Cashing In on the Bad Boy Image

“Destroy All Girls.” “Wife Beater.” “Kill.”

Slogans of a subversive, counterculture organization? Well, sort of, if that’s what you call teenage boys.

The messages are a marketing ploy, appearing on shirts made by a Huntington Beach in-line skating equipment firm named Senate.

Until recently, Senate was known only among a small subset of aggressive, or extreme, skaters who perform a variety of acrobatics on their in-line wheels.

Then in May, the 3-year-old firm joined the shock marketing hall of fame--or shame--when the Galyan’s sporting goods chain, a subsidiary of the Limited, announced that it was returning Senate merchandise, deeming the “Destroy All Girls” laundry tag line offensive.

But even as mainstream America condemned Senate, the company expected that demand for its shirts, jeans, wheels and other accessories would increase.

As Arlo Eisenberg, Senate’s 23-year-old co-founder and marketing chief, says: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?”

Well, yes and no. It is hardly a secret that sex, violence and outrageousness sell, from the “nothing comes between me and my Calvins” jeans ads in 1980 to the fashion industry’s current “heroin chic” look. And controversial T-shirt slogans are a cheap and easy way to get attention.

The real test of longevity is finding a way to keep pushing the marketing boundaries without alienating too much of society.

“The biggest challenge that every company faces is finding the right voice,” said Jim Small, manager of business affairs at Nike, which has refined edginess to an art form.

For now, Senate is getting a lot of mileage by riding the growth of “aggressive skating,” which is the very edge of the cutting edge. If you haven’t heard of the sport, you are probably over 25 and think Seattle grunge is still hot.

Extreme skaters don’t want Spandex; they want baggy pants and boxer shorts. They don’t have tans; they have tattoos. They use smaller wheels for sharp turns, and specialized metal plates on skate frames that help them “grind” down on rails to brake the slide.

Like skateboarders, these extreme skaters see themselves as a distinct breed. Because skate parks equipped with ramps and railings are relatively scarce, many take to the streets where they occasionally run afoul of police with such stunts as--quite literally--skating down the steps of City Hall.

“We’re not bad guys, we’re not out killing people,” said Ryan Beytor, 24, of Chino, who uses the Pharside 714 skate park in Costa Mesa. “I’m about having fun, just rolling, hanging out with friends, having a beer.”

It is a different world than the more sedate pastime known as recreational in-line skating, which was born in the early 1980s when two Minnesota brothers designed skates for off-season hockey training. The pair went on to found Rollerblade, but the sport didn’t really take off until the company loaded up vans with skates and gave demonstrations along Southern California’s beach boardwalks.

Within a decade, in-line skating had mushroomed into a national phenomenon. By last year, more than 30 million Americans were practicing in-line skating, up 19% from 1995.

About five years ago, a splinter group of skaters who borrowed the tricks of the skateboarding crowd--jumping, flipping and careening along curbs, walls and rails--began to evolve.

Southern California has become the focal point for aggressive skating. In the last few years, the region has given birth to magazines with names like Box and Daily Bread, which run articles on subjects ranging from sex and politics to the mechanics of extreme skating.

Video Groove in Costa Mesa began making a series of wildly popular videos showcasing daredevil skaters, set to the music of alternative bands.

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Perhaps the biggest factor behind aggressive skating’s appeal was the debut two years ago of ESPN’s X-Games (X for extreme). A sort of Olympics of alternative sports, the X-Games--this year’s event ended last weekend in San Diego--has generated a small but loyal following, particularly among youths who feel alienated from the traditional sports world.

In terms of numbers, aggressive skating is still tiny, accounting for 5% to 10% of the $1-billion-a-year in-line skating market, according to the International In-line Skating Assn. in Kensington, Md. But its popularity is soaring, and it’s now the fastest-growing segment within America’s fastest-growing sport.

Senate is at the crest of that wave.

Like other companies that have used intentionally belligerent themes, Senate has carefully honed an us vs. them mentality--a strategy that works particularly well with extreme skaters.

Eisenberg, a former X-Games champion, is known on the competitive skating circuit as the Michael Jordan of his sport, but with a Dennis Rodman attitude. At one time, he sported a buzz cut in the shape of horns.

He started Senate in 1994 with President Mark Heineken, 28, and a handful of other skaters after they unsuccessfully tried to persuade larger sporting goods concerns to make products specifically for aggressive skating.

From the start, Senate struck a rebellious note, right down to the company name--chosen to reflect a “powerful yet corrupt” institution, Eisenberg says.

Catalogs and packaging materials were laced with obscenities. One line of shirts was emblazoned with the word “Sinner” and a rendering of a skater holding a bloody baseball bat. Another depicted someone committing suicide. A Senate bumper sticker reads, “My Son Beat Up Your Student of the Month.”

