Blank Skateboard Decks - The Debate

On the heels of talking about skateboard decks made in china I should probably talk a little about blank decks.

Like them or not, they’re probably here to stay and there’s not much anyone can do as long as the kids keep demanding them.

What’s the issue? It’s price. Blank decks are cheaper than company or pro decks, and when the kid who just came into the shop because he broke his deck pulls out his $35, what can he buy? He can get a blank deck with grip, or he can wait another week to earn $15 so he can get the pro deck.

If this kid can’t tell any difference between a pro deck and a blank, which one is he going to buy? Even if he knows the blank doesn’t feel quite as good and might break sooner, he’s probably still going to buy the blank. This means that ultimately the only people who are going to buy pro and company decks are those who are very brand conscious, the wealthy, or the ever-shrinking group of those who think there really is a difference.

Let’s tackle the quality issue first, because it’s arguably the main one. Yes, some blanks really stink. I’ve used blanks that are junk and which I would never buy again. If those blanks were the only blanks available I would be willing to spend the extra money to get a real deck.

However, there’s a dark little secret out there that some of you kids may not know, which is that some blanks are made by the same companies making the pro decks. Not all of them, but some of them. So you could, in fact, go out and buy a blank that is the exact same deck that your favorite pro skater uses, except without the graphics, of course.

And even if this weren’t the case, eventually people would figure out how to make blanks that aren’t the junk I’ve used before, but would actually be a good deck, and then they might as well be made by the same companies making pro decks.

Personally, I would like to see kids buying pro decks, if only to support the pros. But I don’t think most kids are that altruistic. So what’s the solution? The easiest thing to do would be for pro decks to be prices alongside blank decks. There’s only one problem–it’s not easy, even if it is the easiest solution. You drop the price on pro decks and suddenly pros aren’t making anything on decks, and the companies aren’t making much either.

I could see companies dropping prices by perhaps $5 at the very most, which doesn’t exactly take care of getting the price at your local shop down from $50 to $30. To make up the difference between blanks and pro decks the pro companies would need to drop their prices by about $10, which would mean they’re making almost no money, and it also wouldn’t solve the problem because then the blanks would drop in price too and we’d be right back where we started except that people would be making less money. Of course the kids would love it because they’d be getting decks for cheaper. But there needs to be a balance, and unless the manufacturing of decks actually becomes cheaper (uh-oh, China again…), the pro deck companies can’t lower their prices by anything substantial. At least that’s how I see it.

Ultimately, prices on pro decks will probably drop, either because of competition from blanks or because they’re cheaper to make in China or most likely a combination of both. If this drop in price is sufficient, it could work out to not be a detriment to the pro companies. People generally buy more of something when it becomes cheaper, and if decks drop in price by $5-10 I would guess that kids really would buy decks more frequently. Combine this with the continually rising popularity of skateboarding in general and dropping prices on pro decks to compete better with blanks might not be such a bad idea as long as blanks don’t immediately drop in price as well.

As for Sublimited, yes, we are going to sell shop decks, but we’re not going to promote them too heavily. We’ll probably have 80-120 decks on our shop wall, and only one or two of them will be shop decks. We know the kids will ask for them, but we’re not going to shove them in their faces. That’s going to be our attempt to balance things by selling the blanks that the kids want, but promote the pros at the same time.