HECK ON WHEELS : Skateboarding’s More Than 20 Million Practitioners Fuel Booming Market That’s Giving Pause to Surfing Industry
Skateboarding is not a crime. --A skateboarder’s bumper sticker
Kids are no longer looking for greener pastures--they would rather have cement.
Or just about any other hard surface to plunk their skateboards on and catch imaginary waves. No place seems to be off limits: drainage ditches, empty swimming pools, even the tops of dumpsters.
More than 20 million acrobatic, dry-land surfers have turned skateboarding into an industry that took in almost $250 million in wholesale equipment sales and $240 million for accessories and clothing in 1987.
The business is dominated by six California companies, including Vision and Alva, two trend-setting Orange County manufacturers. Those six firms, which specialize in making pro-quality skateboards and accessories, generated about $125 million in sales last year.
The industry’s rapid growth was reflected earlier this year at the Action Sports Trade Show in Long Beach, where up to 155 of the 775 vendors showed off skateboards or skatewear--a 30% increase from just two years ago.
Skateboarding has become an industry that caters to both a mass market and a trend-setting “outlaw” image. The style is commonly reflected in skateboards, particularly expensive customized ones, adorned with dancing skeletons and skulls, snakes, screaming faces or dragons.
‘More Rad Than the Surfer’
“Always before, the skater wanted to surf and emulated surfing,” said Dick Metz, founder of the Hobie Sports retail chain and partner of surfboard king Hobie Alter. “Now it’s rad (radical) to be a skateboarder, and the skateboarder is more rad than the surfer. Skateboarders dress differently, act differently--it’s become more progressive and stylish, while the surfer has evolved into a conservative thing.”
And you don’t need an ocean to roll like a pro.
“You can skate anywhere,” said Richard Novak, whose Santa Cruz Skateboards is one of the three biggest names making pro-quality skateboards. “The center of skateboarding right now is everywhere. You can see it in Minnesota, New York, Tokyo, Germany, England. . . . So people can relate to skating more than they can to surfing.”
“There’s more cement being poured every day,” noted Kevin Thatcher of Thrasher, a magazine named after rad skaters’ aggressive style. “Skateboarders thrive on an empty pool, a parking lot, a tennis court--just about everywhere there’s a smooth surface.”
And their sport has created a thriving retail trade. Galaxy Sports in Laguna Beach, for example, has been doing a booming business, selling about 120 types of skateboards.
The type of board you choose depends on the type of skating you do and what tricks you want to perform. The store also stocks accessories, including kits to build skating pipes and launch ramps 3 to 4 feet high.
It is a business that is aimed at the very young. Mitch Muniz, Galaxy’s store manager, noted that the store sells mostly to children 7 to 10 years olds--”the ones that bring in mom and dad, who’ll spend the money.”
Galaxy sells 50 to 60 skateboards a week for up to $170 apiece.
150% Increase in Sales
At the four Southland Chick’s Sporting Goods stores, skateboard sales have gone up 150% in the last year and a half. “We probably see 150 parents with kids every weekend,” buyer John Christensen said.
“The reason the parents come along is to carry the money,” joked Cliff Pulfer, a Calgary resident vacationing in Southern California last week. Pulfer, along with wife, Carol, and 14-year-old son, Troy, spent about two hours of their Southern California vacation at Skateboard Lover Pro Shop in Garden Grove.
Troy chose about $200 in skate gear, including a fluorescent orange, yellow and green skateboard deck with a pirate and snake design and wheels. Next came the trucks (axle units), truck guards to protect the trucks, rails to protect the bottom of the board, riser pads, grip tape and four red bolts. Finally came guards for the kick tail and nose guard. Skateboard Lover threw in a few free decals.
The laundry list of parts is not unusual because serious skateboarders put their boards together piecemeal, like component stereo systems.
The wide interest in skateboarding has led to a big and bustling industry of board, wheel and deck manufacturers--not to mention all kinds of protective gear and three special-interest magazines.
Aficionados put together their own customized boards, spending up to $170 for the components, even though the industry also offers fully assembled--if less sophisticated--boards for as little as $9.95. The professional models, however, set industry trends.
Mass-marketed skateboards sold by companies like Variflex, Nash, Valterra Products Inc., Sport Fun, Roller Derby and Brookfield cost $10 to $59.95.
Ray Losi, president and chairman of Moorpark-based Variflex, said his company grossed $1.5 million from skateboard sales in 1983. That climbed to $30 million--or a 37% share of the market--in 1987. The mass-market companies sold 1.6 million to 1.9 million boards last year.
But skateboarders, like car owners, like to move up to flashier and more expensive models. So there are also a much smaller, more select group of customized board makers who are in the quality end of the business. Their contrasts--and increasing recent success--are embodied in Brad Dorfman and Tony Alva, two unconventional county entrepreneurs who are among the industry’s leaders.
You can’t say success has spoiled Alva. It hasn’t made him cut off his pink, red and purple dreadlocks. And he isn’t averse to hopping a fence to do a little skateboarding in an abandoned swimming pool or other less likely places. That was why he was scratching poison-oak rash the other day.
