Magma

In 1976, identical twin brothers, Jim and Jerry Mashburn, created Magma Products. They were two young California sailors who, besides their love of sailing, loved to barbeque. However, experiments with attaching grills to their boat proved unsuccessful. The porcelain metal grills available in the mid 1970's were just not up to the task. After a short time attached to the stern of Jim and Jerry's boat, the grills simply rusted out and became completely unserviceable. Knowing the durability of stainless steel in marine environments, the twins set to work making a stainless steel grill that would withstand the hardships of a salt water environment.

Their early experiments proved that they were on the right track and soon they had a charcoal grill that they knew was the answer to their problem. Well....at least their first problem. Now they had to convince boaters that placing burning hot charcoal on their boats was not a completely crazy idea.

Countless hours of talking to the boat-wise Southern California sailing community gradually won over a few converts and those converts converted even more until the sight of glowing charcoals was not an uncommon sight in Avalon Harbor on any summer’s evening

Selling the new idea to the boating equipment stores however, was harder. Traveling from San Diego to Santa Barbara in their beat up old van, Jim and Jerry visited every marine store that would talk to them. Not many buyers wanted to risk their careers on such a risky purchase, so the brothers often left their invention in the stores on consignment. They would immediately go to the docks, find a customer for their products, and lead them directly to the marine store to purchase the consigned grill. This convinced the marine store buyer of the demand for their product and orders soon followed.