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Bertlemann, Larry

Beachwear company cofounded in the early 1960s by surf entrepreneur Duke Boyd, originally based in Long Beach, California. Hang Ten "took surfwear in a new dimension," historian Peter Westwick wrote. "It stitched up the cachet of surfing and sold it in department stores to customers who had never seen a surfboard."

Boyd, a Kansas-born Army vet surfer attending Long Beach State College, approached Long Beach-based clothing manufacturer Doris Moore with an idea for making a canvas and flannel jacket for surfers. She instead pointed to one of Boyd's sketches for surf trunks and suggested they try that instead. Samples were made, Boyd began visiting Southern California surf shops, and two weeks later had orders for 500 pairs.

While the Hang Ten founding date is often reported as being 1960, a 1964 

 article reported that the company shipped its first order of trunks on May 1, 1962. Katin surf trunks, by that time, had been popular among California surfers for three years; M. Nii Taylor, a small storefront on the West Side of Oahu, had been making custom surfing trunks (including the Makaha Drowner model) since the early '50s.

The Hang Ten name itself came about when Moore, a non-surfer, asked Boyd, "What would be the equivalent of a hole-in-one in surfing?" In 1964, the Hang Ten name was trademarked, as was the logo—a pair of chubby cartoon footprints that looked great on everything from trunks to T-shirts to stickers.

Riding the American surf craze launched in part by 

 and the Beach Boys, Hang Ten was an immediate success—not so much with surfers themselves, although they were initially fans of the trunks, but by non-surfers across the nation who by 1965 were able to purchase Hang Ten gear at their local department store. Hang Ten thus became the first surf-originated brand to find huge mainstream success. "Surfing [at that time] was getting so big, so fast," Boyd later recalled. "For three or four years there I couldn’t design anything that was not successful." Even so, he added, "I didn’t know I was going to change the world and become a gazillionaire."

Hang Ten's surf-world cachet plummeted during the late-'60s counterculture-influenced fashion shift. Boyd and Moore sold the company in 1971, for $3 million dollars, to Ratner Clothes for Men, in San Diego, who aggressively and successfully pushed Hang Ten further into the fashion mainstream. By 1982, the 

 reported the company "collected royalties on a wholesale volume of about $250 million." Hang Ten had long since quit making clothing. Instead, it simply licensed the name and logo to other interests around the world. "But," Foster told the 

, "we want the public to believe there's one company making all of this product." That year there were 90 products, made in 35 nations, carrying the Hang Ten name. As one surfwearr competitor said at the time, "Hang Ten is the granddaddy of us all."

Hang Ten changed owners a few times in decades to come. In the early '90s, the label became popular among young thrift-store shoppers, pursuing what Altculture.com called "street fashion's growing infantilization." The still-viable Hang Ten company meanwhile introduced a "new" line of retro-designed beachwear virtually indistinguishable from the original, with an ad campaign tag line reading "Hang Ten: Bitchin' When Your Mom was a Babe."

From 1972 to 1983, Hang Ten was one of the foremost sponsors of professional surfing competition. Jeff Hakman, Shaun Tomson, Larry Bertlemann, and Gerry Lopez were among the finals of the prestigious Hang Ten American Pro, held at Sunset Beach in Hawaii during the first half the '70s.

Hang Ten

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