These days, Alva heads Alva Products, a county company known as the most “dreaded” because of the dreadlock hair style sported by Alva and his team of professional skaters who promote the products.
Alva’s dedication to skateboarding has brought him not only fortune but fame. He is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for leaping over 19 barrels on a skateboard in 1977.
The $2.5-million-a-year company produces mostly skateboarding hardware such as decks, wheels and accessories and also distributes trucks. Alva also just expanded its T-shirt clothing line to include shorts.
The company is considered an industry leader despite the relatively small sales because of the legendary likes of Alva and the radical-punk image of the tattooed skaters who work for him.
Brad Dorfman, casual but less punk with shoulder-length hair, owns Costa Mesa-based Vision Sports and Vision Street Wear--both major industry forces in skateboards and skatewear.
Shrewd Business Savvy, Hard Work
After starting the company 11 years ago, Dorfman, 38, expanded his operations through a mix of shrewd business savvy and hard work--to the point that today he conducts business from portable phones in two Mercedes-Benz convertibles.
The company had 1987 wholesale sales of $30 million-plus from skateboards, snowboards, skateboard parts, distribution of other company’s products, clothing, shoes, safety gear, helmets, key chains and decals.
Vision sponsors scores of skateboarding exhibitions and distributes pictures of wholesome, if decidedly trendy, youths with their skateboards.
“The market for the hard goods will increase, but it’ll reach a plateau,” said Dorfman, who has become known as the “J.R.” of the industry to critics who say his aggressive marketing has sometimes been at the expense of competitors.
Despite the criticism, industry experts credited Vision for canny marketing. At least half of Vision’s 1987 sales were for skate hardware.
But Dorfman insisted that sales of skatewear “can well exceed the surf market.” That would be impressive because the California-based surfwear industry takes in about $1 billion a year.
“There are a lot more skaters than surfers,” Dorfman said--and they all need clothes.
So, not surprisingly, the punk style has been copied by a series of surfwear manufacturers that have produced their own skatewear labels. These include Gotcha’s Bash line, Billabong’s Bad Billy’s, Catchit’s Skatehardware and SK8 and Life’s a Beach’s Bad Boy label.
The competition is ironic because surfwear makers not long ago were complaining about others treading on their turf--or water.
“When all the L.A. sportswear guys jumped into the surfwear market, all the surf guys said, ‘Hey, stay in your own market,’ ” said Nat Norfleet, president of Norfleet Hawaii, an Irvine-based surfwear company. “Now all the surfwear guys are getting into skatewear, and the skate guys are saying, ‘Hey, stay in your own market.’ ”
There may be good reason for the invasion.
The skatewear industry “is pretty much in its infancy,” said Michael Tomson, president of Costa Mesa-based Gotcha Sportswear. “Potentially it could go to the size of surfwear, but right now it’s somewhat of a paper tiger. Everyone’s rushing to get into this because of what they think it might be, not because of what it is.”
“These kids are just flush with money,” said Gary Hanson, owner of Thunderwear, a San Clemente-based manufacturer of skate gloves that feature heavy wrist supports and cut-out fingertips so that boards can be grabbed more easily. Hanson estimated that his firm sold about 50,000 pairs of gloves through 400 stores in 1986, and sales are increasing.
Despite the fickleness of the skateboarding public, the industry has created its own stars--to go with a good deal of promotion.
Top professional skaters such as Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, Rodney Mullin and Mark (Gator) Rogowski reportedly earn $100,000 to $200,000 a year from product endorsements. Hawk has his name on a line of T-shirts, shorts, jackets, pants, duffel bags, miniature skateboards (finger boards) and watches.
Hosoi and Mullin endorse Converse skate shoes. The endorsements are important because, according to at least one industry expert, there is a $200-million wholesale market for the shoes--most of them with wildly colored soles and fabrics featuring designs such as barbed wire, skeletons or bones, as well as distinctive side-pads.
“We like to think of Christian Hosoi and Rodney Mullin as the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird of their sports,” said John O’Neil, Converse group marketing manager. “They’re as important to us in their sports as Magic and Larry are to us in basketball.”
Very Hot, Very Trendy
Meanwhile, makers of other products--including Slice, Mountain Dew, Kool-Aid and Swatchwear--are using skateboarders in advertising too. “It’s very hot, it’s very trendy, and that’s Mountain Dew’s audience, which is totally teens,” said Dave Ropes, vice president of advertising for Pepsi-Cola Co.
There are, naturally, also skateboard videos, and a skateboard movie--”Gleaming the Cube”--is in the works.
The kind of audience they will find--and whether that audience will endure--is anyone’s guess, but industry experts don’t see the fad dying.
“I think it will level off and stay consistent,” said Larry Gordon, owner of Gordon & Smith, a San Diego skateboard manufacturer.
“It’s too established to die. Like the bicycle or surfboard business, once something like this becomes established, there’s an ongoing market--new kids, kids that wear out equipment or want to buy newer things.”
Skater Dan (Smitty) Smith, 15, of Banning said: “It’s the danger--when you’re in the air if you don’t come down, you just die. It helps you relax, too, and takes your mind off your problems.”
Besides, it’s fun.
