Ok, let’s just have it out once and for all. First of all, here are links to other opinions on this matter. This post will re-hash some material that has already been posted on this blog (links listed at end of article) as well as things that have been said elsewhere, but I think it’s worth revisiting the issue.
I recently received an email from someone who took issue with me starting a website that sells blank skateboard decks (for the reason that I am financially involved you’ll have to consider for yourself how that might affect my opinions, although I think I would have the same opinions regardless). Here are some quotes from the email:
“Do you understand that this takes away from the kids and does not support them………So take away all the pro’s and what do you have a bunch of mongo pushing skateboarders that have no direction where to go!!!!”
“Blank decks are taking away from pro’s and the people that work for them as a whole from sales to filmers etc………..”
Then I just saw this posted on the Skateboard Mag’s website the other day:
“Quit buying blanks and shop boards, support the pros, they deserve it.”
Here’s a quote from “the bizzle” on skateboardrumors.com - “Skaters hardly get paid anything for deck sales because there are so many shop boards, blanks, mini-logos and little garage skate companies on the market. That’s why they have to get their money from elsewhere like shoe sponsorships, energy drinks, watches, clothes, whatever.”
Here’s another from SR’s very own Mr. John Finn - “Sometimes you just need a cheap deck but in the end it does nothing for skateboarding in regards to its growth. And by growth I mean the development of brands, pros and magazines.”
At the risk of putting words into anyone’s mouth, let me see if I can sum up what people are saying:
1. Blank decks = less money for the pros, filmers, and others in the industry
2. Less money = not as many pros, filmers, videos, good magazines, brands, etc.
Let’s take a rational, logical look at these two arguments. Does the existence of blank decks mean there is less money going around the industry than there would otherwise be? On the surface, this would seem to make sense. If there weren’t any such thing as a blank deck then kids would buy pro decks instead, right? The assumption is that every sale of a blank deck represents the loss of a sale of a pro deck, or since blanks are cheaper maybe the sale of every two blank decks represents a pro deck sale that didn’t happen. This may be and probably is true. However, there’s more to the story.
Let’s compare the state of skateboarding to what it was like 15 years ago when nobody bought blank decks.
15 years ago…
- Other than Tony Hawk, no pro I know of made more than $100K per year.
- Ams didn’t get paid.
- There were a lot less pros and ams, which meant less tours, demos, etc.
- I don’t have evidence, but I’d be willing to bet lunch at In-N-Out that photogs, filmers, and others made a lot less money 15 years ago.
- Approximately 1-2 skate videos came out per year, vs. 523 skate videos that came out last week.
- Contest prizes were a joke, although they were the best we had and better than nothing. But they were nothing compared to today.
Today…
- Tony Hawk makes more than $20 million per year. Other skateboarders make a ton of money as well. Stevie Williams gets $500K from Reebok per year, Bob Burnquist gets $80K from Ogio, etc.
- Today even a lot of ams get paid. Some get paid quite well.
- Today you can’t keep up with who’s turning pro, who the ams are, or even what the teams are. An am nobody has heard of can back tailslide the Wilshire rail (the big one). That kind of stuff didn’t happen 15 years ago. If anyone was getting good you knew who they were because there just weren’t as many people to keep track of.
- As a result of more pros and ams you’ve got more teams, and more demos and tours than ever.
- Chris Cole made $30K in one day at the Skate Plaza competition. The #1 guy 15 years ago would have been lucky to make that much on contests in an entire year, plus he would have had to skate street, mini, and vert.
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What’s the point? The point is that at the same time that blank deck sales have eaten up more and more of the total amount of deck sales, everything else about skateboarding has improved in dramatic fashion, as far as money is concerned.
Ok, you say, so the pros aren’t hurting, and everyone is making more money than they were before blanks were around. But that’s just coincidence, and everyone would be doing even better if it weren’t for blanks.
Maybe, maybe not. Let’s look deeper. Here are some possible ways in which blank decks might end up pumping more money into the industry and towards pros and others than would otherwise exist.
a. Blank decks promote sales of other items. Anyone who has worked in skateshop knows that money doesn’t come from decks. It comes from shoes first, and then from other clothing sales. A skateshop might make a few bucks on a deck, but they’ll make $40 on a pair of shoes at full price.
If a kid can buy 10 blank decks in a year vs. 5 pro decks, chances are he’s going to skate more, plus he’s going to have newer griptape more of the time. Skating more with newer griptape means shoes wear out faster, not to mention that skating more will also mean that shirts, pants, and other skate-related products wear out faster like wheels, hardware, bearings, and trucks.
b. Blank decks get more kids skating.
Simple economics says that all other things being equal, if something is cheaper, more people will buy it. Or in the case of skateboarding, if it’s cheaper more people will do it.
