Shoe Dreams
As many companies do, Vans was birthed from a dream of one of its founders, Paul Van Doren.He had learned how to make sneakers in a factory on the East Coast and had seen all the shoes he was making being sold to retail stores which then resold them to the public. His dream seemed fairly simple -- to manufacture shoes and sell them directly to the public rather than going through a middleman retailer.

Paul decided to move west to Southern California along with his partners, Jim Van Doren, Gordy Lee and Serge D'Elia, and began making his dream come true. All of them had experience in the shoe manufacturing business although none of them knew anything about retailing.

March 1966
After a full year of building the Vans factory, the first official day of business was March 15, 1966, when the first Vans shoe store opened at 704 East Broadway in Anaheim, California. They offered three styles on that first day, priced $2.49, $4.49, and $4.99 but had only made display shoes. The racks on the wall were stacked with empty boxes to help make it look like a shoe store, but they hadn't been able to make any stock to fill 400-square-
foot store.

Twelve customers came into the Vans store that morning and picked out the style and color of shoes they wanted. However, since they didn't have any shoes in stock, Paul and Gordy asked the customers to come back in the afternoon to pick up their shoes. They then rushed back into the factory and made up the selected shoes.