Thursday, February 20, 2014

Lessons from Rollerbladers.

A rollerblading website recently posted a conversation between a few bladers discussing the relationship between blading and scootering, and their respective pasts.  They raised a lot of good points, and it was cool to see them respecting us for choosing a different vehicle to ride and have fun on, despite how easily they could hate on us after years of receiving hate themselves.  Rollerblading’s history was brought up, and it made me think a little.  Blader Sam Cooper said:

 “Unlike blading the sport grew slowly at first, managing to build a small but solid industry of brands just before the boom hit. It’s the brand owners who have handled the boom in a much better way compared to kids who owned the majority of blading’s biggest brands in the early nineties. It’s these freestyle scooter brand owners who have made the difference and continue to grow the sport and industry with their business acumen and passion for the sport.”

Over the past few years, there has been a growing emphasis on supporting “rider-owned” companies and rejecting those “corporate, businessman-owned” brands.  I’m not gonna pretend to be an expert on rollerblading, but from what I can tell in this article, that’s how it was in the 90’s for them…except it was the rider-owned brands who made up the majority of their industry.  So not knowing how to handle their success, not being able to sustain the incredible growth they had, the bubble eventually burst, and the industry basically died out.  They hit the top of the actions sports world- -X-Games- and were kicked out in 2005. 

So how do we prevent this from happening to us?  These rollerbladers say we’ve already avoided their mistakes by having a core group of solid brands before our own boom hit.  The first big companies include brands like Phoenix, Proto, District, Lucky, Tilt, Envy, and Madd, the majority of which are not owned by riders, but are still all around today.  It seems like these bladers would embrace the “big business” brands…Looking at the other side of the coin, consider skateboarding.  The biggest action sports industry has perhaps the biggest anti-corporate movement, and not without good reason.  Skateboarding has had multiple booms and crashes throughout its history, and they will all tell you that corporations are part of the reason for it.  So where does that leave scootering?  It seems to me that we fall somewhere in the middle.  We don’t actually have much for corporate money wanting in on our sport yet- look at Red Bull.  They posted the Devin Supertramp video of Dakota Shuetz and the other Lucky guys on their Facebook, and took it down almost immediately.  Whatever interest they had in supporting scootering was quickly extinguished by a legion of couch commenters.  And these guys are spending upwards of a billion dollars per year in marketing (900 million in 2010).  Hooking a guy like Kota up would be a drop in the ocean for them.  If they don’t think that’s worth it at all, I think we still have a long way to go before we really have to worry about the implications of corporate takeover. 

Is the bubble going to burst like it did with rollerblading?  Are our roots strong enough to last through a drought?  These bladers seem to think so.  What can we do to make sure we don’t experience the same crash they did?  John Adams says it perfectly:

“We shouldn’t be trying to have the largest industry possible. We should make sure the industry we have is healthy and sustainable. Absolutely we should be reaching out to the youth and getting them excited about rollerblading scootering, but we ought to be able to do that without tearing others down.”

The bottom line is that all companies, regardless of their participation in the sport, are vital.  It’s been said before that they’re all pieces of the puzzle.  If we want to have a sustainable future we need to have brands who have a true passion for scootering- they need to care for the riders and the industry…but they also need to have proper business know-how to handle their growth responsibly.


6 comments:

  1. Great article. I am one of the people who was always so annoyed seeing this "Only support rider owned" by all these street riders, as they heelwhip down the street on their District V2is. About time someone sat down and understood that all companies (Or at least the core companies mentioned in this article, and a few others) are all playing a huge role in where this sport has gone, and is going.

    Don't get me wrong, anyone that knows me knows that I have a soft spot for rider owned companies like Tilt, Proto, HellaGrip, Ethic, and many more. But that in no way means that riders need to start hating and bashing on the companies that see as corporate. It is most likely THOSE companies that got kids into the sport, and eventually led them to your rider owned companies.

    Problem with our sport is everyone is so god damn closed minded, and thinks they have it ALL figured out, and they don't want to hear anyone tell them different. But reading this article, at least one more person seems to understand that it's not just rider owned companies that are ensuring that we still have a sport to participate in.

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    Replies
    1. The active dislike of corporation(esque) companies like Madd Gear is pretty well confined to forums and facebooks. These two things are reasonably closed communities when it comes to the target audience of a company like Madd.
      I won't discredit Madd for the work that they've done pushing the sport. They were the first to really sink into international travel, which really pushed other companies to catch up and allocate funding to pro level riders, and I praise them for that.
      The reason these types of companies are bashed, while rider owned are praised is because we as a small community contribute heavily to their welfare. We are the group that is going to keep them alive when scooters have an inevitable slump, while Madd continue to sell entry level product to the younger demographic.

      So yes, we do need the bigger companies for the sport to continue, and we can respect them for that. But in no way do they need our support or backing to remain alive.

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    2. No, they don't "need" it. My point, is that I feel they deserve it. Maybe some riders won't respect them on the same level as a rider owned company, because the hardships each company face are very different. But they still deserve respect.

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  2. NO comments! Okay! There HAS to be comments! Yeah, it looks as if every action sport thus far had a dark age to some degree. A sport like scootering is going to be in the hot seat after it becomes known, because its not looking like the yunguns are getting tired of the razor. The scooter is looking like it is up there with the wagon,hula hoop,tricycle, any toy the kids have always loved. Even when the sport debuts in pop culture, the scooter has already developed ONE
    image and not 2: a toy and an extreme one. Then the industry will have to introduce a whole new appeal: that it IS extreme AND badass because that's the main reason anyone really fucks with skaters and the moto/bike dudes. So yeh, there's a little pov from moi!

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  3. Great article. Looking forward to a scooter industry that allows the older generation of riders to keep doing what they love by providing them with real pay.

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  4. Couple things.

    1. Great article

    2. Skateboarding is one of the biggest corporation/investor run industries. Probably about 75% of skateboard companies are owned by or were owned by Powell-Peralta. Stacy Peralta being the skater and George Powell, the investor.

    3. The guys that support Ethic (awesome brand), should also be supporting all of the other brands, because guess what kids, there are people with money that are behind Kevin. That is how an industry works.

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