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Randy French founded SURFTECH in 1989, his background as a surfboard shaper and a pioneer in the windsurf industry drove him to experiment with different materials in an effort to make his boards lighter and stronger. Randy's involvement with sailboards resulted in major technological breakthroughs in composite board construction. In turn his company, Seatrend, soon became a mass production operation, producing hundreds of identical sailboard models and shipping them to windsurf shops around the world. At the end of the '80s, the windsurf market was fading and all but went away in the early to mid '90s. So in 1989, Randy took what he had learned designing sailboards and applied it to his first love, surfboards. The first shaper to join with Randy and Surftech was legendary South Bay shaper, Dale Velzy. Soon after Reynolds Yater, Mickey Munoz, Robert August and Donald Takayama all were on board and enthusiastic about what this new technology would mean to the world of surfing. Soon after, Surftech was producing entire quivers from these legendary shapers and Randy's vision of sharing this new technology became a reality. As the longboard side of Surftech continued to grow through the early '90s, the company turned it's attention to the shortboard world. Randy had introduced his own line of shortboards in 1990 and was getting very good feedback from the Santa Cruz crew. Geoff Rashe, shaper and owner of M10 Surfboards in Santa Cruz was convinced after his top team rider, Jason "Ratboy" Collins tried one of the boards and wouldn't give it back. Soon shortboard shapers from around the globe including Glen Minami, Phil Byrne, John Carper, Rusty Preisendorfer & Al Merrick saw the advantages of working with Surftech and that Surftech's "Tuflite" would be a positive addition to their surfboard offering.