Wheel Power
The hottest trend in fashion isn’t a color or silhouette, but playgrounds.
Youth- and active-oriented brands--from Vans to Levi’s--are strengthening their hold on pop culture by boosting their role in sports. These alliances can ensure a brand’s relevance and even survival in an increasingly saturated marketplace.
Beyond simply sponsoring uniforms or posting banners at events, apparel and shoemakers are becoming sports facilities’ developers.
In Orange on Saturday and Sunday, more than 1,000 inquiring minds, many covered in helmets, came to gawk at--and ride--the 46,000 square feet of wooden ramps and concrete bowls at Vans Skatepark.
The sneaker maker plunked down $5 million to construct its Taj Mahal to skateboarding, touting it as a training camp for competitors and a place for enthusiasts to ride hassle-free.
After first walking through a shop hawking Vans-branded merchandise, customers pay $7 to $14 (depending on the time of day) to enter the skate park, where the company’s logo is splattered from the vertical ramps up to the wall.
This is a place where skateboarding is not a crime, as a bumper-sticker mantra goes. It’s king.
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Who knows if it will work. At the park opening, many applauded Vans for building the ramps, but, like seventh-grader Brian McHugh of Orange, they may not feel compelled to buy its active-casual footwear, clothing and accessories. More than two dozen skate-specific shoe brands compete for skateboarders’ feet while also trying to attract the greater number of nonskaters who just like the look.
“Brands are taking a different role in positioning themselves in their customers’ lifestyles. It’s not just what you should wear, but what you should do, how you should live,” says Jane Rinzler Buckingham, founder of Youth Intelligence, a New York trend forecasting group that counts MTV and Clairol among its clients. “Customers expect added value for their loyalty.”
In Santa Barbara, several manufacturers of skateboards and related apparel banded together to persuade a reluctant City Council that the area needed a skate park. When the city found usage of a temporary skate park at a junior high school exceeded interest in local baseball diamonds and other sports areas, it gave its blessing and partial funding to build a $400,000 concrete skate park across from the pier. Donations have covered most of the costs, including fund-raisers hosted by Powell Skateboards.
“The kids want to skate, they don’t want to play baseball,” says longtime skater Sean Murphy, who, along with his twin brother and father, owns a skate brand called Porn Star.
“A couple years ago it seemed so unreal that this could even happen,” the 30-year-old says. “Now companies around the country are finding ways of getting parks in their cities. When sponsors come in, so do the people, because it’s an added attraction when we bring in the pros, the free stickers and other giveaways.”
In October, Levi’s sponsored the Aggressive Skaters Assn. Pro Tour World Championships in Las Vegas. The San Francisco-based jeans maker also entered a team made up of top international skaters, outfitted in Levi’s gear. And it provided a super ramp--fully branded with illustrations from the company’s Silver Tab campaign. A contest on the ramp yielded the largest purse awarded at an in-line skate event--$10,000.
“We’re just trying to reach our target consumers, who are 15 to 19 years old, in new and innovative ways and reach them in places where they spend their time,” company spokeswoman Kim Sobel says. “Our involvement in extreme sports is one way to speak to them directly.”
It’s no coincidence that Irvine-based Gotcha makes surf and snowboard gear and is co-owner in the $40-million, four-story Gotcha Glacier set to open in Anaheim in spring 2000. The snowboarding facility is designed to meet the competitive requirements of the International Snowboarding Federation and the Olympics. The complex will also feature a surf park with 12-foot waves, a skyboarding chamber, a roller hockey rink and a gallery of shops and restaurants.
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Gotcha CEO Marvin Winkler returned from Hawaii Monday, where he scoped out sites for a second Gotcha Glacier. The brand owns a minority stake in the venture but will reap extensively from its affiliation, particularly in the coveted area of credibility.
“As we move forward, the credibility factor is becoming more important,” says Robin Austin, whose Connecticut-based trend forecaster Fusion 5 works with Sprite and Nike. “It takes more than a cool product. It’s about what a company stands for and how it connects emotionally with consumers. A company doesn’t own cool, the consumer does. It’s up to the consumer to determine who is and isn’t. When kids start talking about it, then it’s cool, then it’s got credibility.”
Adds Youth Intelligence’s Rinzler Buckingham: “Kids know they have money to spend, and they know they have power. So these kids want to know what the companies are going to do for them.” If a company seems to be trying to manipulate them or is trying to be hip, kids will turn away.
Nike encountered such action when it tried entering the skateboard market by financing last summer’s remodeling of a popular skate park at the Encinitas YMCA. But antiestablishment skateboarders--leery of anyone who sees them as a profit source or fad--spread a “Don’t Do It” campaign in the streets and through the Internet.
Still, the behemoth’s contributions to community sports is extensive. Last year, Nike partnered with Kaboom, a Washington-based nonprofit group that identifies sites for building playgrounds, tennis and basketball courts. Among the 10 earmarked this year is a playground at Chernow House, a community center in Boyle Heights.
Nike provides employees to install equipment, as well as 75% of the funds for the projects, which average $22,500. No signs indicate Nike’s sponsorship, nor are they required, says spokesman Robert Mitchell, although a Philadelphia playground has chosen to recognize its benefactor.
Vans’ hugely successful Warp Tour, a marriage of punk rock and skateboarding, has become a summer tradition. And the company is finalizing a lease in Orlando, Fla., for a location comparable to the Orange park. It also plans to build more skate parks in the U.S. and overseas.
Skate legend Micke Alba, 35, of Ontario, thinks the skate park works. “It’s good for the sport overall,” he says. “If it means companies have to step up because the government refuses, then more power to them.”
Skaters such as Clay Lerner of Malibu echo company owners who say that everyone wins in this trend. “We need the companies to supply us with the clothes and the boards. We need them to build these places,” says the eighth-grader. “But they need us too.”
