Alex De La Pena: General Manager in San Clemente, CA

I was initially hired as the Creative Manager by the licensee of FMF Apparel. When the Emler family ended the license agreement in 2017 I transitioned into the General Manager role for FMF Apparel. Since I was a kid I had always been a fan of FMF and racing in general. Even though I had not worked in the Moto space prior to this, my skillset from the skate, surf and snowboard industry allowed me to adapt quickly.

What a great experience this was. I got back together with my older brother Vince De la Pena. He wanted to create a new style of youth culture apparel. " Putting the Special back into Specialty " was our motto. This was simple because at the time the industry no longer was special. We were named Break our Brand of the year from SIMA, every year we were in business. We wound up creating a brand out of gate that the majority of the specialty retailers were on board, and brought in to their stores.

Thankfully I was ready for a change. When Billabong acquired Element Skateboards, they brought two employees with the the "Founder" , marketing manager, and art director. The company needed a Design Director for apparel and I was ready for the challenge. A great experience in learning the corporate world. I was very thankful for the opportunity.

With my older brother Vince De La Pena in a slow motion retirement from his professional surfing career, decided he wanted to go into apparel. I found that my education in arts ( culinary ) had the very same skill set as in apparel, or any other kind of design. So it didn't take me long to start learning apparel design. Its great to see that the work we put in in 1992 is still relevant today.