Our Story

Some things you find. Some things find you.

In the summer of 1975, a ten-year-old kid from Utah climbed into the back of a station wagon and began what would become the most important annual ritual of his life. The destination was San Clemente, California — a small beach town on the Pacific Coast Highway where the air smelled salty, the light fell differently, and the world seemed to operate by entirely different rules.

For young Curtis, the drive itself was part of the magic. Down I-15 through St. George and Las Vegas, the high desert of Utah and the Mojave, giving way mile by mile until that first glimpse of the blue Pacific stopped everything. The sound of waves. The feel of cold water rushing up the sand. The sense that something bigger than everyday life was happening here.

The same rented beach house became a yearly pilgrimage — and over the years, those summers at Capistrano, Doheny, Salt Creek, Laguna, and San Clemente became the foundation of something that would take decades to fully understand.

California in the mid-1970s was transformative.

The surf shops lining PCH — Hobie, Herbie Fletcher, BC Surf Designs, Rip Curl, Stewart's, Infiniti — weren't just stores. They were embassies of a culture built around freedom, craftsmanship, and the genuine love of the ocean. The magazines — Surfer, Skateboarder — were graphic bibles of the coastal California lifestyle. The brands — Ocean Pacific, Offshore, Quiksilver, Town & Country, Vans, Lightning Bolt, Maui and Sons — weren't just selling products. They were selling a way of viewing the world.

Curtis was paying close attention.

One summer, staying next door to the beach house, there was a man with a dog who turned out to be a sandal maker just getting his start — the kind of person who had decided to make one thing and make it beautifully. He invited the two curious kids next door to visit his small factory in San Clemente. It left a mark. Here was someone doing something they genuinely loved, making something people actually needed, with their own hands.

That idea never really left.

Some lessons take a lifetime to understand.

Curtis's father Fred spent his career as a shoe and apparel sales rep — seven western states, a territory built on honest relationships and real belief in the products he carried. Sample cases arrived at the house seasonally. New styles of spring/summer and fall/winter laid out on the basement pool table were a normal part of childhood. Fred's sales philosophy was simple: be who you genuinely are and sell something you believe makes people's lives better.

It was a lesson absorbed without knowing it.

Years later, through a chance meeting at a shoe show in Las Vegas, Fred would befriend a manufacturer from China named Paul who was struggling to find his footing in the American market. Fred helped him rearrange his booth, took his line on the road, and helped build his first American accounts. It became a lifelong friendship — the kind that only happens when someone leads with generosity rather than calculation.

When Fred passed away, Curtis kept that friendship alive. And on a drive through Southern California with his own family years later, a stop at Paul's office and a glance at the sandals on his daughter's feet sparked an idea that had been forming, quietly, since 1975.

SeaBe was born from two sets of initials and fifty years of paying attention.

Curtis and his wife Cristie — both sharing the same initials, CB — built the name together. SeaBe. Like "being of the sea." Easy to say. Easy to remember. Honest about where it came from.

The first sandals came out of their basement. Eight single molds. Multiple colors. A Shopify account. A truck full of inventory and a belief that there was room in the world for a sandal that honored the Southern California lifestyle and the Hawaiian slipper tradition — utilitarian, unpretentious, made for real life — but brought into it some color, some comfort, and some craft.

Curtis had spent years before that telling stories — training at the American Film Institute, working in advertising during the heady early days of technology branding, making documentaries and independent films. He understood how things looked. How they felt. How a brand could be authentic or hollow — and how quickly people could tell the difference.

SeaBe was going to be authentic.

The sandal that lasts.

Anyone who has spent time on a beach knows the difference between a sandal that makes it through the summer and one that barely survives the week. We spent years finding that difference — testing materials, adjusting molds, obsessing over the things most people never notice until they're gone: the give of the footbed, the grip of the sole, the way the strap sits across the foot after a full day of walking.

The result is a sandal made from ultra-soft polymer that's waterproof, non-slip, recyclable — and yes, they float. A sandal rooted in the Hawaiian slipper tradition that has dressed the feet of beach communities for generations. Simple. Honest. Built to last.

We're just getting started.

SeaBe is a family company with a new chapter ahead. A leather sandal crafted with the same care as the original is coming soon. Coastal-inspired goods that make you feel like the beach is a block away.

We want our store to feel like the places that shaped us: those small surf shops on Pacific Coast Highway where someone who loved what they did decided to share it with the world.

We're not trying to be everything. We're trying to be exactly one thing — a brand built around the kind of freedom, craft, and coastal spirit that a ten-year-old kid from Utah first discovered on a beach in Southern California in 1975.

The station wagon is long gone. The spirit of that drive is very much alive.

Welcome to SeaBe. 🌺