Inductee Bio
ALLEN CUSTOM SURFBOARDS
By Al Faas, Founder
My brother John Faas and I started Allen Surfboards in 1959 in our garage on Melva Street in Downey, California. John was recently out of high school and I was working as an L.A. City Fireman, still living at home. Dad came home from work at North American Aviation one day with a couple of chemicals that made foam, a relatively new material. We experimented with it and decided we could make surfboards if we built our own fiberglass and steel mold to form foam blanks. We built the mold, poured blanks, and shaped and glassed those blanks in our garage, becoming one of the earliest foam surfboard manufacturers.
Early on, we sold boards to our friends around Downey. We didn't have enough friends to make a business, so in 1960 we decided to set up a shop. We wanted to be on PCH, but there wasn't a space for rent, so we moved into a building at 4645 Anaheim Street, Long Beach. Unknowingly, we chose a location close to Wilson High School, Lakewood High, Milliken, and Long Beach City College. Immediately kids showed up to check out our shop.
Our Long Beach store was both our manufacturing site and showroom. We had foam mold equipment, a woodworking shop and glassing setup. Both John and I could build a complete board. We were both proficient at cutting the blanks, making the balsa and redwood stringers, hand shaping the boards, glassing and finishing the colors. We poured our own blanks until 1961, then went to Clark Foam blanks. From day one we made our own board fins from laminated wood or fiberglass. Our standard long boards were often one of a kind, and about fifty percent of our boards were custom made to buyers' specs.
Surfboards sold for an average of $125 in those early days. Thus, selling surf accessories was a key part of our business. We carried Duke Boyd's Hang Ten trunks, the first nylon trunks on the market. We printed up Allen logo decals, T-shirts, and sweatshirts, and sold authentic Mexican huarache sandals. We let kids pay by "lay away" so they could afford a board and gear.
Early on, we ran an ad in Surfer Magazine that was a map showing our shop location. Kids drove all the way from Pasadena to find us. We sponsored Bruce Brown and Grant Rohloff surf movies at the high schools and college theatres. We also sponsored surfer Mark Martenson in his early years when he was willing to trade us publicity for boards. We wholesaled our boards to Sports Chalet, Neil's Sporting Goods in Santa Ana and other sports and ski shops.
Not every businessman can claim trips to Hawaii as business expenses, but our winters spent on Oahu in 1960ᇒ were legitimate write-offs. That was where we met filmmaker Bruce Brown, John Severson, and many notable surfers. We even worked out a Hawaiian distributorship with Donald Takayama who sold our boards in Honolulu.
In 1963, we expanded to our second Allen Surfboard shop in Surfside in the distinctive building shaped like a tugboat pilothouse. We primarily shaped boards in that store and glassed at the Long Beach shop during 1963ᇔ. Operating two stores didn't pay, so we consolidated back to Long Beach. Making custom boards was a labor of love, but couldn't pay the bills long term.
In late 1964 we received a golden offer to sell the Allen name to Glass Research. It was a Jacksonville, Florida company that intended to set up a large manufacturing operation to build semi-custom boards to wholesale to sporting and department stores up and down the East Coast. With the sale of the Allen brand, the Long Beach shop closed.
Early 1965, now married, I moved to Jacksonville to become a partner and plant manager for the Glass Research company. I was charged with setting up the manufacturing operation in a
20,000 square foot empty warehouse. We built five molds and five sanding rooms, a stringer installation and glassing room with space to work on 30 boards at one time. The plant produced 300 boards a week with a staff of 20 employees. The boards sold under the name
Surfcraft, with three different models: Mako, Marlin, and Reef.
Mass producing boards didn't translate into profits, and the Surfcraft operation lasted about 18 months. Many of our employees were surfers who wanted a hand-shaped board, so I resurrected the Allen name inside the Surfcraft factory, providing a high-end product for the
company. The word 'custom' was added to the logo "Allen Custom Surfboards" in a double oval. This set the board apart from earlier California Allen boards.
The Allen custom board became popular with local Florida surfers and the shop formed a top surf team, which included Kathie LaCroix, Bruce Clelland, Mike Holtsinger, Mark Kizis, Tim Rasbeary, Red Danner, and Rick Perry. Photos of Kathie, carrying her 9-foot Allen Custom Surfboard, were featured in Life Magazine's 1965 article about surfing. An Allen custom board is part of the Coco Beach Surf Museum collection.
By 1967 it was time for me to return to California. John and I have shaped boards for Orange County shops over the years, but we never went back into surfboard manufacturing. We built an apartment house in Vail, Colorado and became homebuilders and skiers, alternately living in Vail and Huntington Beach for many years. I retired to Mesquite, Nevada in 2004. John passed away in 2023.
I often run into people who were a part of the surf industry, and I still enjoy reminiscing about those days. No matter what role you played, you sound like a hero when you name off the guys you hung out with at Trestles and North Shore and Noosa Heads in those days. Back then, there was plenty of ocean for everybody to catch a wave.
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