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

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I, like most people, delete spam from my email inbox as soon as I get it. However, this one caught my eye.

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Since posting a link in a previous post about Nike and the Don't Do It / Nike boycott movement I've gotten input from people who hate Nike's involvement in skateboarding (which is different from hating Nike itself), those who don't care and adamantly believe no one else should care, and those who think Nike being involved is great. To be honest, I'm a bit torn.

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Most of you reading this probably weren't skating when Girl Skateboards was started. It was 1993 if I'm not mistaken. Everyone who was anyone in skateboarding went to San Francisco for the yearly contests they had in the fountains there back in the day, and most of the Plan B riders were riding blank decks or something, and they were telling people that they were riding for Girl, not Plan B anymore.

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I've got my hand on the pulse of this industry. I know what's popular and what's not. I know what to buy, and what to sell. I know what product will fly off the shelf, and what will survive ten individual price reductions without moving. Now all I need is a shop and I could actually do something with myself.

And how do I know what's popular? Cause I know what the kids are searching for online. Do you want to know? Here you go.

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You can tell Transworld is committed to skateboarding because they allow ads like this to be on their website. Congrats guys, you're aiding and abetting major corporate interests that care nothing about skateboarding as they try to put real skateboard clothing companies out of business.

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The offending Dickies ad is on p. 89 of the September 2005 issue of Transworld.

You know, when I was taking all those classes in college about marketing they would talk about doing focus groups, research, and really trying to figure out what the customer wanted. Sometimes companies would do the right things and have a hit product. Sometimes they wouldn't do the right things and they'd still get lucky. Sometimes they'd do the right things and it would bomb. And sometimes they wouldn't do the right things and it would bomb. That's my way of saying that I don't know whether or not Dickies did the right things, but I have to guess they didn't, because there are some obvious problems with this ad.

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The accused: Entenmann's, baker of fine donuts and other pastries, including a mean pound cake.

The locations: Skateboarder Magazine, September '05, p. 53. Transworld Skateboarding, August 2005, p. 105.

The crime: Bad marketing.

Let's analyze what's wrong with Entenmann's new advertising campaign that attempts to cater to skateboarders.

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Paul ain't gettin' no incentives for this photo.

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As we're working on starting the Sublimited skateshop, I've been thinking that in the future we'll want to get some pros on the team. It's probably a little early for this since we don't even have the first shop open yet, but it's just something I've been thinking about.

Then I started thinking about actually having some pros come in as business partners or investors with the shop, and that led to thinking about which skaters I would most like to work with and I started coming up with a list and reasons. This isn't anything too serious, just some random thoughts.

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In addition to starting Sublimited I also own a web design firm called MWI. I think skateboarders in general tend to appreciate good design more than the general public for some reason, and in my case it's not just a hobby but my job as well. Well, my other job besides Sublimited.

One of the benefits of running Sublimited is that I get catalogs sent to me by all the companies and then I get to order stuff. I don't get to use all the stuff, but it's still a bit like Christamas. But even if I didn't get to order anything, I still enjoy just looking at the catalogs, and some of the catalogs are beginning to be great examples of good design.

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