When the Van Doren Rubber Co. threw open its retail doors in Anaheim, Calif., on March 16, 1966, the business was so new that many of the boxes on the shelves didn't even have shoes in them. But there were samples to try on. Somewhere between 12 and 16 customers (accounts vary) placed orders for the company's rubber-soled canvas deck shoes that had to be manufactured on the premises overnight and picked up the next day.

Those shoes could have been just another blip on the radar of 1960s manufacturing, but it turned out to be something much bigger. The Van Doren Rubber Co. would become Vans, makers of the super-casual footwear with the waffle-bottom sole that made its way into our collective consciousness.

Now a multibillion-dollar action sports brand owned by North Carolina-based VF Corp., Vans marks its golden anniversary this year with half a dozen simultaneous music-fueled parties in six cities around the globe, including Austin, Texas; Cape Town, South Africa; Hong Kong; and Mexico City. The company also released limited-edition $175 woven checkerboard sneakers and republished a 2009 book chronicling the label's history.

Steve Van Doren, the son of company co-founder Paul Van Doren, sat in his Cypress, Calif., office to talk about the brand's past, its present and where it might be in another 50 years.

The Vans story began two years before the company was founded when his father, then an employee of Massachusetts-based Randolph Rubber Co., moved to Southern California from Boston in 1964.

“My dad was down in Huntington Beach,” Van Doren said. “Duke Kahanamoku was there, [surfers] Fred Hemmings, Corky Carroll and Paul Strauch were there, too, and they all had these navy blue Hawaiian shirts on. … My dad said, ‘Duke, I can make you a pair of shoes out of that Hawaiian shirt …' Duke gave him Fred's shirt, [and] my dad went back to the Randolph factory and made a pair of shoes for him.”

Paul Van Doren teamed with his brother, James Van Doren, and business partners Gordon Lee and Serge D'Elia, and by early 1966 the wheels were in motion.

Skateboarders were early fans. “They adopted us, no ifs, ands or buts about it,” Steve Van Doren said in a 2009 interview. “When you're skateboarding, you tend to wear out one shoe because you're dragging it to brake or you're sliding with it. And the shoes were $8 back then, and they could buy one shoe for $4.”

If there was a single stroke of luck in Vans' first two decades, it was the black-and-white checkerboard, a pattern so much a part of the brand DNA it covers millions of pairs of Vans, the facade of company headquarters and a tricked-out Fiat in the parking lot.

In “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Sean Penn wore his own checkered pair as part of his Jeff Spicoli wardrobe.

“?‘Fast Times' definitely put us on the map,” Van Doren said. “We were about a $20 million company before the movie came out, and we were on track for $40 million to $45 million after that.”

What the Vans brand might look like when it turns 100 is anybody's guess (one can hope for checkerboard, honest-to-goodness moon boots on the lunar surface), but given the successful synergy between the founding family and Vans' corporate parent, it's hard not to imagine a Van Doren in the mix.