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I dug the interview but I have to ask, with every interview coming out and pros saying board companies aren't making much money and paying riders yet skateboarding is bigger than ever who's pocketing all the money kids are obviously buying boards. I want to see bareback or generator board sells numbers
Is skating really bigger than ever? I think it is just at a really consistent place. Remember in 2001 people on habitat and workshop where banking like 10 large a month on board royalties alone. It was a far more prosperous time to be pro. I think the new mantra is that operational costs are higher and companies are trying to stock pile a bit more cash to insulate themselves from any bad weather that might arise.
Ahhh 2001. No facebook or instagram, no Nike, no abundance of 5 panel/janoski wearing clones, plenty of real skate shops, enough board sponsors to go around. Those were the days.
I'll break it down aatila. Basically the skateboard market is over saturated with pros for the amount of people buying boards. Sure, skateboarding was not as big in 2000 and skating wasn't as main stream as it is now, but back then there were fewer pros people knew of to choose from and there were a lot more people likely to buy product with said pros' name on it. Like someone else said, although todays market is bigger its still finite. The internet fucked things up too, since now you can go online and watch some unknown guy from a random grassroots board company and buy their product by clicking a link on the video. 15 years ago, the only skaters you knew of were the guys with big parts on vhs. The majority chose from a few board companies (girl/choco, aws/habitat, warehouse, etc), so the guys on those teams got a higher % of sales from that market. Today, the % is so spread out because there are has been an exponential amount of companies popping up and the $ spent isn't just going to a hand full of companies. This reason outweighs everything else, even more than higher production costs for decks.
To midevilco, skateboarding has always been an industry that had clones and followers. Remember when everyone was wearing accels after pjlwhl? Or when everyone wore carpenter jeans/ cargo pants and puffy moon boot cupsole shoes in the late 90's? Or cut offs and purple/ Orange shirts in the early 90's with impractical small wheels? Skateboarders are the biggest trend hoppers ever, we just fool ourselves into thinking we aren't because we get to the trends before shitty rappers & celebrities, and then dump the old trend for the new trend quicker. We suck just as much as any other group of sheep.