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Capitalism Grinds the Skateboard Industry

July 27, 2007

I thought it was odd to see a skateboarding article in the Wall Street Journal this morning. But it’s not about nollies and ollies and nose-grinds or half-cabs. It’s about capitalism ($$$):

The International Association of Skateboard Companies figures 50% to 70% of all the skateboard decks sold are blank rather than branded. “The problem is the blank boards don’t really contribute to the industry. They don’t buy advertisements in skateboard magazines. They don’t support professional riders,” says John Bernards, executive director of the International Association of Skateboard Companies, based in Santa Margarita, Calif…

Mr. Bernards’ group recently published an advertising supplement in skateboarding magazines called “Under Fire,” featuring interviews with pros, brand owners and distributors, to try to persuade young people to stop buying blank decks as a matter of principle. One author called blank decks “bland, unwarranted commodities that support faceless factories that do nothing to support professional skateboarding.”

It sounds to me like the branded decks aren’t contributing to the industry - there is no value-added, whatsoever. Wait - there’s an “International Association of Skateboard Companies? You’ve got to be shitting me. But seriously: blank decks don’t “really contribute” to the industry? No, they don’t contribute to IASC’s bottomline. All the people riding those blank decks are of course contributing to the indusry: they’re buying the clothes, the shoes, the hats, the name-brand socks, the trucks, the bearings, the wheels. Tony Hawk’s video game (all of them). They’re spending money on Vans’ Warped Tour, and they watch the X Games on TV. The people who buy these decks are the industry, present and future.

Fortunately, the “effort backfired.” According to Mr. Bernards, “We got hate mail saying that we are trying to commercialize skateboarding.”

Didn’t your marketing team tell you that in terms of aversion to commercialization and “selling-out,” skateboarding kids are second only to thirty-somethings with mohawks and Sex Pistols bumper stickers? Apparently, you did not get that memo.  Bob Denike, president of NHS, a distributor, blames the industry for “[L]osing customers to cheap decks. ‘We don’t keep the product changing and moving forward. When you have a 10-15 year run of no innovation, you leave the door wide open for an issue like this.’”

Anyways, some of the companies, including NHS began a mysterious process called “innovation and differentiation,” hitherto known only to capitalists and Loki, the Norse god of mischief:  “[T]he large skateboard brands have begun adding new technology, such as special footplates, air pockets, and layers of hemp fabric, Kevlar or fiberglass to absorb shock.”

To nobody’s surprise, except perhaps Mr. Bernards, the innovators are doing well. Denike, who is “looking at boards made by mixing fiberglass materials with wood and wood laminates,” says that for a new, innovative skateboard deck with a kevlar inlay to prevent fracture, “Sales are rising.”

No kidding.  Welcome to the real world.

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