In the early 1970's, Zog was shaping boards and running a small surf shop in Goleta, California. As fate would have, a chemist named Nate Skinner worked in a building next to Zog's shop. Zog and Nate got to talking and decided that with Nate's scientific training and Zog's surfing background, they were the perfect pair to develop a unique, high-performance surfboard wax.

Over the course of the next year, Nate created and modified various wax prototypes, which Zog tested and evaluated under actual surfing conditions. Eventually they arrived at a formula that met their specifications.