Skateboard or Sell Skateboard Shit
On a tour with Ron Allen a long time ago… Ron had writing on his griptape. He was riding for H-Street at the time and he was traveling around the country skating demos and shit in some of the smallest towns in the USA.
“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge”
That’s what Ron wrote on his griptape in 1989. We discussed the shoes that Nike was putting on the market for Skateboarding back then… In a tiny ass town in Ohio… In between taking turns trying a 9 stair handrail.
One of the kids watching us had a pair of those pink Nike Skateboard shoes on and he commented on how we might want to try tightening the laces on our shoes… We both looked at the kid and didn’t say anything.
We both landed the next try and skated away from the rail and didn’t stop or even look back at that kid with those shoes on. That kid didn’t follow us and all the other kids that were watching instead of Skateboarding didn’t follow us either.
They witnessed.
Fast Forward to now…
There is a sort of verbal agreement in the Skateboard Indu$try regarding retail accounts and a no-compete within a 10 mile radius. Zumiez is about to open within the 10 mile radius of a lot of Skateshops this year and we mean A LOT. Check out their site and look at the list of brands that zumiez carries and you will see that almost every company that supposedly lives by the 10 mile rule is available at Zumiez. Except one company. Yep… Nike SB is standing by the 10 mile rule. Consolidated isn’t up there yet.
How smart is that? Trick all the Skateshop owners into thinking that Nike SB is on their side when they feel like everyone else completely left them for the almighty dollar.
Final thought: This just isn’t right at all
Skate Everything Faster…
Support your local shop
I don’t think its too late.
15 years ago if you skated you either listened to punk or you were a jock-o who pushed for skateboarding to be an olympic sport.
Well, the jock-o’s strategy was to keep their message positive and continually influence the new batch of skaters who contiually find skateboarding. They knew that majority of kids typically skateboard for 3-4 years then get a fast car, knock up a girl, and start drinking way too much.
Because of this, the turnover for skateboarders is fairly high and often. Nike simply copied this same strategy.
I knew, and most you knew back then all the reasons why you wouldnt wear Nikes to skate. They never needed explained. It was given.
Nike knew that we knew that too. But they didnt care. Their strategy was TIME. To us, Nike never fit in to skateboarding, but those who didnt skateboard didn’t know what.
So Nike ran a few “What if we treated all Athletes like skateboarders” commercials on mainstream on television.
The Jock-O’s were like “WOW, Nike likes skateboarders and I like Nike and WOW I don’t have to think for myself and coach says date raping is okay in the off season”.
And for the next 5-6 years Nike continued to put ads in skateboard magazines and other places. And during that time it was pissing us off, it taught the new batch of skateboarders that Nike was CORE AS FUCK. Sign a few pro’s VIOLA!
If the skateboard market continues to contract (or very very very slow growth) like it has so far this year, Nike should be out in no time. But if it doesnt, the hope for us old grumpy men is that if the pendulum swung this far in the past 15 years towards a corporate takeover of skateboarding, then the doomed to fail attitudes of skateboarders can swing it back.
FUCK NIKE. They didnt conquer shit and they are gonna wake up one day and wonder what the fuck they wasted 10 years on skateboarding for.
Drunken Gorilla
My older brother owns a bike shop here in San Diego and all the shops have agreements like that too. But the problem is that there is already a Performance or other corporate bike shop in practically every part of the city.
So he sells fewer brands with a high level of exclusivity. He sells really high-end stuff and he sells stuff like cheapo beach cruisers. He does really well because he sells stuff like fixed-gear bikes and super-custom stuff that the corporate shops don’t carry. Plus he is super friendly and helpful.
The mom-n-pop skateshops here in SD simply don’t have enough good product anymore. It’s all the same kiddie stuff and more shoes and shirts than skate gear. Sullen hung-over dude behind the counter won’t get off the phone and won’t help me out.
I went to every shop in metro san diego looking for TSG safety equipment and the only store in the whole city that had it was McGills in Encinitas.. 20 miles away. Good luck finding a 9″ shape or 60MM wheels or Indy 169’s. This is San Diego, not Kansas.
I buy all my gear online now. Sad but true.
Currently, the skateboard shops are making money from Nike. That’s something that doesn’t come around that often and with margins on hardgoods being as low as they are, the shops need to make money anyway that they can. Also, as you probably already know, the NIKE SB demographic is not necessarily the typical skateboard demographic. So, by shops being able to pull “non skaters” into their shops, they in turn have increased their local audience. Then if they’re smart with upsells and such, they turn a $60 pair of Nike SB’s into a Zoo t-shirt and a Element hat. Therefore, raising their average order size to over $100.
It’s in my opinion that in order to protect the distribution channel then maybe start with creating some sort of plan that will help increase the shops hardgoods margins? Maybe by showing shops that the manufactures care about their bottom line, then maybe they will be more willing to NOT support large sporting goods companies. Ultimately, it’s all about the dollar.
They make lots of products that can pull in non skaters. ie Inline skates, sproting goods equiptment etc. So whats that mean? The skaters go to the sporting goods stores to get the skate shoes and the core shops become outlets for non skating sneaker heads?
Same deal with walmart and small busniess. I think everyone should just except the fact that skateboarding is all money, but then again what isn’t?
Nike makes some of the rawest shit.
sneakerheads die for rarieties of theres
pharrell callabos to make a dope kick which people pay 400 dollars for
there shoes are hobbies
and there marketing cant be beaten
pink boxes
blue and black boxes
patent leather purple shoes
to dope, to odd, to rare to rich to messed with