Alrighty gents, I used to own a skateshop in the pre-Internet days. I handed out fliers at skate spots. I talked to people. I did everything I could to get the word out, but like you, I didn’t have money to slap up a billboard or anything, so I relied mostly on word of mouth. Luckily, skateshops in that day were pretty rare, and so when a new one popped up everyone for an hour drive around knew about it overnight. You could have the lamest skateshop with no product and people would still get their mom to drive them an hour each way to check it out. And then they would still come back!

The Internet changes everything. It’s not all that hard to slap together a website, create a profile on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. If you’re a skateshop it’s a piece of cake for skaters to find you…right? Well, maybe you’ve got the system down, but even if you do, you could probably use a little more foot traffic or online sales. As you can tell if you follow this blog, writing posts here is not my full time job. Have I even written 10 times on here in the last year? Nay, my full time job is doing search engine optimization for other companies that have nothing to do with skateboarding. And recently, I launched a new business that builds online directories. I’m going to stick up one for every state and one for every major metro/city, but for now we’ve got a few up and running.

SkateShopDirectory.net

BostonSkateboardShops.com

CaliforniaSkateboardShops.com

LosAngelesSkateboardShops.com

NewYorkSkateboardShops.com

UtahSkateboardShops.com

You can go and list your skateshop on any of these websites for free. You get a whole page where you can put whatever information in there that you want, as well as a link to your website. If you know anything about getting better rankings in Google for your website, you’ll know a big part of it is getting links back from sites that are relevant to what you do. These websites are highly relevant, and as such are going to help your rankings quite a bit.

There’s no catch, other than this–if you want to be on the homepage, it costs $20/month (or $50/month on the national one, $20/month for a featured listing on a state-level page). You’ll still get some value and some traffic if you get a free listing, don’t get me wrong, but you’ll get a lot more traffic and SEO value if you’re on the homepage with a featured listing. Trust me, I know how money can be tight when you’re running a shop, but for $20/month, you can’t beat this deal.

Yeah, I know the websites don’t look like anything to do with skateboarding. My company has launched 723 of these in the last week (see DeclareMedia.com) and we might customized the look and feel down the road, but there’s no time for that at the moment. And hey, it doesn’t really matter. You’re still going to get traffic and SEO results, no matter what the sites look like.

I don’t post much anymore, do I? Yeah, I’ve been kind of busy with the day job. And I really need to get a post done for Fortica Skateboards who sent me two decks all the way last year, but between snow, sickness, and injuries I haven’t been able to get out and skate the decks, which I really want to because they look awesome and feel good carpet boarding.

But what I wanted to comment on today is this whole recession thing, and if you think we’re coming out of it…well, we’ll see where we’re at a year from now. But a few years ago there was a big to-do in the skateboarding business world about shop decks and blank decks and how they were hurting sales of pro models, and how we should imagine a world without pros and how bad that would be. Now look, I love the pros as much as anyone. Those guys kill themselves to get where they are, and they deserve whatever they can get, and frankly, after years of riding blanks (I wasn’t buying them, I was getting them for free, and do you think I’m going to go spend $50 on a pro deck when I can ride a decent blank for $0?) I think there is something to be said for pro decks. I’m not sure if it’s worth $20 to everyone out there, but I think it might be worth it to me. But it’s hard to blame a kid who only has $30 for buying a blank instead of waiting another month to save up another $20 so he can get a pro deck. But that’s not my point here.

The point is that whatever damage might have been done to sales of pro decks due to competition from blanks has been compounded by the bad economy, and I’d be willing to wager the recession has done a lot more damage to pros than blanks ever did, because while there are blank decks and wheels that are decent, I’ve never seen decent blank trucks or shoes. This economy is hitting soft goods and well as hard goods, and that means there’s less money to go around for everybody from every source, not just smaller deck sales. But do we see pros giving up? Do we see pros not skating anymore? No, they’re killing it just as much as ever, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe they’re having even more fun than they were before.

What really gets me thinking is Circa and ExpeditionOne. Just a year ago you could have written off both of these companies. Sure, Circa’s shoes are no different than those from any other company, and ExpeditionOne’s decks are just as good as those from any other company, but we should all know by now that branding/marketing and team members are what sell skate products, and not so much quality, because the quality of everything is pretty much the same with minor exceptions. And when it came to those two factors, Circa and ExpeditionOne didn’t have bad branding/marketing, and they had some good riders–some dang good riders, in fact–but…well, they just didn’t seem to be on the same level with the other companies. But all of a sudden Gallant is off Plan B/DC and on Circa/ExpeditionOne. Now Matt Miller is on Expedition. Suddenly Expedition’s team is like…wow, that’s a really, really solid team. And Circa’s team is really, really solid too.

