Enterprising surfer and surfwear executive from Newport Beach, California; leader of the brightly colored California New Wave surfers in the late 1970s and early '80s; marketing ace for surfwear giant Quiksilver since the mid-'80s. "Danny was Quiksilver's conduit to the kids on the beach," surf journalist Phil Jarratt wrote, "and thus became the 'rainman' to a $10-billion surf industry market leader."
Kwock was born (1961) in Honolulu, began surfing in Waikiki at age eight, and moved with his family to Newport at 12. He became interested in fashion in 1978 after paging through an issue of Vogue magazine, and in 1980 he made the cover of Surfer riding a polka-dot surfboard and wearing a full-length red, white, and powder-blue wetsuit. While best remembered as a flashy performance rider, Kwock also had a taste for bigger, more powerful waves, and often turned up at the infamous Newport Wedge. "I rode a surfboard there, which was unheard of at the time," Kwock later said. "To me it was the ultimate. Surfing in front of thousands of spectators lined up to see blood. The Wedge was where I began to understand how entertaining Surfing socal could be."
Kwock first came to Quiksilver's attention in 1978 when he got caught stealing surf trunks from the company's Costa Mesa warehouse. After diligently working off his debt, Kwock became a Quiksilver team rider, then took an office job, and in 1986 he was named the company's marketing director. He helped develop the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau contest at Waimea Bay, Hawaii (first held in 1984), as well as the Men Who Ride Mountains contest at Maverick's in California (first held in 1999). Kwock also helped both future world champions Kelly Slater and Lisa Andersen to the Quiksilver team. In 2002, Kwock was named President of the company's new Quiksilver Entertainment division.
In the early 1990s, Kwock was a $15,000 founding investor in a new company called Volcom. As surf writer Phil Jarratt later noted, this was an "open secret" at Quiksilver, and nobody seemed to mind. When Volcom went public in 2005, however, and Kwock was suddenly a $50-million shareholder, conflict-of-interest issues came to the fore, and Kwock's long relationship with Quiksilver came to an end.
