Maui & Sons Is Riding Wave of Fashion Success : Firm Begun With $3,500 Now a $13-Million Concern

They started five years ago with $3,500, a logo and an idea for madras plaid shorts.

Today, Jeffrey Yokoyama and Steve Prested are at the helm of a $13-million clothing concern, Maui & Sons, whose shorts, T-shirts and expanding line of casual clothing have become favorites of young America.

The Irvine-based company has grown so rapidly that it has had to move five times since it began in the bedroom of a rented duplex in Corona del Mar. The company now inhabits a 35,000-square-foot office, design and warehouse complex that is almost three times the size its previous quarters in Costa Mesa.

And the peak of the growth curve is not in sight, the partners said.

Prested said he believes Maui & Sons will record $20 million in sales next year. The company’s T-shirts, shorts, pants, sweaters, dresses, jackets and casual shoes are sold in 850 stores around the nation and soon will be sold through licensees in Australia, Japan and Europe, Prested said.

“We’re doubling sales every year,” he said.

And now the company is aiming its sights at an accessory line that might include items such as watches, young children’s wear and perhaps its own string of retail stores.

Prested and Yokoyama, told five years ago that the madras shorts wouldn’t sell, sometimes seem amazed at their success.

“We thought there was a slight chance it would happen,” Prested said, but “it’s really jelled.”

Maui & Sons was started in 1981 when Prested, Yokoyama and Rich Rietveld, three buddies from the Glendale High School class of 1973, got together to kick around ideas for a business. Yokoyama was tired of cutting hair; Prested’s real estate business was less than lively, and Rietveld could not earn enough as a free-lance artist to support himself.

“The three of us were tired of being broke,” Prested said.

Yokoyama was leaning toward a chocolate chip cookie company to be named after his grandmother who lives on the island of Maui in Hawaii. That idea got as far as the logo Rietveld designed--a black circle with little geometric shapes in the middle to represent the chips.

The three soon agreed, however, that they knew little about packaging cookies, so they turned to apparel instead. They did not know much about that business, either, but they figured it would take a smaller investment to establish a foothold.

Prested pulled together $3,500, bought enough madras plaid to make 1,000 pairs of boxer-style drawstring shorts, and took out an ad in Surfer magazine. The shorts marked the return of madras, last seen in the 1960s. The design intrigued trend-conscious young beachgoers, and the original order of shorts at the Hobie Sports shop in Corona del Mar sold out in three weeks.

Prested and Yokoyama haven’t thought of chocolate chip cookies since.

Today, they own a combined 95% of the company; Rietveld has a 5% stake.

While Prested tends to the financial side of the business, Yokoyama designs most of the patterns--such as the space characters, collages of bright colors and sharks wearing sunglasses--that give Maui & Sons clothes their distinctive look.

From the beginning, they have relied on an unorthodox advertising campaign whose theme posters often have little or nothing to do with clothing. An upcoming one, for instance, features American Indian warriors riding flying sharks against a background of futuristic buildings.

Each month, Rietveld designs a theme poster for the next ad campaign. He pores through stacks of magazines and books for inspiration, he said, usually taking two weeks to complete a poster.

“The main thing is to grab their attention,” he said.