Boardriders appoints new COO

By

Robin Driver

Published
Nov 28, 2021

California-based board sports equipment group Boardriders has reportedly named Deborah Palmer Keiser as its new chief operating officer.

 
According to a report from Shop-Eat-Surf.com citing information shared with Boardriders employees, Keiser will join the company, which owns brands including Quiksilver, Roxy and Billabong, on December 13, 2021. She will be based at the group’s HQ in Huntington Beach, California, and succeeds Colin Smith, who has been serving as interim COO for the past few months.
 
Most recently, Keiser was president at specialty bag and travel brand Timbuk2, a role that she stepped into in February 2020. Over the last three years, she has also worked as a business and leadership development specialist, consulting for early and mid-stage companies.

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Her recent experience also includes periods spent serving as chief supply chain officer at Yeezy LLC, VP for sourcing, product and supply chain at Sundance Holdings Group, and president at Alabama Chanin.
 
Over the course of the 90s and the early 2000s, Keiser racked up experience in leadership roles at the likes of Victoria’s Secret and Gap, before joining Williams Sonoma as senior vice president for international operations in 2006. In this role, the executive drove the group’s international expansion by working to establish its brands, which include Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm, in 16 countries. During this time, Keiser lived in France, a market where Boardriders has sizable operations.
 
Keiser’s appointment comes a few short months after Boardriders announced that it had named Nicolas Foulet as president of EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), a region that had previously been overseen by Greg Healy, president for Asia-Pacific, since the departure of Thomas Chambolle in 2019.
 
The move was implemented as part of the strategic plan introduced by the company’s new CEO Arne Arens, who took charge of Boardriders in March of this year and was convinced that the EMEA region needed its own president.
 
According to Shop-Eat-Surf.com, Keiser will begin international travel in January in order to meet Boardriders’ global teams.