I’ve been riding decks flowed to me by Brock and Sean over at Mothership Distribution for the past year or so now. The more I ride them, the more I worry about how the deck companies sponsoring pros are going to get along, because the quality of the blank products I’m getting from Mothership is pretty high, as good as or better than any pro deck I’ve ever had.
Mothership Distribution is a deck manufacturer with skate shops being their main target market. That is, if you own a skate shop and want to get some shop decks, you talk to Mothership and they’ll make the decks for you according to your specs (you can give them a custom shape or choose from their existing shapes) and they’ll screen your graphics onto the deck for you as well. You just send them the design you want, and you get a box full of nice shop decks. It’s easy. And they can also get you blank wheels, bearings, hardware, griptape, and trucks, amongst other things.
I’ve written about the blank deck issue before, as well as the issue of skateboard decks made in China. Mothership is a prime example of where those in the industry have either already moved or will be moving soon. But that’s not the point of this post.
The point is that Mothership decks, which are made in China, are a lot better than I expected. I had expected anything from China to quickly delaminate, break, warp, or explode. My experience has been anything but. In fact, I’ve tested these decks in ways that I’ve broken other decks and I’ve found that they are standing up to my 220 lbs much better than other name-brand decks I’ve had in the past.
That isn’t to say I haven’t broken any, but I break almost every deck I ride and these haven’t broken as quickly and in some cases they never broke. In fact, one Mothership deck I had actually cracked within 30 minutes on a flat bar (I routinely break decks on flat bars since I’m pretty heavy), but it was still rideable. I then ended up riding that deck for another 3 months, which included at least 400 boardslides on rails and flat bars, but it never actually broke and remained rideable for all that time. I ended up replacing it because the tail was starting to get a little sharp and the grip was wearing out.
Other problems I’ve experienced in the past with other blank or shop decks are shape, weight, thickness, concave, and pop. I haven’t had any such problems with Mothership decks. They’re light, thin but strong (I got a Shuvit blank once that seemed like it was super thick and I couldn’t stand the thing, I don’t like thick decks), they’ve got good shapes, the concave is right, and they’ve got as much pop as any other deck I’ve ever had.
If you’re a kid looking to buy a blank deck Mothership isn’t where you go, since they don’t do retail. You can buy their products through www.myblankskateboarddeck.com or even better, go to your local skateshop and tell them they need to get their shop decks from Mothership Distribution.
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What happened to the myblankskateboarddeck.com site? Why did it not work out?
The problem is that blank decks are a commodity. That is, there’s no differentiation. A blank deck is a blank deck, and if someone can buy one for $15 instead of $20 they’ll buy the one for $15. That means whoever can offer the lowest price wins, and unfortunately I was not the guy with the lowest prices, since I was just getting started, and there were already companies out there shipping thousands every month, which meant they had per-board costs that were much lower than mine, which essentially meant they could sell their decks for lower than I was paying for decks. It very quickly became obvious that it wasn’t going to be a good business model so I shut it down. I only wish I had thought a little more about it before getting started.