Tom Kartsotis started what became Fossil in 1984 in Richardson, Texas, under the name Overseas Products International, on a suggestion from his older brother Kosta, a merchandising executive at Sanger-Harris. The Fossil name itself was a nickname the brothers used for their father, and the watches leaned into it, retro designs pulled from 1930s-50s advertising, sold at accessible prices and packaged from 1989 on in tin boxes styled after 1950s American graphics. The company went public in 1993, with Kartsotis staying on as president until 2010, before he left to run his own manufacturing firm, Bedrock Manufacturing.