by The Editors on April 22, 2009
New York Times writer Michael Brick gets looks into boardsports triathlon Ultimate Boarder and finds the intersection of marketing, action sports, novelty and a founder who just wants make money doing what he loves.
The Ultimate Boarder organizer, Tim D. Hoover, a 38-year-old amateur surfer and onetime film industry worker, described the contest as his ticket to raising his family in this easygoing beach setting 60 miles north of Los Angeles. . . .“I really wanted to make this a grassroots, bootstrap, organic thing,” he said. “I wanted to do something to inspire and create a format for the next generation of kids that grow up in this lifestyle.”
Wonder how that’s working for him? How many people, aside from the competitors, really care about a competition that is won each year by aging skateboard team managers from surf clothing companies?
[Link: New York Times]
by The Editors on April 21, 2009
by The Editors on April 21, 2009
Airwalk is sticking with print advertising according to a story in Brandweek. The company is launching their new “We Are Airwalk” campaign in the printed pages of several magazines that are still in business.
The campaign will break in print in the June issue of Vapors, a skateboarding/lifestyle magazine. The print component will comprise 26 pages across vertical titles like Skateboarder and Snowboarder, as well as other lifestyle and music titles, including Spin and Filter. As for social media, the brand will have a presence on MySpace and Twitter. . . “The campaign is really focusing on athletes and who they are,” said Bruce Pettet, CEO of Airwalk, Denver, Colo. “It’s more than winning an X Games medal, it’s more the everyday life of what athletes do.”
Aside from the fact that they’re launching in print, it is nice to see that they’re sticking with the action photo and a logo creative. That way Andy Macdonald will actually have photos in a skateboard magazine.
[Link: Brandweek]
by The Editors on April 21, 2009
Andy Jenkins and Girl have developed a second round of Product (Red). This time it is two limited edition Girl Mike Carroll decks.
With every board sold, Girl givs a majority of its profits to the Global Fund.
[Link: Join Red via Club Mumble]
by The Editors on April 20, 2009
North Carolina State University in Raleigh has a seriously detailed set of rules around the campus, but thankfully, two skateboarding tricks were recently decriminalized, according to a story in The News & Observer.
Without comment, the Board of Trustees approved changes to the university’s transportation policy last week that decriminalized two of the most modest skateboard tricks: the ollie (wherein the back foot pushes the tail of the board down and the front foot lifts the board into the air) and the manual (riding on just two wheels, similar to a “wheelie” on a bike).
Sadly, “grinding” is still a crime at the school, but it’s nice to know that simply rolling around is legal.
[Link: The News & Observer]
by The Editors on April 20, 2009
It’s a green, oily day around these parts, but it’s nothing compared to the Amazonian verdure that is Sole Techololgy’s Pierre André Senizergues. He’s so green that he regularly sleeps on a bed of solar cells and has a garden in an industrial park. He’s so green he has a recycled clothing company. He’s so green the LA Times just did another story on how green he is. And that’s pretty damn green.
“What I’m trying to do with this is reach the influencers. I realized that when my furniture was [at Colette], Karl Lagerfeld bought some of it; whether it’s skateboarding, movies, furniture, architecture or fashion, if you can move that 10% that are the influencers, you can move everybody else.”
We think it’s working.
[Link: LA Times via The Skateboard Mag]
by The Editors on April 20, 2009
A skateboarder in West Bountiful, Utah rolled by and snatched a bag containing $2,700 from a Cafe owner who was on her way to the bank, according to a story on KSL.com
Police say the manager of the Café Rio at 235 S. 500 West in West Bountiful was walking a bag of bank deposits to her car around 10:20 a.m. Saturday. A man on a skateboard went speeding by, grabbed the bag of cash and kept boarding past.
We’re going to go out on a limb here and assume it was a longboard. . .
[Link: KSL.com]
by The Editors on April 20, 2009
Danny Way, who started on the pole position in Saturday’s Toyota Grand Prix Celebrity Pro and lead the celebrities the entire race, crashed in the final lap with a little help from the Disney Channel’s Raven Symone. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t happy about it, according to the Long Beach Press Telegram.
I got robbed,” said the skateboarding great, who will certainly take some heat from fellow X-Gamers and previous Pro/Celebrity Race winners Bucky Lasek and Dave Mirra. “I worked hard to get the best lap. It’s not my fault that effort was taken away. Everyone knows if she didn’t crash that I would have won.”
Even though Danny turned in the fastest lap time of the day (faster even the Al Unser Jr.) it was Keanu Reeves, who was able to avoid the crash and cross the finish line for the win. Yep, that’s racing.
[Link: Long Beach Press Telegram]
by The Editors on April 17, 2009
This is old news to anyone who follows Tony Hawk on Twitter, but last night he casually tweeted that a sports museum that he had loaned some memorabilia to had just gone bankrupt and the court wanted him to pay $1,500 to get his stuff back. Apparently, his stuff was being treated as an asset.
Today, CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell blogged about the tweet today and added a little detail:
We’re not 100 percent sure, but we think Hawk is talking about the Sports Museum of America, a national sports museum that was based near Wall Street and was actually open for seven months before shutting down in February. . .The museum’s parent company filed for bankruptcy the following month with $56 million in assets and $177 million in debt. The museum was displaying Hawk’s second-place trophy from a 1979 youth skateboarding competition.
Hopefully, Tony will get his trophy back. He won it once already and he shouldn’t have to win it again.
[Link: CNBC]
by The Editors on April 16, 2009
Entrepreneur magazine checks in with the raddest businessmen on the planet: Ryan Sheckler, bmxer Dave Mirra, and Paul Rodriguez to see how things are hanging. From Sheckler’s “Ferrari F430 parked outside,” to Mirra’s “multimillion-dollar business” to P.Rod’s “shoe boutique” the magazine makes it look like getting paid isn’t so bad afterall.
“I’m a skateboarder,” Sheckler says. “I’ll always be just a skateboarder. But I have these awesome opportunities that I’ll never let go by. It started with skateboarding. It’ll end with skateboarding. The things I do in between are my choice. The haters can say what they want, and the people who are my friends can realize what I’m doing and realize the empire I’m building for myself, and tag along and have some fun.”
Now really, who would hate on Ryan?
[Link: Entregreneur.com]
New York Times writer Michael Brick gets looks into boardsports triathlon Ultimate Boarder and finds the intersection of marketing, action sports, novelty and a founder who just wants make money doing what he loves.
