San Rafael company turned hippie symbol into empire

Anyone who has ever attended a Grateful Dead show, shopped at a street fair or taken part in an anti-war protest has probably seen Isaac Goff's handiwork, even if they've never heard his name.

As founder of San Rafael's Dharma Trading Co., which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Goff has been responsible for helping popularize what became the uniform of the 1960s counterculture: the tie-dyed T-shirt.

It was very much integrated with what was happening in the '60s: with San Francisco, with the Grateful Dead, with Flower Power, with the whole movement that was occurring," said Goff, 68, who lives in Fairfax. "Woodstock was like a throbbing mass of tie-dye. It was a part of that whole period."

These days, Dharma is a multimillion-dollar company, shipping several hundred pounds of American, Chinese and Indian dye each week to Australia, Europe and the Americas. The company has supplied dye to Cirque du Soleil and Hollywood filmmakers, though David Goff, Isaac's son, said primary customers continue to be small vendors and craft workers.

The majority are people doing craft fairs, tie-dyes and concerts," David Goff said. "If you went to an outdoor festival, chances are the vendors there" are using Dharma dyes, he said.

isaac Goff didn't set out to found a tie-dyeing empire. His business began as a way to help a friend sell meditation cushions to the San Francisco Zen Center. Her Berkeley store, the Dharma Pillow Works, also provided materials for weavers.

"Through her, I made contact with a Peace Corps project in Ecuador, and arranged for them to send her a shipment of handspun wool," Goff said. "Almost immediately, she got pregnant and sold the rest of her pillows to the Zen center."

That left Goff with a shipment of South American wool, which proved to be popular with Bay Area weavers. Based on his success - and inspired by his involvement with Subud, an Indonesian spiritual association - Goff borrowed $2,000 from his aunt, took a yarn-buying trip to Mexico and opened a store on Berkeley's University Avenue in July 1969.

Subud is based on the premise that we can be guided in our actions by a force that enables us to lead a better life," Goff said. "Each of us is born with a talent and the implicit obligation to make use of that talent for ourselves and the betterment of mankind. My own talents are an ability for business and organization. So instead of following the path that I was on - which would have led to tuning out and dropping out a lot - I decided to start a business."

From the beginning, Goff said, his goal was to run a successful business without compromising his principles, which he said are similar to search giant Google's stated goal of "Don't be evil." The company has operated a storefront on San Rafael's Fourth Street since 1975, though Goff said the majority of Dharma's business comes online and over the phone.

I didn't want to become what I viewed then as an evil businessman, or a profit-driven kind of guy," Goff said. "I wanted to see if I could get involved in business without sacrificing my ethical values."

While the yarns and fabrics he imported remained popular, Goff said, it was the colored dyes he sold that made Dharma Trading Co. an institution.

If you went to a Dead concert during the '60s, you saw vendors all over the parking lot selling tie-dyed" clothing, Goff said. "Those vendors would make just enough money to get to the next Dead show, and they ordered (dye) from us. We started getting orders from people all over the country."

Goff thinks his dyes are popular because they retain their bright colors despite repeated washings. But he also believes Dharma's emphasis on service keeps his customers coming back.

They cater to a particular niche, and they offer great service and a lot of staff knowledge to that niche, providing excellent customer service," said Nancy Mackle, deputy city manager for San Rafael. "That's a model that works really well here."

The company's commitment to service goes beyond the needs of its customers. Dharma donated tie-dye supplies to the Red Cross in Mississippi as a project to cheer up children after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Goff has supported a fair trade market for clothing produced by Bolivian textile workers, and regularly travels to South America in support of medical programs.

With a portion of our profits, we provide open-heart surgery for children in Bolivia at the rate of one a month," Goff said. "These are children who are poor beyond your wildest dreams; they would have no future unless someone came up with money for a valve to repair the holes in their hearts. We also have a free eye exam and eyeglass program" in Bolivian schools, Goff added.

With Subud, part of the whole concept is you've got to share your good fortune," Goff said. "I've had all this good fortune, and I didn't really do anything to earn it. So I have a responsibility to try to do good stuff."

Contact Rob Rogers via e-mail at rrogers@marinij.com