On any good day at Tower 34 in North Manhattan Beach, the kind where the sets start stacking and the offshore wind cleans up the face just enough, you’ll hear it: “Barrels!”
Not whispered. Not politely suggested. Screamed.
That’s where Barlz was born. Not in a boardroom. Not in a branding session. But in the lineup, between friends.
“Barlz was born out of total stoke,” cofounder James Sweigert tells me, laughing as he recounts the moment. “It was literally myself and one of my buddies out in front of Tower 34 on a really fun day … we were just screaming at each other, ‘Barrels!’”
Then the light bulb.
“How would you spell that?” his friend asked.
James shot back instinctively: “B-A-R-L-Z.”
That night, he did what any modern surf romantic would do: He checked the domain. It was available.
“For $9,” he says. “How is there a five-letter .com still available?”
Minutes later, he received an automated email valuing it at $3,500.
“We turned a profit and hadn’t sold a T-shirt,” jokes James, who says it felt like a sign.
But James didn’t just stumble into design. “I was literally designing since I could hold a pencil,” he says.
His résumé includes a degree from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in San Francisco, where he studied color theory and textiles. His aesthetic pulls from high fashion—think Versace and Armani—layered over California surf culture. Barlz is the perfect collision of James’ passions: surfing, design and fashion.
Enter cofounder Jake Kirschenbaum: former pro surfer, Cocoa Beach native and lifelong product of surf culture. His dad started a high school surf team in Florida. Years later, his mom started a women’s surf club at the same school. Surfing wasn’t just a hobby in his household; it was heritage.
“Surf culture is very, very important to me,” Jake says. “It gave me a life. It gave me purpose.”
For him, Barlz isn’t just apparel. It’s art—designed, as he puts it, “by surfers, for surfers.”
That ethos is everything. Walk into their El Porto flagship tucked along Highland in North Manhattan Beach, and you’ll immediately feel the difference. This isn’t the predictable surf palette of washed blues and greys.
“We’re bringing a little bit more of an edgier, bolder, new age look,” Jake explains. “More color. More vibrance. More fashion-forward.”
Accessibility matters too. “It’s very direct-to-consumer,” he says. “You get to see the people who are making the clothing.”
That transparency shows up in the design process. It’s collaborative, organically rooted in surf sessions, late-night sketching and conversations between friends.
One of their earliest graphics pays homage to a 1930s photograph of a Manhattan Beach lifeguard wearing a “Manhattan Beach Surfing Club” hoodie. Barlz reimagined the design, adding a subtle Tower 34 nod, and suddenly the local crew was wearing a piece of history on their backs.
Jake’s current obsession is a pair of silky pajamas he originally designed for his wife, now a cult favorite that blurs the line between surfwear and streetwear. That crossover is intentional.
“It’s totally working,” James says with a smile.
So why El Porto?
“Because this is where it started,” James says. “The brand was conceived right here at Tower 34. This is our neighborhood. This is a local brand.”
Now Barlz is entering a strategic shift. The Manhattan Beach pop-up location will close its doors on April 20 with a major sale. The brand will transition to a primarily online model, giving James and Jake the flexibility to keep running what they affectionately call a “two-man show” while keeping creativity high and overhead lean.
The shift allows them to focus on product, community and the next evolution of Barlz without losing the authenticity that made it special in the first place. Barlz didn’t start with investors; it started with friends yelling across a lineup.
And that kind of energy? You can’t manufacture it.
