Surfing helped popularise the boots outside Australia and New Zealand. Advertisements for Australian sheepskin boots first appeared in Californian surf magazines in 1970. By the mid-1970s, several surf shops in Santa Cruz, California and the San Fernando Valley were selling a limited number of boots purchased by the shops' owners while visiting surfing events in Australia. In 1978, a Western Australian manufacturer of sheepskin boots, Country Leather, advertised outside Australia for distributors to sell its sheepskin boots, which were made from sheepskin sourced from Jackson's Tannery in Geelong, Victoria. Seeing the popularity of the boots among American surfers, Australian surfer Brian Smith, then living in Santa Monica, California, and colleague Doug Jensen bought boots from Country Leather but were unhappy with the brand and decided to register UGG as their own trademark. Family friends invested $20,000 into the new venture and the group set up Ugg Imports. Due to other business commitments, in 1979 Jensen handed over his share of the company to Smith. In 1987 Smith registered Ugg Holdings Inc. and in 1985 registered a U.S. trademark on a ram's head logo with the words "Original UGG Boot UGG Australia." In 1995, Ugg Holdings purchased Stedman's various trademarks. As for the ugg name, Smith stated: "We always called them uggs, long before it was trademarked."