But why is this happening? Could it be that the recession has made skaters appreciate things other than money a bit more? Maybe pros are realizing life is too short to focus on cash flow, and they’re going where they feel like they can enjoy life the most. Not that there’s anything wrong with the corporate thing, maybe some skaters like that and that’s part of the fun for them. But maybe that’s not the right thing for other skaters who just want to skate and hang out with friends, rather than doing tons of demos, signings, travel, etc., and maybe it’s worth giving up the huge paycheck for a more relaxed lifestyle.

I’m not in the industry so I don’t really have a clue. But I think it’s worth asking whether money is all it’s cracked up to be in skateboarding. Maybe the recession will turn out the be the thing that keeps skateboarding real just a little bit longer.

Hey Dennis, I don’t know who this Carrie lady is that you’ve hired to handle your public relations, but I think you need to sit down with her and have a little talk about this email she’s sending around:

Hi Joshua!

Check out this AWESOME skate video: Dennis Busenitz doing what he does best, landing so many tricks that it’s almost unbelievable! See Dennis kick-push: http://chunnel.tv/street/774/dennis-busenitz-pro-skater:

Dennis Busenitz puts together more tricks in 3 minutes and 50 seconds than most skaters do in a 6 or 7 minute spot.  It’s ridiculous, plus the insane amount of tricks performed over gaps, and possibly the best Kalis 360 flip ever made! This is definitely a top video spot for 2009!

Thanks, and please share this with your readers!

Best,
Carrie

The video is really good though. Can’t wait for it to come out so I can see a higher-res versino of Dennis’ kick-push.

You’ve got two options for getting ramps for your indoor skatepark; build or buy (meaning you pay someone else to build them for you). Unless you absolutely know what you’re doing when it comes to building skateboard ramps (and you would know if you did) I’d recommend paying someone else who has the experience.

Unless you have a very small park, you’re going to be looking at spending a good $50-75K on ramps (including labor) if you buy them, and you could spend quite a bit more. You might think you’ll save a lot of money building the ramps yourself, and hey, how hard could it be? But bear in mind you’re lying to yourself. Building an indoor skatepark takes a lot of time, especially if you’re not an expert. If it takes you four months to do what a professional team can do in two weeks, you may have just blown through an extra three months of rent and now you’re not saving any money. Plus you might mess up the ramps, and as a result the kids won’t like them and so you’ve only got half the customers coming in that you would otherwise have. So trust me, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing go and pay someone else to build those ramps for you. And don’t just pay the 18-year old kid who built a halfpipe in his backyard once and who has some “cool ideas”, I mean really hire a professional company, like Team Payne.

Another way to find out who to hire is to find out who built some of the private indoor parks that are in videos so much these days. Unfortunately I don’t know exactly who built the Berrics, or the Blackbox skatepark, or any of the others, but I bet someone else does and will comment on this post.

So Nyjah is off Element and I’m predicting he’ll end up on Plan B. You might knock Plan B for some things, but you can’t knock the fact that they have an amazing team. But despite the awesome team they’ve got a huge problem, which is the same problem they had 15 years ago–the best skaters want to own their own companies and do things their own way. P-Rod and Ladd might be happy right now, but in 3-5 years they’re going to start asking questions about what they’ll do if they get hurt, if they can’t keep up, if they want to retire, etc. They’ll start feeling a lot of pressure to perform in order to stay on Plan B, and they’ll start realizing that if they owned their own company, they couldn’t be kicked off, and that maybe then skating could just be about fun again. And it won’t matter how much money is offered to them, because they’ll be looking for something money can’t buy.

Plan B could give these guys ownership in the company, but that’s a pretty big risk for Danny to take, and I’m not sure I would take it if I were in his shoes. It’s one thing when you start a company as a group (like Girl), but another when you start a company and then bring guys in.

It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out for Plan B. Maybe they’ll just be a temporary haven for the guys who are the best of the moment until those guys move on to start their own companies. Could that work for them? Who knows.

I get a lot of requests from various skateboard companies to post a link to their website. I especially get a lot of these from random skateboard t-shirt companies. But I’m kind of lazy and don’t want to bother. So let’s make this easy for everyone. If you own a skateboard-related t-shirt company, post a link to your website in the comments for this post. All links on this blog are followed, so you’ll get the SEO value you’re looking for, and everyone will be able to find links to skateboard t-shirt companies all in one place.