The sheer outrageousness was precisely the point, Eisenberg said. “We wanted to make skating cool.”

Senate fan Ryan Hayward, 15, of Costa Mesa agreed: “It’s what we like, it’s what we want.”

The key to Senate’s popularity among aggressive skaters, industry insiders say, is that it was started by some of their own, not a big corporation with Madison Avenue whizzes trying to figure out what youths think is cool.

Still, young as he is, those who know Eisenberg are struck by the Texas native’s keen eye for self-promotion. Never known to refuse an interview, Eisenberg saw the X-Games as “not just an event that has decent prize money,” said Chris Stiepock, X-Games’ director of marketing.

“We’re an opportunity for him to further his endeavors. He recognizes that if in-line skating becomes more popular, his company will benefit.”

Although Eisenberg denies such a calculated strategy, the results are clear.

“He developed a following of tens of thousands of kids,” said Todd Shays, executive director of the Aggressive Skaters Assn. in Venice. “That’s the reason Senate is so successful.”

The Senate controversy has raised concern in the fledgling industry that extreme skaters will now be branded as a bunch of obnoxious adolescents, just as the sport is starting to achieve some legitimacy in the broader athletic realm.

“We’re not all represented by Senate,” said Angie Walton, publisher of Daily Bread magazine.

Despite the “nasty boy” image, most aggressive skating enthusiasts are “nice, mainstream kids who have parents who make $50,000 or $80,000 a year and go to a nice school and summer camp,” Shays said.

“It’s not necessarily a punk culture. It’s like soccer moms.”

Indeed, it’s a tricky game Senate is playing, and one that only a few marketers have parlayed into a lasting success. Go too far and you will never be more than a novelty, a quickly forgotten item on the nightly news. Not far enough, and what’s the point? Kids don’t want wimpy; they want wild.

The fear of suddenly being perceived as out of touch is enough to give cold sweats to even the most effective in-your-face marketers. Executives at Nike “have nightmares about kids waking up and saying, ‘Buy me anything but Nikes,’ ” said Faith Popcorn, the New York-based marketing guru.

At the same time, a crude or titillating sales campaign can easily backfire if the retailing world outside of Venice Beach or Times Square deems that the line of good taste has been crossed.

“You can only take hip and cool so far,” said Jack Trout, a marketing consultant in Greenwich, Conn.

“It’s one thing if you’re totally selling on your own, through the Internet,” he said. “But everybody wants to work up to the big guys. Let’s be real. That’s where the money is.”

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Even the most stubbornly abrasive marketers have learned that lesson.

In 1995, the master of controversial ad campaigns himself, Calvin Klein, backed down after he was accused of promoting kiddie porn with ads featuring very young models in suggestive poses. Although he probably would have withstood the hue and cry from politicians, he caved in when his biggest customers told him to scrap the ads.

“The retailers are the ones who pay the bills, and they are public companies,” said Alan Millstein, editor and publisher of the New York-based Fashion Network Report newsletter. “They don’t want some churchgoing women cutting up their credit cards.”

Another case in point is Coed Naked. Three years ago, parent company Coed Sportswear was embroiled in a controversy when a Massachusetts teenager refused a teacher’s order to remove a T-shirt reading, “Coed Naked--Do It to the Rhythm.” A lawsuit followed, and the state Supreme Court sided with the student.

Yet it was a Pyrrhic victory for the company. When the case was first publicized, stores began ordering Coed Naked shirts “by the truckload,” said Scott MacHardy, president of Coed Sportswear. But as time went by, the company found that it couldn’t fight every school board decision banning its shirts. In the long run, he said, sales were probably hurt.

“You have to pick your battles,” MacHardy said. “You can’t be middle of the road apple pie to the majors [retailers] and still have an edge to the kids.”

Eisenberg says he is well aware of that, and finds it ironic that Senate is getting so much notoriety just as he has been trying to tone down the company’s image as part of an effort to cultivate a broader youth market.

“When we got bigger,” he admitted, “we realized there was a lot at risk.”

The “Destroy All Girls” line was printed in tiny letters at the bottom of laundry tags, not splashed across the front of T-shirts, he noted. Meanwhile, the pictures of bloody baseball bats are long gone.

The company is also using another common marketing trick. It has started new brands in an attempt to appeal to different groups by divorcing certain products from the Senate name. One line, “976,” run by Heineken’s wife, Vera, is targeted at the growing contingent of female aggressive skaters.

Eisenberg defends Senate’s outlaw image as critical to disassociating aggressive skating from in-line skating in the early days. But he contends that the company has accomplished that goal.

“We’ve mellowed,” he said. Now, “our focus is on quality products, and being part of the scene.”