Hey Australian pals, it seems like skateboarding is pretty fucking big in your country. Are there big local brands there? Can these guys get on something there and make money? I'm just curious because you hear about all kinds of Australian skaters riding for US brands but if so many people skate then a lot of people are buying product and that money isn't really staying there when it seems to me could. Enlighten me please.
Biggest and best is Pass~Port (Sydney based). Neither Alex Lawton or Dennis Durrant or anyone else who was on element aus will get on passport though. Next few biggest brands are Hoddle, which is passport's melbourne based sister company, Jack Kirk skates for them. Four Skate Co. (Perth) which I guess their most notable pro is Casey Foley. Then a bunch of pretty shit smaller companies like Folklore and a Time Skateboards reboot. Private Joy is a cool smaller Melbourne/Sydney based company. The only one of these that seems to be profitable really is Passport - their clothes are popular among non-skaters, they have broken out of Aus to be distributed internationally, and they have a great recognisable team. No one here is really making money from board sponsors though, a ton of people get stuff from Hardcore dist (Enjoi, Almost, Alltimers, Blind, etc.) but only boards. Like I imagine in the US there's more money in shoe sponsors, although converse here is pretty much non-existent, New Balance seems to only have a small travel budget, and Vans might pay a select few. Adidas and Nike have a bigger budget and do more - the Nike SB aus team is huge but it still doesnt seem like much money is allocated their way to do trips, and only the pros are payed I think. Volcom and RVCA also have small teams and do trips. So yeah, not much money in it here unless you make it on the proper US team of your shoe or clothing sponsor.
Topic: Durrant Of Element (Read 8404 times)