Sometimes we get stuck thinking that any industry, like skateboarding, is a pie, and if someone is taking 20% of the pie today whereas they were only taking 10% five years ago that means that somebody else is making less money than they used to. But what if you grow the pie? Blank deck sales are actually a lot more than 20% of deck sales from what I understand, and yet pros today make more off of deck sales than they ever have before. How can this be? Because more kids are skateboarding than ever before, and while I don’t have proof, economic laws would say that blank decks have been at least partially responsible for this growth by making it easier for kids to afford to skate.
You could then say that blank decks might not be hurting yet, but it’s going to get worse and soon nobody will buy pro decks at all.
Yes, you could make form a credible argument around this. People buy products based on three criteria; price, quality, and brand. Blank decks by definition can’t compete very well on the basis of branding since they don’t have it (actually in a way they do, but I think it’s negligible). They currently compete very well on the basis of price, and they are catching up with pro decks when it comes to quality.
If a skateboarder is strictly utilitarian, then he will buy blank decks as long as the quality seems fair given how much he pays for it.
However, I daresay that the vast majority of skateboarders are EXTREMELY conscious of brand, and I think this is what will save professional deck companies. No, I know this is what will save them.
Think about t-shirts. A skate t-shirt costs as much as $20 in some stores. You can buy the exact same t-shirt without a design on it for $3 at JC Penney. For the same reason a kid will beg his mom to get him a Girl t-shirt instead of a plain white one from Wal-Mart you can bet he’s going to be set on getting the Koston deck instead of a blank.
To sum up, I don’t believe that blank decks necessarily hurt pros or anyone else, but I can’t say for certain that they don’t hurt. But I think a deeper look might very well show that blank decks have indirectly caused pros and everyone else in the industry to make more money than they would have otherwise. I also believe going forward that neither pros nor pro deck companies should feel threatened by blank decks. As long as they focus on branding and on other brand-related skate products (like shoes and clothing) I think there’s more than enough money to be made so that nobody can complain. If nothing else, blank decks may make companies focus more on producing good brands and better products such that we’ll see more progress than would otherwise happen. There’s nothing like a little competition to make people get creative and come up with new ideas.
If you’ve got a different opinion, please share.
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Related reading:
Blank Skateboard Decks - The Debate
ahh, the old blank deck debate, while good points are made on shoes, clothing etc.., i’d have to say that my problem, despite the fact that kids often ‘grow out’ of riding blanks as they become less desirable as they become more brand aware, skateboarding ultimately does not benefit from the dead-end market of blanks. There’s none of that money going back in to benefit skateboarding in any way.
Of course it brings more people to skateboarding, or at least, more people own one, we all no doubt had to start somewhere in the realms of bad product.
The problem is the ridiculous amount of companies producing the blanks, a ridiculous amount of shops buying into that combined with too many places where you can actually buy a skateboard. Skateboarding’s growth is hurting specialty retail rather than benefitting it.
As I said at the beginning, I understand that a kids first couple of boards may be the low quality kind, but how do you educate when everything is so price driven?, it’s a huge mountain to climb, it comes down to dollars, everyone wants a cheapboard, not a skateboard.
Buying better quality from veteran experienced manus for sure lasts longer than newer ‘we got ‘em’ suppliers.
On top of this there’s the grey area of shop boards, a lot of which don’t come from good , known woodshops either.
Due to distributors selling wider as skateboarding grows, shop boards have become a means to compete somehow, with the malls, sports shops etc, with buying power to cut pricing to improve their margins etc, etc..Having said that, there are also shop boards which are used to fund events, demos, movie premiers etc, all things which do good to keep the community around an independent store thriving (not to mention keeping the door itself, open for business)
So the grey area is a whole other debate..
There’s obviously points on both (or all) sides of the blank debate.
In skateboardings highs and lows, the industry has upsized, supersized and downsized and only the strong survive, but imagine a world where no one company is willing to take all those chances all over again and we’re all riding product no better than the first board we ever had and even that is in short supply..
Then some guy suddenly says, when all the world is blank, hey, maybe we should put a graphic on these to make them more interesting, or, even better, we should start a team and give our riders a dollar a board……….
While I appreciate what has been said about plenty money to go round, in my own time skateboarding, it’s all disappeared more than once…..
I’m sure I speak for every side when I say that skating has been/is a great friend to us all, so if you see a hand round your friends neck choking them, what will you do?….
Cube.
Here’s the problem from a shop owner’s perspective. When every Tom, Dick and Harry is selling product and the manufacturers (contrary to what they apparently belive) don’t support “core” shops very well, why in the name of all that is sacred should I close my doors because I refused to sell product that could have kept my doors open? Everyone forgets about shops like mine that struggle to stay open and get little support from suppliers, reps and the industry as a whole. Explain to me, if you would, Cube, why I should give up on my store because you and others feel that I should only sell branded product (for the record, I do not sell blanks, just shop branded product)? Is it that everyone loves to buy from CCS so much that it doesn’t matter if there’s a shop in town keeping the dream alive? I don’t get it - maybe you can help.
