Conversations with Founders: Andy from Dock & Bay
Why beach towels?
We started Dock & Bay nearly ten years ago. At the time, Ben and I were working together and meeting up every Tuesday for a bottle of vodka to brainstorm business ideas. Honestly, we couldn’t be bothered with what we were doing anymore, and we just wanted a change—something more creative.
Ben did some research on Amazon and came across these travel towels. They were dull, scratchy, badly packaged, and not very inspiring. They were a convenience item—small and easy to take around. Despite their bad quality, they were consistently among the top-selling products on Amazon during the summer months. Ben came to me with that and said “Why not make a towel that’s not just functional but actually cool, and something people would want to carry around?”
That’s how Dock & Bay was born. We had zero design skills at the time, so we went with stripes. There are photos from our first design days where we pulled down a huge red curtain from Ben’s house and laid strips of white paper across it. Originally, we called ourselves Cabana to match the cabana stripes, but that name was already trademarked. We pulled the production at the last minute and rebranded to Dock & Bay. And here we are, almost ten years later!