school without shoes or life without video games. Well, if you were one
of Jack O'Neill's children, founder of O'Neill Inc. and wetsuit inventor,
you might very well listen as he told ice-cold horror stories that drove
him to develop our trusty neoprene armor. Hell, you may end up helping
with a few inventions of your own.
In 1952, Jack opened his first surf shop in a garage across the Great
Highway in San Francisco, a sand dune away from his favorite bodysurfing
break. There he sold his first wetsuits, a few vests he made from gluing
together pieces of neoprene. From that very garage Jack expanded the average
surfer's playground from Steamer Lane to J-Bay, Antarctica and those fun
reefbreaks off the coast of Iceland. Thanks to Jack O'Neill, "It's
always summer on the inside."
"Surfing in the 50s was great," says Jack. "You knew
everybody and we all took turns on the waves." But surfing in the
1950s also meant short sessions due to the cold water temperatures,
and surfers tried anything to stay warm. "I remember one guy that
tried to keep warm with a navy jumper and he put Thompson's Water Seal
on it," recalls Jack.
"He set out in an oil slick all by himself." Cold and sick
of cutting his sessions short at Ocean Beach, Jack embarked on a mission
to create the wetsuit.
Jack soon became a regular at surplus stores collecting old WWII frogmen
suits. "These suits consisted of a thin sheet of rubber, worn over
something like long underwear," says Jack. "The air trapped
in the underwear gave the insulation. But in the rough surf the suit
would come apart at the waist entry, water would get in, displacing
the air and making it hazardous."
Working with different types of flexible foam, his first success was
with polyvinylchloride (PVC). While it had good insulating properties,
it was prone to a lot of wear and tear so he glued a sheet of plastic
to the PVC and made a vest. Voila! His first wetsuit. Yet, while PVC
served its purpose, it was hard to work with and Jack went back to the
drawing board.
Jack finally struck gold with neoprene, which he discovered carpeting
the aisle of a DC-3 passenger plane.
It was a good insulator, buoyant and easy to bond. Soon after Jack developed
designs for the shorty, long john and long-sleeved beaver-tailed jacket
wetsuits. "I got a lot of laughs," remembers Jack. "Surfers
would come up from down south and I remember one of them saying, 'Maybe
you clowns up here need a suit but never us.' I was just trying to do
more surfing, have some surfing friends and get a little income."
Despite all the naysayers, the vests started to fly off the hangers
and O'Neill was in business.
Since then, O'Neill has made countless improvements to the design and
quality of the wetsuit, from the introduction of the zigzag stitch to
the most recently patented Zipperless Entry Neck (Z.E.N.) design. But
accomplishments are nothing new to the O'Neill family. Jack was always
a man of firsts, responsible for creating the modern-day surf shop.
While guys like Dale Velzy and Hobie Alter had shops down south, they
only sold boards.
"Since I was making wetsuits and surfboards, I decided to call
my place Surf Shop. And I was able to get a federal trademark registration
on the name surf shop too," says Jack. He also pioneered the surfboard
travel bag and was one of the first to start blowing foam blanks.
The inventor's gene seems to run in the family, too. His son Pat was
a pioneer in developing the leash, affectionately known as the "kook
cord" back then. Using materials such as nylon lines, suction cups
and surgical tubing, Pat found ways to prevent his board from crashing
into the cliffs and breaking in half.
"It was extremely hard to see the surgical tubing, and when I fell
off my board, the board went into the wave and stretched the tubing
out 22- to 23-feet," says Pat. "And then it came racing back
like a speeding bullet. People had never seen anything like this. They
thought it was a remote control or something."
O'Neill has been and still is a family-run company. The O'Neill kids
-- Pat, Mike, Cathy, Bridget, Shawn, Tim and Jack "JJ" --
plunged into the business at an early age, literally. As part of his
marketing strategy, Jack took his wetsuits to all the major boat shows
in the 50s and plopped his wetsuit-clad kids on a block of ice to prove
that the rubber suits worked.
As they grew older, all seven kids were put to work in some aspect of
the company. "Jack worked hard and instilled a strong work ethic
with us," says Pat. "I started out in the company cleaning
toilets in the wetsuit factory."
"It's great having a business that your kids are interested in,"
adds Jack. "It was something they all wanted to be involved in."
Today, Pat serves as president and CEO while Bridget is executive vice
president of international design. Tim, a United States Coast Guard
licensed captain, heads up the O'Neill Yacht Division and runs all maritime
operations, and Mike contributes new ideas for wetsuit design.
Jack keeps a hand in the business as chairman, but now dedicates most
of his time to a growing non-profit program called "The O'Neill
Sea Odyssey," an ocean education program for kids. Through the
program, the crew takes elementary schoolchildren out on a 65-foot catamaran
in Monterey Bay where they learn about marine science, ecology and navigation.
The trip is free, but they do require the kids to earn it by doing community
service such as cleaning up a beach.
"The objective of Sea Odyssey is to teach kids about our living
ocean and emphasize that we must take care of it," says Jack. "We
take a lot of underprivileged kids and it opens a lot of doors for them.
I've had kids tell me they were going to be this or that but then decide
they're going to be a marine biologist."
To date, the program has taken out over 17,000 kids, just one of many
success stories made as O'Neill evolved from a small garage surf shop
to an international company with over 70 distributors. Since 1952, it
has become the world's premiere wetsuit manufacturer and has expanded
into other sports like snowboarding, wakeboarding and triathlons. And
while not highly publicized, O'Neill also makes specialized wetsuit
gear for a number of elite military special operations and combat rescue
units. The contracts do not bring in a significant profit; in fact,
many are losses, but according to Pat, it helps them push the edge of
research and development, which in turn benefits the design of regular
wetsuits.
Yet, despite all the growth and change, one thing remains the same.
Ever since he glued his first wetsuit together, Jack's vision for the
company has been steadfast: to make the best product to allow surfers
to surf longer and progress at their sport without being restricted
by the element of nature.
So what's left for a company that has accomplished so much? "I
would like O'Neill to stay just as it is," says Jack. "The
kids are doing a great job, and I like the way we continue to take care
of the surf shops that have supported us in the past. I never thought
anything like this could possibly happen; it's beyond my fondest dreams."
-- Bonnie Cha
Posted by Jacks Surfboards.
