Success Doesn’t Just Skate In

Nathan Khoshnood is working the fence, hawking Oriental rugs made in Georgia to passing motorists in Los Angeles. He’s making a few bucks, but his mind is not in the game. He is thinking skateboards--giant winged skateboards, ones on which his earthbound fortunes were at last to take wing.

Perhaps he also broods, as the cars whiz past the carpeted fence at the corner of Florence and Miles in Huntington Park, about where he went wrong in life. It’s been a strange journey for a man who says his name means “satisfaction” in Farsi, his native tongue.

Lately, Khoshnood is a misnomer. For a mere $12,000, this son and grandson of traders and businessmen got a lock on the entire North American market, 365 million strong, for what could be the hottest toy in history.

It could be, but unfortunately for Khoshnood, it isn’t. “Skatewing,” a sturdy-looking skateboard with wheeled wings and handles that permit nifty turns, is an item that almost no one in North America seems to want.

Worse yet, Khoshnood doesn’t just have exclusive rights. He also laid out $25,000 for 650 actual Skatewings, now sitting in storage in Downey at $150 a month.

“I put practically every penny into this,” he says ruefully.

The whole thing started more than a year ago, when Skatewing seemed set to take off. Khoshnood saw it on public television, of all places, and it immediately captured his imagination.

“The next thing you know, I got the money together, opened the LC, and a container arrived. That was the beginning of the latest disaster.”

LC means letter of credit, one of which was necessary because the Skatewing was invented in Australia, and because Khoshnood’s containerful was made in China.

As for “the latest disaster,” well, maybe he exaggerates, but the problem is a little larger than a skateboard.

California is full of Khoshnoods, even if their names--Kim or Garcia or Liu--don’t mean anything in Farsi. They share enormous entrepreneurial spirit and, one assumes, a similar sense of exile.

At 30, Khoshnood believes that he should be further along, should have money in the bank. But thanks in part to Skatewing, he still lives alone in a small apartment in Palms.

Determined to marry a fellow Iranian Jewish emigre, Khoshnood says the conservative parents of prospective mates look askance at a suitor whose entire net worth is tied up in unsaleable Stealth-wing skateboards in Downey.

It is a strange impasse for one blessed with such seeming foresight. Descendant of Sephardic Jews forced from Spain by the Inquisition and settled for centuries in Iran, Khoshnood knew enough to get out of Iran before the fundamentalist revolution and the war with Iraq. He left at just 17, speaking nothing but Farsi.

And he knew enough to come to the United States, where he lived illegally for 10 years before he had the good fortune to win a green card and permanent residence.

Like so many immigrants, Khoshnood came to work. He learned English during a few months in London, and attended a community college in Miami, where after six months of yard work he had his own truck, tools and customers. He was in business.

“All of my family has done business,” he says. “I can’t work for anybody.”

Then he fell in love, or rather into a classic immigrant love story. Khoshnood and his girlfriend took so much heat from their families about religious and cultural differences that he finally broke off the relationship to wander the country, selling carpets on street corners from Manhattan to Honolulu.

He’s also peddled women’s wear, shoes and toys. Khoshnood is a friendly guy, open and easy to like, and you get the feeling he could sell just about anything. Anything but Skatewings.

Lord knows he’s tried. He got a sales territory that stretches from the Bering Sea to the Yucatan Peninsula. With his fine grasp of popular culture, Khoshnood easily snared great free publicity on the ABC and Fox television networks, as well as on local television. He even sent a Skatewing to David Letterman.

“I got such a terrific item,” he says almost indignantly. “I can’t sell it. I can’t make it.”

The real problem, he acknowledges, is that the Skatewings cost too much. To be profitable, they have to retail for at least $65, a lot for such an item in a bad economy. But they’re made by hand of bent plywood; Khoshnood himself paid $38.50 each wholesale.

He’s tried sporting goods stores, which consider it a toy, and toy stores, which consider it a sporting good. Wal-Mart and Woolworth’s wouldn’t bite either.

Early one morning Kmart called; they wanted more information. Khoshnood was on a cloud.

“Twenty-two hundred stores!” he says in some awe. “They would probably take six pieces each!”

But ultimately Kmart didn’t take any.

For Khoshnood, this business of the Skatewings is getting so bad he may have to move someplace cheaper, maybe go in with some roommates. When he gets sick, he goes to the county hospital, where he spends most of the day waiting.

Khoshnood has been away from home so long that home isn’t really anywhere. This is his third two-year stint in Los Angeles; he hasn’t figured out yet whether he’ll stay permanently, or where else he might end up.

Maybe that’s what hurts most about the Skatewing fiasco. Having failed to make his fortune at it, the prospect of a lasting home seems further away than ever.