OneBallJay began as an experimental surf wax project in 1986 when Jay Rota (a.k.a. One Ball Jay) and Matt Cummins were introduced to surfing by Mike Olson and Peter Saari of Mervin Manufacturing. During the summer, skateboarding was their main focus and surfing proved to be a fresh alternative. In the midst of surfing and driving to the beach, they decided to try making their own surf wax. Their first concoctions of surfing wax were terrible. The wax was dubbed "sap wax" because it contained car oil, bees wax and tree sap.

As the rainy season rolled in, the time spent skateboarding and surfing warped into time spent snowboarding. "In the winter, the skateboard ramps are wet and the water is cold. Snowboarding was new to us and looked like fun, we were trying to figure out how we could get some boards and get up to the mountains to ride. We never had much of a job or money so we built the boards out of an old tree fort and bent up the nose with a car tire and by rolling the car on top it," Matt said. In order to get the boards to move, they needed wax and naturally they made that too. Snowboard wax was born in 1986 when they successfully combined canning paraffin with graphite. They started to produce a few bars at a time. Mike and Peter from Mervin were given bars to try. They suggested Jay and Matt call the new wax, "One Ball Jay" because shortly before a visit to drop off some wax, Jay had a skateboard accident. The tail of his board nailed him in the balls. The fall and damage was pretty bad, but everything healed up fine and the name stuck.(Jay has two kids now)

Soon after, Jay and Matt made their first snowboard wax; another friend of Matt's became involved. Paul Ferrell was a friend of Matt's and was working in Matt's family's snowboard shop, Northwest Snowboards. In their spare time, Paul and Matt would make wax in the back of the shop using electric skillets. Eventually, in order to speed up production, Paul went out and bought several big hot plates and bulk wax at a candle shop and the company was off. Over time, people heard about the wax and local shops started to call and order wax and shirts.

As Paul and Matt became more involved in snowboarding, they decided to put One Ball Jay on the back burner and pursue careers in snowboarding. Within a couple years, they were getting free boards from Gnu and traveling to enter competitions. Although Matt was consumed by snowboarding, he still wanted to keep One Ball Jay running. He called on his good friend, Bryan Rusforth to help him make wax and send out orders. Bryan bought half the company and took off running. Gradually, more wax formulas were created, accessories we added to the line and Oneballjay grew to an international company with a hardcore following of snowboarders and skiers worldwide.