
I grew up surfing the North Shore. Cold water wasn't a thing. The wax in the shop was the wax that worked, and you didn't think about it. Then I moved to California in 2019 and suddenly it was 78°F in August and my "all-temp" bar was sliding off the deck like butter on a hot pan.
I tried everything on the shelf. Sticky Bumps. Sex Wax. The drugstore stuff a buddy swore by. Some of it was great. Some of it was great once, and then it'd ball up after a week. I was buying three bars a month and getting frustrated, which is a lot of frustration to have about something that costs $2.50.
So I started mixing my own. Not because I had a business plan. Because I had a kitchen, a double-boiler, and time. I'd melt down a bar, add more beeswax, melt it again, pour it into a Tupperware lid, and try it on Saturday at Puka Pier. Half the time it was worse than what I started with. The other half it was just different.
Then I found Willie
In the spring of 2022 I went to a Long Beach shelter to look at a bigger dog. A retriever-something. I came home with Willie. I will not be defending this decision because there's nothing to defend. He looked up at me. That was that.
The first time I took him to the beach, he walked right up to my longboard sitting on the sand and put his front paws on it like he'd been waiting his whole life for the introduction. I have a photo of it somewhere. I should find it.
What I figured out that summer is that Willie has opinions. He has an opinion about every batch of wax I pour. If a bar's too soft, he ignores it. If it's right, he stands on it. If it's too good, he lies down on it and refuses to move, which is a problem because I'm trying to surf.
That's how the tail-wag rating started. It was a joke. Then it stopped being a joke. Now every bar gets one because — and I'm being completely serious — he's the most consistent quality control system I've got.
The garage became a thing
I started giving bars away to friends at Pelican Bluff. Then their friends. Then a guy at the Tide Pools paddled up to me one morning and asked where he could buy "the wax with the dog on it." I didn't have an answer because I wasn't selling wax. I was just making it.
That conversation is why Willie's exists. I went home, designed a paper-label wrapper that night, and ordered 500 of them. They sat in my garage for three weeks before I worked up the nerve to actually charge somebody money for a bar.
The first sale was to my neighbor. He paid me in cash. I put the cash in a coffee can. The coffee can is still in the garage. It's been promoted to ceremonial status.
What I'm trying to make
I'm not trying to be Sex Wax. I'm not trying to be on every shelf at every surf shop in the country. I'm one guy in Puka Cove pouring small batches in a garage with a chihuahua on the workbench. The wax is good because I can't sell bad wax to people who live ten minutes from my house — they'll come tell me.
What I want Willie's to be is a brand that feels like a friend made it. Because a friend did. The friend has bad knees and prefers warm water. The friend's dog is opinionated. The friend will tell you straight up if you bought the wrong temperature bar.
So that's the origin story. Rider Made, Four Paw Approved. A garage on PCH. WILLIE'S TAKE: he says hi.