BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

Arturo Vega knows the Ramones well. Very well.

The painter and designer served as the punk band’s artistic director for more than two decades, created its logo and did the lighting for its stage shows. He claims to have only missed two performances in the band’s entire career — once when he couldn’t get through customs to Canada, the other time when his fellow roadies ran into a little trouble with the law.

The Ramones, like many punk bands, didn’t sell a huge amount of records in their time, but as the band trekked from one gig to another, sales always went briskly at the merchandise table. So when Hurley International, a Costa Mesa surfing apparel company, contacted Vega about designing a clothing line based on the Ramones, he leaped at the chance to bring the band’s image to a new generation.

“The Ramones always sold a lot more T-shirts than records,” Vega said Thursday outside the American Rag Cie at Fashion Island, where Hurley’s Joey Ramone Collection had just gone on sale. “The matching with Hurley was perfect because their audience is surfboarding and skateboarding kids. The Ramones are the coolest of the punk bands, so it was mutually beneficial.”

The Joey Ramone Collection — named after the band’s lead singer — is the latest youthful clothing line to come out of Hurley International, a subsidiary of Nike that started on the Westside in 1999 and has a history of spotlighting music and art as well as apparel. Two years ago, the company put together a traveling art show titled “Against the Grain,” in which punk-rock visual artists designed surfboards; Hurley also regularly hosts a gallery series to exhibit work by Third World artists.

Vega, who met the Hurley leaders when he contributed one of the surfboards to “Against the Grain,” worked for nearly half a year with the brand’s design team to create the Joey Ramone line. The collection includes T-shirts, board shorts and tank tops for men and women, with prices ranging roughly from $40 to $80. Most of the items feature pictures of Joey Ramone, but others display the band’s logo — a bald eagle surrounded by arrows and stars — that Vega designed in the 1970s.

Along with American Rag Cie and Fred Segal in Santa Monica, where Hurley held its launches last week, the Ramone line will be available at a number of boutiques and surf and skate shops. Joe McElroy, the director of global branding for Hurley, said many people who purchase the items may already have a Ramones garment or two in their closet.

“Their T-shirt is probably the most bootlegged T-shirt of any band,” he said.

YEAR BEGAN: 1999

PARENT COMPANY: Nike

FOUNDER: Bob Hurley

SPECIALTIES: Surf- and beach-themed clothing

HEADQUARTERS: 1945 Placentia Ave., Suite G, Costa Mesa

VISIT: www.hurley.com

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.