If you own a skate shop in Utah then here’s your opportunity to get some free marketing. Just shoot us an email answering the following interview questions and we’ll give you your own post here on the blog and a link to your website. Feel free to include some photos if you want.

1. Shop name

2. Owner’s name

3. Contact info (address, phone, email, etc.)

4. Website

5. Year shop opened

6. What made you want to open a skate shop?

7. How did you start it? Where’d you get the money, how did you decide on the location, etc.?

8. What challenges have you faced in starting/running the shop?

9. What would you do differently if you could do it again?

10. What do you like about running a skate shop?

11. If you weren’t running a skate shop what would you be doing? If you do other things, what else do you do?

12. Do you sell online? If so, how’s that working out for you? If not, why not?

13. Where do you think the business of skateboarding is headed?

14. If you could change one thing about the skateboarding industry what would it be and why?

15. Do you have a shop team? How does that benefit your shop?

16. Who’s coming up in Utah?

17. What do you think about the Utah skate scene?

18. What’s your opinion on Salt Lake outlawing skateboard ramps in backyards?

19. If you had a million dollars that you could only spend on your skate shop (not on burritos or jewelry for your wife or anything), what would you do with it?

20. What’s the best trick you’ve done in the last year?

21. Anything else you want to say?

Are you a fan of Lakai skateboard shoes? If so, why? Which shoe model have you had the best experience with? Do you buy the shoe based on looks, whose shoe it is, how long you think it’s going to last, or what? Have you ever bought Lakais and then had the buyer’s remorse and wished you had bought something else? If so, why?

In a nutshell, the theory of Dunbar’s Number says that you have trouble dealing with more than 150 people. Not you specifically, you in general, and me too. That is, if you’ve got a company with 150 people in it, that will work fine, but hire 50 more people and you start having problems. Put 125 people in a church congregation and they’ll do fine, but double it to 250 and the preacher will start having issues with his flock. Those who believe in Dunbar’s number say that “group sizes larger than [150] generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced policies and regulations to maintain a stable cohesion.” So what does this have to do with skateboarding?

I think it might have everything to do with skateboarding pros and deck sales. I’m not sure the industry can handle more than 150 pros at a time because I’m not sure the kids can handle more than 150 pros. It’s not that kids get overwhelmed by walking into a skateshop and seeing too many different pro decks on the wall or that there are too many products endorsed by pros or anything like that. I think it’s that kids (as well as adults, but I’m going to keep talking about the “kids” since the adult skate market is probably relatively tiny compared to what is purchased by kids under 18) simply don’t have the mental capacity to remember more than 150 pros.

Think of a kid’s mind like a small glass. Imagine that you have an eye dropper and you’re dropping drops of liquid into the glass, and the glass can hold about 150 drops. Once you get to 150, every drop you drop into the glass forces one drop out of it. It might be the drop you just dropped in, or it might be another one.

Granted, all drops are not created equal. Koston has been and will continue to be on every kid’s mind for a while and isn’t going to be forced out very easily. But is Koston as big to kids today as Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, Hosoi, or Tony Hawk were to those of us who grew up in the 80s? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Koston’s “brand” isn’t as strong as that of pros from the 80s simply because we didn’t have as many pros to choose from back then.

A pro’s personal brand is diluted today by all the other pros out there, and with the rise of the “pro-am” (i.e. Daniel Castillo) kids have even more skaters to keep track of than they ever did before. For companies this may not be such a problem, but it may be an issue for individual riders, even those legends like Koston, Reynolds, or Berra. With so many old pros, current pros, and new pros, plus new stellar ams, legends don’t take on the same status they once did and are more easily forgotten.

Take Jeremy Wray for example. For those of you who skated when the first issue of 411 came out, do you remember how amazing Jeremy’s part was? Even by today’s standards many of the tricks he did were amazing. Over the next few years Jeremy definitely became a legend as he pioneered much of what we see today. And yet today if you went and asked 20 13-year old skaters who Jeremy Wray is, I’ll bet you not one would have even heard of him. But I bet you that at least some of them will have heard of Hosoi or Cab.

So what’s this mean for the industry? I’m not sure. I think the slipping sales of pro decks may have something to do with this. I don’t think kids care about or respect pros the way they once did. The pros aren’t legends, they’re just really good skaters. But I’m no longer a kid and so I could be totally wrong on this one. But whether or not it’s a problem for the industry or companies, it’s certainly a problem for pros. If a pro wants to have any lasting impact on skateboarding and extend their career then they’re going to have to work harder and make sure they either make their company a top-tier company, or they’re going to have to ride for a top-tier company that can boost their own brand.

