KATIN

About KATIN

Katin began in the summer of 1954, when Nancy and Walter Katin opened a small boat cover business in the beach town of Surfside, California. Their canvas covers, sewn with waxed-nylon thread and nickel grommets, were considered bulletproof. Then a local teenager named Corky Carroll, later one of the world's first professional surfers, asked for trunks that would outlast his cut-off jeans. Walter made him a pair from the same canvas, and they became some of California's first surf trunks. Demand grew, so Walter brought in a local seamstress, Sato Hughes. By the mid-1960s, surfers such as Gerry Lopez, Shaun Tomson and Mark Richards were wearing them. Katin USA still makes surf trunks and California-inspired surf apparel.