Almost forty years on, the “Originals” are still the ones people come back for.
From the Fat Willy's Surf Shack archive · St Ives, since 1987
Every business has a first thing it ever sold. Most of the time nobody recalls what it was. We do! This is because our first product is still hanging on our rails today, unchanged, almost four decades later.
Before there was a shop, before there was bamboo on the walls or a Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner, there was a garage in Northamptonshire and a man called Roger Ward with a heat press, a hard work ethic and a lightbulb moment.
A garage, a Volvo, and transatlantic Saturdays
In the late 1970s, Roger was printing T-shirt transfers out of his garage and driving them down to shops across the South West on Saturdays. During the week he was flying from London to NYC in the morning, filling eight cargo bags with transfers, and flying home the same night. Then loading up the trusty family Volvo with his tee shirt transfers in the boot, Cornwall bound.
The idea that arrived fully formed, Roger’s lightbulb moment
In 1984, somewhere over the Atlantic, the epiphany happened. Not a slow growing idea which built over months of contemplation….an immediate strong concept which arrived complete. Roger always described it as an idea that arrived, mid-flight, completely formed: neon colours, bamboo, palm trees, a shop that felt like nowhere else. The complete anthesis of white walls and chrome clothes hangers. He envisaged the logo before he'd drawn it. The identical one still used today, the same timeless design. We've never seen a reason to change it.
A year later, in 1985, Fat Willy's Surf Shack opened its doors in Newquay and it started, fittingly, as a T-shirt shop. A pop-up at the back of the store, selling the Fat Willy's design alongside the custom transfers Roger had built his name on at the front. To Roger’s delight customers were drawn to the back of the shop, passing by the custom transfers and heading straight to the Fat Willy’s designs. Choosing the signature logo tee shirt which still remains our hero best seller to date…. By 1986 the whole shop was dedicated to the iconic Fat Willy's design, it had outgrown it’s pop up….the rest as they say…is history!
The Original: adult and kids' tee
That's the T-shirt we mean when we say "the Original”. The adult and children's tee that came before the hoodies, before the accessories, before the four Cornish shops and the 28 stores that once stretched from Newquay to Newport Beach, Barbados to Blackpool. It's the reason Fat Willy's exists at all.
What's stuck with us over four decades isn't just the design, though we're super proud our devotees still covet wearing Fat Willy’s. We hear it constantly in the shop, in the queue, in the emails that land in our inbox: T-shirts bought in 1980’s that are still doing the school run, still going on beach walks, still fitting (more or less) and a central item in someone's wardrobe. Demonstrating quality that lasts. It was important to Roger that he sold garments which stood the test of time and the Originals were built with this principle in mind.
"Roger wasn't trying to sell T-shirts. He was trying to make people happy."
Still the ones people come back for
St Ives followed Newquay in 1987, and the Original tee came with it: the same design, the same neon, sold from a shop with bamboo on the walls, a Wurlitzer jukebox in homage to Roger and Theresa’s love of 1950’s music and accompanied by the sound of the harbour waves crashing outside the door.
It's travelled a long way since: we've had sightings as far afield as the Hamptons (check out our Travel With Us map on the website to see where our clothing has been spotted and why not submit your own photo to get featured on our virtual world map).
Every summer a queue of people discover it for the first time alongside many people returning for their annual visit, we are delighted to welcome customers who came as children themselves returning with their own grandkids and love to hear their stories and reminiscing about their first experience in-store.
Forty years is a long time for a T-shirt and shop to stay exactly as it began. We like to think that's the point. Why change things when they mean so much to us and our customers……
The Fat Willy's Family, St Ives
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