Libby Stockstill didn’t just join Billabong International Ltd.’s in-house legal team in Irvine—she built one.
“I had to hit the ground running while working to get to know the business and its needs to determine what the scope of the role and department should be and what the resourcing should look like,” said Stockstill, who was honored as a Rising Star at the Business Journal’s seventh annual General Counsel Awards dinner on Nov. 2 at Hotel Irvine. “This involved building relationships with the leadership, brands and departments to integrate myself and the department and help ensure the North American legal team is of maximum effectiveness and value to the business.”
The Australia-based action sports apparel and footwear company has a market value of about $187 million and keeps headquarters for three brands in Orange County—Element and RVCA in Costa Mesa and Billabong USA in Irvine.
Strong Foundation
Stockstill’s 2014 move to the surfwear powerhouse combined some of the things she liked most about her previous employer, Latham & Watkins LLP in Costa Mesa, where she worked for eight years with “great companies and strong brands” as a “trusted adviser to key business constituents and taking on complex, challenging projects,” Stockstill said in an email.
It also was a unique opportunity to be part of something new, she said, “with an iconic brand I grew up with and its portfolio of other incredible brands during a time of sweeping change.”
She since has been promoted to the role of senior corporate counsel for the U.S. division and has grown the North American legal department to include a senior paralegal and a corporate counsel.
Stockstill’s duties include overseeing legal matters for all three brands, including intellectual property, real estate, governance and regulatory issues, mergers and acquisitions, employment and marketing. She is also involved in negotiation of sponsorship and licensing agreements.
“It gives me the opportunity to wear my business hat, in addition to my legal one, which is exciting and rewarding,” she said. “I enjoy getting to think strategically while leveraging my legal skills. I also have much more extensive client contact at every level, being a part of the business from the inside, which has given me the opportunity to work with a vast array of intelligent, passionate people with different talents and backgrounds.”
Stronger Future
Her team is now helping Billabong streamline its operation via a “global omnichannel platform” that will support all of the company’s brands and that allows for integration of brick-and-mortar retail, e-commerce, customer relationship management, social media, content management and international shipping, in a multilanguage and multicurrency environment.
She worked on a July deal for La Jolla-based hard goods brand Sector 9, which Billabong sold to Bravo Sports Corp. in Santa Fe Springs, and on a spinoff of online retailers Swell and Surfstitch, for which Billabong got $32.4 million in August 2014.
Her team also assisted with development and implementation of a minimum-advertised price policy and an online retail sales and marketing agreement for the U.S. and Canada “that will help the brands protect and build upon their image and reputation in the marketplace.”
Stockstill, while at Latham, “represented clients in billions of dollars of public and private mergers and acquisitions,” including serving as counsel to Costa Mesa-based action-sports apparel maker Volcom Inc. when Kering in Paris—then known as PPR—acquired it along with San Clemente-based sunglasses and goggles brand, Electric Visual, in 2011 for $608 million. She also represented Jeremy Johnson and Jerrod Blandino, co-founders of Too Faced Cosmetics Inc. in Irvine, who in 2012 sold a majority stake in the makeup brand to San Francisco-based Weston Presidio for $71.3 million.
Stockstill got her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California-Los Angeles and her law degree from Notre Dame Law School. She has served as an ambassador for the Orangewood Foundation since 2013, and from 2011 to 2013 was a member of the board of directors of Working Wardrobes, an Irvine-based nonprofit organization that provides career training, job placement assistance and professional wardrobe services.
Stockstill also provided pro bono legal services for Half the Sky Movement LLC to develop and produce four-hour documentary series “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” which is based on the best-selling book of the same name by Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism.
“It is important to me to continue in the long line of people paving the way for women who want to follow their dreams and ambitions in their lives and careers,” Stockstill said by email. “I have benefited from mentors who have helped steer me on this path, and I hope that I can do the same for others. I also believe in equal rights and equal opportunities, and I’m excited by many of the role models and dialogues gaining more attention in recent times.
