Wellen: Surfboards to Clothing
Matt Jung taught himself how to shape his own surfboards by reading blogs and watching videos on YouTube while he was a high school student in Glendale, Calif. Now Jung leaves the shaping of his Wellen-brand surfboards to a professional, and the young entrepreneur is applying that hands-on, do-it-yourself spirit into a clothing line that launched last year.
“I’m kind of a one-man show,” said Jung, who will be printing about 1,500 of Wellen’s latest batch of T-shirts at a rented studio. “There’s a screen printer and there’s me standing at the screen press, and I put each shirt individually on.”
Jung started Wellen clothing with graphic T-shirts that he sold to friends while he attended Whittier College in Whittier, Calif., two years ago. He started selling the tees wholesale this year to surf-based stores such as Thalia Surf Shop in Laguna Beach and Clout Malibu, both in California, and online at Swell (www.swell.com). The shirts retail from $28 to $38 and are in softer, thinner cotton that most standard blanks.
Jung works with five artists who hand draw the line art with quirky T-shirt graphics. “With the ’Cowabunga’ shirt we have a picture of a cow and then ’abunga.’ There’s a very surf humor. With our rugby shirts there is a classic feel.”
For Holiday 2009, Jung expanded into cut-and-sew with brushed twill walk shorts, plaid flannel shirts and a hoodie that have been sold to a higher cachet of stores such as American Rag. On the hooded cotton button-down shirts in summery bright madras plaids, which retail for $68, mismatching buttons add an extra quirk. Each Pima-cotton hoodie that retails for $56 is hand tie-dyed. “It’s not high end, but its not low end. We’re the higher end in surf shops,” Jung said.
For more information, visit www.wellensurf.com or e-mail dealers@wellensurf.com.—Rhea Cortado
