About Us

Sunup/Sundown® stumbled into existence in 1975 on a trip to Haiti made by Tom Farley and John Tengblad and our wives. We were on a visit to a friend of John's, the owner of the Royal Haitian Hotel. While there, Tom's wife was knitting a bikini and the guys were discussing manufacturing ideas for Haiti. The light bulb went on and we went searching for someone to set up a hand knitting facility.

We found Lionel Pressoir running an electronics factory and he readily agreed to set up a small facility, one that would CROCHET bikinis. Turns out Haitians don't knit but just about everyone crochets.

So we started crocheting bikinis and importing them into the United States. John and Tom started the retail store rounds and we sold a lot of bikinis. However, we found that retails stores are very slow pay and started looking for any other way.

Back in 1976, the conventional wisdom was that you couldn't sell swimsuits or lingerie by mail. Folks thought there were laws prohibiting returns (there weren't, by the way) and others thought that no one would buy these items without being able to try them on. That meant, of course, that there weren't any lingerie or swimwear catalog companies. Since we didn't know any better, we took ads in Cosmopolitan and Glamour and started getting overwhelmed with orders for crochet bikinis. The rest is history. Sunup/Sundown® is THE oldest company selling swimwear by mail, period.

John is no longer with the company, but Tom soldiers on! Sunup/Sundown® sells only swimwear that Tom designs and has made in a factory right here in Fort Lauderdale. We offer a paper catalog but this web site accounts for an ever increasing percentage of our sales.

I welcome you to our site. I can be reached during the business day at (954) 970-2039 and outside contractors take orders for us 24/7 at (800) 926-8081. Mail will reach us at:

Sunup/Sundown®
PO Box 11899
Fort Lauderdale FL 33339

Tom