Deep in San Francisco, California’s Sunset district there is a house with a bowl in the backyard and a woodshop in the garage. This is where maker George Rocha creates new old skateboards out of old skateboards. The business is called Iris Skateboards, but from the sounds of it Rocha makes a lot of cool stuff. And his friends are obviously pretty good at building websites, shooting photos, and making slick films featuring Iris Skateboards. Which all works out pretty well for a guy who claims he doesn’t know anything about marketing. Check it out in Jeremy McNamara’s film Day by Day.
Like snowboard bindings that rotate, motorized skateboards have forever been a solution to a problem that does not exist. That hasn’t stopped a slew of Northern California tech heads from trying to design the perfect electric skateboard. (You may remember Boosted Boards whose batteries “vented”). Fast Company checks in with Ryan Evans “the 32-year-old CEO of an electric skateboard company called Inboard Technology” the latest producer of unaffordable longboards few skateboarders want to buy.
With the M1, Inboard hopes to snare early adopters who the company identifies as mostly men between 30 and 55 years of age who live in urban areas and earn more than $130,000 annually. According to Inboard’s analysis, a million people fit that description, and with more than twice the median income in the U.S., they can afford the $1,399 price tag. As the price drops, the potential customer base grows. If the board costs less than $1,000, college kids are more likely to buy it, and at a price point under $600, high schoolers get in on it.
Want to roll on a skateboard without pushing? Go down a hill. Want to get to work without driving a car (or pushing a skateboard), ride a bike. Want to look like a total tool while riding a skateboard in a suit, talking on a cellphone, and swerving through pedestrians? Looks like the Inboard M1 is just for you.
Capitola, California entrepreneur Griffin Guess, the guy running the Titans of Mavericks big wave surf contest and Big Cartel Management reportedly filed for bankruptcy on both businesses on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, according to a story in the Mercury News.
Cartel Management Inc. and Titans of Mavericks LLC, . . . filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection amid a sea of legal and financial problems. . . It’s unclear exactly what the twin bankruptcies mean for the contest this year and in years to come, since Cartel last year obtained a new five-year permit from the San Mateo County Harbor District to run the contest off Pillar Point.
But there is more:
The bankruptcies come on the heels of a judgment this fall in which jurors found Cartel and Guess’s wife, swimsuit model Marissa Miller, owed a company $1 million for breaching a contract to promote sunless tanning products and a tanning salon in Southern California. . . On Friday, Red Bull Media House filed a breach of contract and unlawful enrichment claim against Cartel and Titans of Mavericks for $400,000. Red Bull has broadcast the Mavericks contest live on the internet. . . Cartel also owes $280,000 to Fox Sports in another disputed claim, according to the bankruptcy filing. The harbor district is owed $6,600 as part of the government contract involving the Mavericks contest.
Guess says none of this should really worry fans of big wave surfing as the bankruptcy is part of a “strategy” to sell off the intellectual property rights and get them into the hands of someone who can “gain from all our hard work,” he said.
In fact, Titans of Mavericks spokesperson Kelsey Kaulukukui said in an email to the Mercury News that none of this should suggest that the contest won’t happen this year. Remember, bankruptcy is just big business’s way of saying, “whoops.”
If you have an Apple TV, Samsung Smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV, Kindle Fire, Chromecast,Nexus Player, Roku Player, Roku TV, or Xbox console you will likely be able to watch the 2017 Volcom Pipeline Pro surf contest live thanks to our friends at the Colored Cow. The contest may start tomorrow (February 1, 2017).
With the best surfer in history, Kelly Slater, looking to defend his title and stars like Jamie O’Brien & John John Florence looking to unseat the champion, the competition promises to be intense. Participants will fight for a prize purse of $75,000 and valuable points in the World Surf League Qualifying Series. Additionally, the Volcom Pipe Pro gives local Hawaiian surfers the opportunity to compete alongside the tour pros and potentially earn their way into the Billabong Pipe Masters.
Patagonia has sponsored a new film The More Things Change by Nathan Myers and Gerry Lopez, featuring Dave Rastovich, Rob Machado and Rizal Tanjung.
When Gerry Lopez first surfed Uluwatu in 1974, the fabled Balinese wave was magical, empty and pristine. Gerry returned to Uluwatu 40 years later to find it bustling, developed and profoundly changed. After a week of surfing and yoga, however, Gerry tapped into a spirit of place that continues to endure. . . In recent years, booming popularity has placed huge environmental pressure on the Uluwatu area. Project Clean Uluwatu is working to ease this pressure and restore the area’s pristine nature.
