Jim Jenks, the founder of the surf apparel brand Ocean Pacific, passed away at age 84.
O.P., also known as Ocean Pacific, began as a surfboard brand founded by John Smith in the 1960s and was sold to Don Hansen of Hansen’s Surf Shop. Around that time, Jenks, who worked as a shop rep, was looking to launch a clothing line that met the demands of surfers both in and out of the water. In 1972, he received the Ocean Pacific name from Hansen and O.P. was born.
The brand dominated the surf category in the 1970s and 1980s, “fusing sports, music, art, and fashion with beach culture,” and considered the first company to translate the West Coast culture into a lifestyle brand, the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach said in its recognition of Jenks as a “Surf Culture” inductee in 2017.
Jenks retired eight years after he launched the brand due to its immediate success and set out to cruise the world on his 90-foot yacht. However, when O.P. president Larry Ornitz died in 1988, he returned to run the company.
“O.P. invented the big marketing and broad distribution of surfing and apparel,” Ian Cairns, an early-era championship surfer, told The Orange County Register. “O.P. just took that surf marketing thing and made it big. Ocean Pacific was all about California, surf, and the beach lifestyle. It’s pretty incredible.”
In the mid-2000s, O.P. was sold to Warnaco Group, Inc., and in 2006 to Iconix Brand Group, Inc., which continues as the brand’s owner.