-Ben
Ben, I tried to point out that while the industry (pre-retail level) sets its sights on blanks as the death grip, that it was indeed, necessary, even vital, that the skate shop owners like yourself, need that business in many cases to keep the door open every day.
Actually, I agree with everything you just said Ben.
You made my point about there being too many places to buy a skateboard, in every possible way, i’d expect, when skating is at it’s current size, that the specialty stores should be seeing the benefits having been there for all the right reasons from the outset.
So, I was far from saying you should give up, more trying to point out just how necessary the product is to stay in business, once again, for reasons you point out.
My closest ties have always been with independent stores who do one thing, sell skateboards. It will always be that way, so many friends of mine in europe have had to close their doors because of multiples who were allowed all the same product and more often than not, even got it first.
One thing we’ll never know (at least this time around) is whether skateboarding would be at its current level, if the existing independent stores, and those now out of business had remained the only places to buy product. I’d like to think so, but that’s another debate.
In the battle for business against the giants I think the front line is the most important, the guys actually on the floor are the ones who can make a difference, you can do all you want to offer the right stuff to compete, but if the customer doesn’t have a good experience while in the store, it’s unlikely they’ll complain, they just won’t come back.
If you have the right people on the floor, you’ll have nothing to worry about from the mall.
What i’m trying to say is that it’s not what you have as much as how you sell it, which goes back to the ‘thriving community’ feel of the successful independent.
I’m still getting my head round the whole blank issue, just like everyone else. I’m straying from the point in hand too, but the reasons this has come about reach pretty far and deep.
Keep keeping the dream alive Ben, I wish you all the very best.
C.
Blanck decks are a great thing,without them most kids wouldnt be able to skate.not everyone can efford a pro deck. As most of the skateboarders say its about the passoin the love of the sport. So if they are pissed they are not real,they are a comersial.Some of thies kids that can only efford the blanck deck they might be the next pro.
Well can I at least wear blank shoelaces?
#$#% that dude who emailed you just for the fact that i push mongo and i do know where to go and i think blank decks dont hurt the industry as i have bought many of them in the last 8 years and im going to be selling blank decks in my shop so i think its a good deal good deck for less who cares if there some cool grapgic if your going to grind it off soone or later
Kevin
I know that graphics are useless after 5 minutes,(if you grind anyway) and that it really doesn’t matter what they say, but the industry sure makes a hell of alot of money of having a skaters name on the bottom.
I’m trying to set up a skate company at the moment with my friends. Our aim is basically to have fun and learn about business, not huge profit. We have all skated for years so we know the difference between blank and pro boards. Even if good blanks were manufactured and sold cheap we would still by the local skate shop boards as they are skater owned. Everyone i know believes that supporting a skater owned company is more important than inviting sportswear big names such as Reebok, Addidas etc. Although I do not intend to gain masses of profit i do intend to get enough to start buying camera equipment and eventually support a team for small tours and other such events. A lot of pros earn enough/too much money, and I believe that the money should go towards supporting all those who are dedicated enough to the sport/artform (don’t get me started on that debate), instead of business men trying to exploit it. This could be compared to China and how it would have a very rich economy had the rest of the world not exploited them. My main point is that the argument shouldn’t just be ‘are blank decks good?’ but should be ‘are blank decks sold by sports giant or exploiting business men hurting skaters that intend to start up a company for little or no profit?’ to which the answer is of course, yes!
Well, let me play the devil’s advocate.
1. What about blanks being sold by the local skate shop? That’s supporting the local skate scene, right? After all, blanks put a lot of money in the skate shop owners pocket which he can use to invest back into the shop in ways that help skaters. By contrast, pro decks hardly put any money in the shop owner’s pocket. BTW, when I talk about “blanks” I’m generally lumping shop decks in the same category.
2. My friend owns a company that makes blank decks, but he’s not an exploiting businessman, he’s a skater. His customers, as far as I know, are all small, locally owned skateshops. Is he hurting the industry?
And just for the record, China is a complicated place and to say it has been exploited is to misunderstand the details of what’s going on there. China actually is becoming one of the richest economies in the world, growing faster than any other economy (about 10% annually, compared to 2-3% in the US). Of course there is exploitation going on, but most of it is probably the Chinese exploiting the Chinese. It’s not American businessmen who go in and pay very little for Chinese goods, it’s the Chinese themselves who keep the prices low so that everyone has to go to China or risk being uncompetitive and going out of business.
blank decks are affordable and dont support the cooperate big wigs that now run most major deck companies. blank skateboard capture what skateboarding used to be. not what you skated but HOW you skated.