+ Art of Skateboarding Articles

GP: You’re such a dick! [loud laughter] Boneite was our most spectacular failure.

GP: You know what? It was a product that we jumped into because we had production problems that we had no way to solve with our 7-ply decks. We found that by using a material we dubbed "Boneite" we could make the decks stronger and slide better and they didn’t warp. So we thought it was wonderful! The team rode them and everybody was happy with them; but the Achilles heel of Boneite was that it absorbed water and after you ground your way through the protective coatings and got it wet in the sprinklers or rained on, it’d puff up and get weak so that it’d lose it’s strength while it was wet. You’d have to wait for it to dry out. Wood does the same thing but to a much lesser degree. Boneite did it to a large degree and we ultimately slipped back into 7-plies as soon as we solved our warping problems.

GP: That’s kind of a loaded question because really the demands of modern skating implies that everyone operates at a very high level. In fact, all we’ve really done is push the envelope back expanding what’s skating. And you still have beginners. And you still have intermediates and then you have people who become more and more expert in certain areas. So I think the 7ply is going to be around for a long time. But it’s become essentially.... People think it’s a commodity. They don’t realize that there is in fact some differences between the quality of veneer, the glue, and laminating that make decks a little bit stronger or weaker, depending on how much knowledge and love you put into them.
  But by in large almost everybody can make a board that is adequate for a beginner or maybe an intermediate that is 7ply and it’s really only very advanced skaters that break 7plies ....or very bad skaters trying to be advanced that break 7plies a lot. [laughter]
  So the new tech boards are interesting but no one’s been able to come up with a combination of improved performance and cost-benefit ratio that can replace the 7ply. All that’s really happened is you can buy a 7ply for 50% less than it used to cost, and nobody makes any money on 7 plies right now to speak of ….and people are trying to build tech decks so they can charge more because they’re better and make a margin again. So for deck makers it’s really a terrible dilemma. People are all stuck in a commodity market and they don’t want to be in a commodity market because you don’t make enough money there to promote, to have a team, to do ads, to make videos, to go on tours. So all the things that people expect manufacturers to do, require that they make money …and if you’re just passing a board along at 15% margin, you can hardly even pay the bills.

GP: It is! But if you can charge $75 for the board that costs you $20 you’re probably making more money than you are now.

GP: Absolutely! The cost of material has gone up. Veneer’s more than doubled… it’s gone up almost 10 times. Urethane is significantly more expensive than it used to be. Glue’s a lot more expensive than it used to be. So the cost of the board, just in terms of raw materials, is probably 2 to 3 times what it was 10 years ago.

GP: And the final product … the price has gone down! Which means all those little companies that were able to make money by selling 500 boards for $35 wholesale… and only cost them $12. It costs them now $16 or $18 and they can’t sell it for $35. Now they have to sell it for $25 and there’s no money in it.

GP: Yeah as long as people want those graphics we’re delighted to re-produce them. And especially since Court is back that’s going to allow us to pick up that ball and run forward with it too. So while we’re standing on a base of legacy graphics we’ll be expending that with new ones all the time.. So it’ll be a combination of new and old. Some of his old graphics are going to be hard to compete with so we’ve got our work set out for us. We haven’t been able to do all of his original team graphics out of respect for their new companies and their concerns about conflict of interest.

GP: That’s always complicated. It depends on whether it’s his shape or not; whether he’s actively involved with us or not; whether we’re feeling comfortable or not at any one point in time. Generally we try to work with our old pros so that if they want to use the graphic we make it easy for them to work with it. And when we use their name … we try to use their name if we can, and then we give them a royalty just like we always did. So umm.. the relationship’s different cuz they’re not actively riding for us anymore, so it becomes more of a business deal at that point in time. Dealing with old graphics in new ways.

GP: Because Tony has asked us not to release his old graphics. We don’t out of respect to Tony. We don’t want to release his old graphics without his name and his permission; so we don’t. If he gives us permission we’ll do it. Actually, he has given us permission to release his original Hawk Skull as part of the Bones Brigade film. So as the film about the Bones Brigade comes out, a reproduction of the Tony Hawk board, made by us, will come out around the same time. And also Tommy… for the reason that they have their own companies and they view it as a conflict of interest for them. Nonetheless, we’re expecting that everyone who’s featured in the Bones Brigade film will participate in the program, and allow us to come out with a limited reissue of their most popular or iconic deck.