A Classic Piece of California Surf Culture

Inspired By ACL

In the late 1950s, Nancy and Walter Katin were in the business of making canvas boat covers, and the "multi" billion dollar surf wear industry of the late nineties and beyond was all but unimaginable. Yet one day a young man came into the Katin's shop in Surfside, California, complaining of the difficulty in finding a pair of swim shorts durable enough to stand up to the then-quirky pastime of surfboard riding. Walter focused on a vision with his sewing machine and some of the sturdy boat canvas previously used for boat covers and whipped up the first pair of Kanvas by Katin surf trunks . The surfer was stoked. Word of Nancy and Walter's creation quickly spread up and down the coast, and the Katin's were suddenly in the surf trunk business. The American surf wear industry was born. To make a very long and famous story somewhat short, the popularity of Katin surf trunks grew and grew. By the time the sport of surfing boomed in popularity in the mid-1960s with the Gidget & Beach Boys era, Katins were firmly entrenched as the grooviest surf trunk around. And so they remained, even as other companies came and went. The Katins kept making their high-quality surf trunks, selling them from the Surfside store and through a network of surf shop dealers all over the Western Hemisphere. From the sixties to the seventies, virtually every top surfer wore Katins[1] and all were proud to appear in surf magazine ads for their favorite trunks.

Their loyalty wasn't just because Nancy and Walter made great surf trunks - the Katins loved the surfers who came into their shop, and the surfers loved them. Walter Katin passed on in 1967, and Nancy continued to run the shop and the business in the same manner as before.

In 1976, just as professional surfing was starting to take off, Nancy initiated an annual Pro/Am Team Challenge at the Huntington Beach Pier as a way to let the surfers show their stuff. All the world's best surfers came to compete, but so did all the hot young kids from Any Beach, USA, who were given the chance to surf side-by-side with their heroes. Winning the Katin Team Challenge instantly became one of the surfing world's most prestigious accomplishments.

By the late seventies, the surf industry had begun a decade of explosive growth, but that wasn't important to Nancy. Her involvement with surfing had nothing to do with cashing in on the sport, it was based on her love of "her boys".

In the early eighties, Nancy's health began to decline and expansion of the company was the last thing on anyone's mind. Yet at this time, the popularity of surf wear began to skyrocket, and many other manufacturers were quick to take advantage of the trend, aggressively attacking the market with slick advertising and worldwide promotional blitzes. Katin, however, was content to keep things low-key, continuing to sew up the best surf trunks you could buy in the back room of the Surfside store, selling them up front and through the same loyal network of surf shops.

In 1986 Nancy Katin passed on. Although they were like parents to a generation of surfers, the Katins never had any children of their own, and Nancy left the business to her loyal friend and seamstress, Sato Hughes, who had begun sewing trunks for the Katins back in 1961.

Continue Reading Here
and here

Swim Trunk Photos: ACL
Text: Wikipedia