Sunrise setup at the Washington State International Kite Festival, 1995.

It started 30 years ago with a couple of friends who loved the wind. Our founders Mark and Scobie spent their childhoods messing around with sailboats and anything that flew. When a friend brought an early dual-line kite to college it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. They were hooked.

Soon they were escaping to the beach to fly at sunrise, between classes, at 2am in a snowstorm. Looping and diving at 50 mph, dragging across the sand on breezy days, soaring gracefully on the quiet ones. Kites weren’t just for kids any more.

As designers, sailors, and aviators Mark and Scobie had learned a thing or two about wings. They were fascinated by high performance aircraft, hang gliders, and the latest windsurfing equipment that was transforming sailing and aviation. Aerospace materials like carbon fiber composites, Spectra fiber and Kevlar weren’t just for the military any more - they were revolutionizing sporting equipment with lighter, stronger, and stiffer materials that allowed eye-popping leaps in performance. They imagined kites that could fly in no wind, relaunch themselves, perform aerobatics with a twitch of the lines.

So light it could fly indoors, the Vapor became an icon.

Tom E. and his SUL Eclipse enjoying a quiet evening on Lake Union, 1996. Photo: Tim Rounds

The industry was young and few had ever heard of sport kites. Fax machines ruled and social media was still decades away. But the extraordinary kites they built spoke for themselves and the word got around.
Prism began to thrive.

It’s been an amazing ride since those early days, through countless challenges and unprecedented changes in our world. We never imagined that three decades later we’d still be at it, still fascinated by kites, and still somehow avoiding those “real jobs” we were all supposed to get.