Slappies:
Oh yeah I remember thinking those Skate More-era Fucking Awesome all-over print hoodies were the coolest at the time
Bad call on my part. Good thing I was a broke teenager at the time.
But yeah, as far as I know, it was a really small-run t-shirt and clothing company, starting in the early 2000s.
I think my first exposure to it was in old Epicly Later'd blog posts from around that time, and I wanted that shit so bad.
And then, like you were saying, they started a board brand in 2013 or whatever, and that was my first time hearing about AVE being involved really, but I could be wrong.
Writing this, it occurs to me how weird it is, that FA is a project that has been growing/building hype for over a decade, before becoming a skate company. There's probably some other examples of similar things, but I can't think of anything really. (JT hyping Zero as a clothing company, while on Toy?)