To watch the entire film, please click play. For more info and/or to make a donation to Project Clean Uluwatu, please click the link below.
Former Billabong CEO Matthew Perrin was sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud and forgery on January 27, 2017, according to a story on News.com.au.
In sentencing the 44-year-old to eight years behind bars, District Court Judge Julie Dick said he still had “no self realisation or remorse”. . . “You seem to simply refuse to recognise that it was you who forged documents and you who caused them to be presented to the bank,” Judge Dick said. . . She said he blamed his ex-wife Nicole Bricknell, the Commonwealth Bank and his former business partners.
Doesn’t sound like odd behavior for a corporate CEO. This one just got caught, it seems. But it’s not over for him. He’s 44 year old and will be eligible for parole in 2021, unless his lawyers can overturn his conviction on appeal, which is exactly what they are going claiming “the jury’s verdict ‘was unsafe and unsatisfactory’.”
Unfortunately, in Australia it seems that they don’t have special country club prisons for white-collar criminals and Perrin will be placed in Arthur Gorrie Prison with “rapists and murderers” according to a story in the Gold Coast News.
Donna Carpenter, the CEO of Burton Snowboards, has decided to help out employees who are making their way to Washington DC for the Women’s March on Washington on January 21, 2017, according to a story in Cosmopolitan Magazine. Donna is giving employees who want to go two nights lodging and $250 cash towards travel. How’s that for support?
I knew there would be a lot of Burton women who were making the effort to get down to Washington,” Donna said. “They’re that type of people. We’re in Vermont, in Bernie-land. I had a lot of employees who were volunteering for Bernie [Sanders]. But it’s a long way from Burlington to Washington, D.C. For me, it’s all about numbers. What they need are numbers to make a point.
Not only does Burton live in Bernie-land, Bernie is like family to the company (literal family) so it makes sense. It will also be nice for everyone to get out in the streets of DC the day after Friday’s events. For more thoughts from Donna, click the link.
Remember this Lily video? It was a drone that magically followed you wherever you went and shot epic follow cam footage without anyone at the controls. Yeah, we do, too. And when we first saw it we thought it was a bit of a dream product — great in the promo video, but never something that would actually work. In fact, we never even posted anything about it.
Apparently, many others believed the hype and threw down big money on pre-orders. Unfortunately, things didn’t go well during production of the drone and the company has now closed up shop and is trying to return money to those who pre-ordered. Meanwhile, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office has filed a civil consumer protection suit “alleging the company had intentionally lied to potential customers with its launch video” according to as story in Forbes.
An interesting side note is that legendary snowboard filmer Brad Kremer has been sucked into the story as he was the recipient of emails that are being used as evidence in the case against Lily.
In an email cited by the lawsuit, Lily CEO Balaresque wrote to Brad Kremer, a video producer who specialized in snowboarding shoots, that shots from the Lily Drone will be using a “Gopro mounted to a Lily prototype. . . . However, we do not feel comfortable telling people that we shot [view from Lily] scenes with a Gopro (because the whole thesis of our product is that you do not need a Gopro),” he continued. “Can you modify a Gopro image in post-processing so that people cannot tell that it was taken from a Gopro…”
According to the story, Kremer declined to discuss the case with Forbes.
As if Oakley’s corporate parent Luxottica couldn’t get any larger, the company today announced that it has merged with French optics giant Essilor in a deal reportedly worth $49 billion, according to a story in the Orange County Business Journal.
The $49 billion deal, expected to close in the second half of the year, will create “EssilorLuxottica,” with total revenue of about $16 billion and more than 140,000 employees. Luxottica’s Executive Chairman Leonardo Del Vecchio will serve as executive chairman and chief executive, while Essilor Chairman and Chief Executive Hubert Sagnières will be appointed executive vice-chairman and deputy chief executive of the new entity.
Thanks to the new deal, Oakley is now siblings with Foster Grantas well as nearly every other eyewear brand and retail outlet on the planet. Guess they’ve got the entire spectrum covered now.
If you have an Apple TV, Samsung Smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV, Kindle Fire, Chromecast, Nexus Player, Roku Player, Roku TV, or Xbox console you will likely be able to watch the 
Former Billabong CEO Matthew Perrin was sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud and forgery on January 27, 2017, according to a story on News.com.au.
As if Oakley’s corporate parent Luxottica couldn’t get any larger, the company today announced that it has merged with French optics giant 
