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Not entirely relevant, but can you believe that Consolidated and Natural Koncept are still going? I mean they've both always been kind of underground companies, but holy crap, how does NK stay in business?
Also, they've got a damn great team, but Jart has such a horrible aesthetic. The worst music in their videos (I think they might actually occasionally ignore their skater's song requests), basically no graphics other than logo boards in different colours. Heard a rumour that it's not owned by anyone interested in skateboarding at all, maybe a surf company or something, and it made sense to me. The only feel I get from their company is "corporate".
Real make great boards and have a stacked team, but they're also guilty of too many logo boards and their graphics have been going downhill for a couple of years too.
true
but according to a friend, who its a shop owner in Madrid, they sell like crazy in Spain and part of Europe, mostly cause they are really cheap and their quality its beyond good.....
.... so their marketing campain its basically cheap shit but quality stuff....
God, Jart is the worst! I just hate all their image, they are the bland of the blandness, and the boards arent that great but yeah for the price they arent bad. They have a team full of rippers, they just need a fucking rebranding... Also, "Jart" is a really bad name tbh.
Jart is a good one. They have good products, made in a top notch spanish factory. The family that owns jart has initially a background in woodworking. They used to make wooden furnitures for the whole spanish market so they know what they are doing in term of products. Their woods comes from canada, and the whole process is made in spain, no drying bullshit by other companies...
They make their board one by one, and have a shitload of shapes available. They also do the graphic part.
Their product is really good and they have been producing boards for around 50 brands in Europe (Antiz, Frank and a lot of others...). They are cheap because they are in charge of the whole process, so you don't have too much middlemen.
In term of marketing, they have no idea of what they are doing. They have a limited knowledge on the skateboarding culture, but work with some guys that are true skaterats, the sad thing is they don't give them enough power. The ones that makes the final decisions are 3 brothers who decide in term of numbers instead of deciding in terms of skaterats culture. They still have a good team.
They been producing boards for close to 15 years, which is not that bad in the skate world where a lot of brands come and go even when they are backed by big names (Bueno, Mystery, Aesthetics, Rasa Libre, 3D...)
The thing is they are making money selling bad graphics on a good product for cheap. Why change if it works? They have a segment and they use it. A Jart board is 30% cheaper than any other brand, and the quality is on par (much better than Girl/choco).
The good thing about their marketing is that they've been doing the same shit for years, and if trends change, they'll stil be doing their logo boards... Which means they don't depend on trends unlike brands like Zero/Creature/Palace/DGK that have a strong identity but are prone to disappear when the trend change.
Being bland is not necessarily a bad thing, because a lot of skaters don't care about a bland product if the product is good.
For example riding a DGK/Zero/enjoi boards is making some kind of statement about your style, your skateboarding; while riding a Real/Jart/Almost is not making any statement.
That is one of the reasons that lot of people would buy a Jart board over a DGK/Zero/Enjoi board that costs 30% more here in Europe. Given a limited choice in the same range of price, a lot of people prefer a bland but quality product over a strong identified product with on par quality that costs 30% more.