Then again, maybe we’re all better off if pro skaters just say “Who cares?” and skate for fun.

Hey Josh – My husband and I are opening up a skate shop in __________. [don't want to alert any competitors] I’m in charge of advertising. I recently read a post of yours dated June 06 in which you made a few comments on how poorly skateboarders are marketed to. Do you have any tips? Our budget is small so I have to be smart about it.

Thanks in advance -

Jeannine

Hi Jeannine, I certainly have some opinions on this, but my advice isn’t worth a darn unless it works, so take it for what it’s worth and don’t be afraid to discount it entirely if you get the feeling it won’t serve you.

1. Research your target market. That is, get out there and talk to skateboarders. Lots of them. Ask them what they like about other shops and what they dislike about other shops. If you don’t talk to at least 10 then you might only get a small part of the picture, since there are different types of skateboarders. If you don’t talk to skateboarders and you don’t understand the culture then you will be seen as a fraud within ten seconds of any skater entering your store.

2. Talk to parents of skateboarders. After all, for the most part they’re the ones who are keeping you in business.

3. Don’t just go ahead and do what either of the two above groups say. One misunderstanding in this world is that we often assume that people know what they want. This is often not the case. Sometimes somebody will say they like something, and they really think they do, but in reality they don’t. Just to give you an example of what I mean, you might talk to 10 skateboarders and they all say they like shops that have black walls, bare metal and wood, and loud music, and you would probably be inclined to believe that this is what they really like. However, you might then build your shop and paint your walls white and have a light wood floor and make the place look more like Banana Republic than Hot Topic and you might actually sell more product that way. What comes out of a customer’s mouth is one thing, but what really matters is what comes out of their wallet.

Now I don’t know whether black paint or white paint is better, I’m just saying you shouldn’t always trust what the customer tells you they like.

4. Word of mouth is the best advertising. Word of mouth advertising doesn’t cost anything, and it’s the best kind of advertising. If you can get your customers to tell other potential customers about your shop then you’ll be sitting pretty. I’ve never seen this done in a retail environment, but there’s this thing that’s common online called “affiliate marketing” and here’s how it might work for you…

You offer your customers the chance to become “affiliates” or unpaid salespeople for your shop. For example, you set up a program wherein if some kid refers $1,000 worth of business to you, you’ll give them $100 credit at your store. How you track that is up to you. You could give the kid a simple code that he passes out to his friends, and maybe you give them a free sticker if they come in and tell you the code, or you give them 5% off, or whatever you can do so that they remember to give you the code so that you can track the purchases and give the credit to the right person. And maybe you don’t do this forever, maybe you just do it for a month or two. The key is that whatever you’re giving the affiliate has to be motivating enough that he will actually go out and spread the word.

5. Branding. Start out with a good brand, please. Don’t call your shop “X-treme Board Sports” or “Radical Wave” or “Totally Awesome Skateboards” or “Super Kewl Hot Dogger Zoom Skateshop.” Keep it simple. “Dave’s Skateshop” is just fine. You don’t have to get that creative. Just keep it simple and normal. Your name is more likely to hurt you than help you anyway.

Once you’ve got the name, don’t create a stupid logo. Again, keep it simple. Don’t have drawings in your logo. Just the text is best. That is, just the name. You don’t have to have a picture, you don’t have to have a symbol. If the name of your shop is Dave’s Skateshop and your logo is “Dave’s Skateshop” in a font that looks like something from 1930′s major league baseball then you’re doing just fine.

6. Public relations. PR is sort of like word of mouth. Find ways to make your shop worthy of being in the news. That is, in positive ways, of course. Local papers will write about just about anything. If your shop is special for some reason based on location, size, shape, has a skatepark in the back, is being run by a military veteran with no legs, etc. then it’s more likely to get written about in the papers.

Here’s a tip: Write your own newspaper article about the shop. If you don’t think it’s very interesting, find ways to make it interesting, or find ways to make your shop more interesting. Then send the article around to all the papers in the area.

7. Sponsor events. Figure out how to get skate teams to come to your shop and do demos. It helps to have a large parking lot. Figure out how to hold a contest at the local skatepark, or have one in your parking lot. It doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. You could hold the “Dave’s Skateshop Annual Flatbar Contest” in front of your shop, and just have flatbars as the obstacles, which aren’t expensive, and maybe you even have people bring their own flatbars. Advertise the event at the local skatepark, in your shop, in the newspaper, at the high school, etc. and you’ll get tons of kids there.

Well, I could come up with more ideas but I have to run. Hope this is helpful. If you have any more questions feel free to post them as comments below and I’ll respond.