Yeah it has been for a good few years now.
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Suits Ipath pretty well.
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Hope he got a big pay day at DC at Element. Don’t see much from him anymore
Some Michael Fabricants gunna whinge at me for saying people should get paid properly and not just getting free shoes for destroying themselves wa wa wa
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I doubt anyone on here would disagree mate.
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No but everytime I talk about Lakai for example someone will complain and say I wanted it to fails
No I didn’t. Crail is cooked now and if you aren’t 30+ who is buying a board either.
But I knew that when I lived in Barca my telesales base salary was more than Jesus got a month from Lakai and that was 2016, so whose mugging who off.
Everyone bangs on about history - so fucking pay people properly when you are meant to be a proper company “fully flared etc” - oh wait you can’t and it goes out of business.
My nostalgia for that is low at this point when I understand what the real world is and people are getting mugged off to ride for a brand.
Bastien reviving Lakai - I love Bastien but how dead is that.
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I’m sort of with you, not sure I’d describe Crailtap as ‘cooked’ exactly, theyre just not what they were.
On the pay side of things I’m fully with you, I don’t want to support a brand just because it has a history and is/was skater owned.
There are too many good skateboarders for everyone to get paid what they might be worth.
There are no hard requirements to be a pro skateboarder, so with the ever increasing pool of talented skaters, there are always going to be people who are amazing, who are either not getting paid at all, or are getting paid less than a normal job would pay, with exponentially more risk to their well being.
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Think about skateboarding 20 years ago… there were very, very few, if any, “street” pros in their 30s and beyond. Now the average age of a pro would be hovering close to 30, if not above that. So there’s less pie for everyone, because there’s less of a defined endpoint for a “career” and the pool of pro level skaters is increasing, whilst the need for pro skaters is arguably decreasing.
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My argument is that people banging on about how irrelevant a company is (especially when they are out of touch with how that company is considered anywhere else) impacts public opinion.
I know some people can just treat anonymous internet opinion as just that but lots of people google things and then look for reviews and opinions online and few get past a couple negative opinions before thinking bad themselves and looking for something else.
We as regulars can take negative opinions on things with a pinch of salt and half the time we’re taking the piss anyway but little Timmy googles what the best deck is to get and he finds this place and reads that certain brands are shit, whack and some are great he’s not getting a fair choice. Yeah, he can be getting good knowledge and it might steer him from Revive but unfair that he might disregard a good brand who have good people involved.
Now, as for pay, who knows why crail have paid less than other brands but honestly, even though Fully Flared was huge, it wasn’t a shoe market surge for Lakai, they have never had a boom like the others so maybe they have paid what they can afford and the riders ride for them because of other reasons.
Lakai now though, who knows.
Girl and Chocolate have been in a weird place for a while but only down to team changes and losing key people who we accociate the brand with.
I know my argument is totally flawed, I just find it unfair when the negativity is pointed in the wrong places sometimes.
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I look at it this way, the era in which you could make really good money from skateboarding was a blip between 1999 and the early 2000s. But the cultural impact of that era has warped people’s perceptions of what can be achieved through skateboarding.
Really, it’s only a minority of mainly California-based pros and company owners that ever make any serious income from skating. Everyone else is chasing dreams and scrabbling around for a share of, an increasingly shrinking, pie.
Skating is mega fun but it seems like a real drag when you try and make a living from it.
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Yeah I think there is some sort of illusion that skateboarding has always been a well paying gig for everyone from the top to the bottom. Take U.K. skating, 90% of pros have always had to work as well.
There have been peaks where the money was flowing and everyone was having a party but there are times when it crashes hard too. Everyone that’s been skating longer than ten years knows these cycles. From skating just falling out of popularity to outside forces (cost of living crisis, recessions, ect) and sometimes both at the same time.
The top skaters like Tony Hawk say, have taken a lot of outside corporate money and sponsors throughout their career. Plus he had the video game hit, which is crazy loot but he has also had hard times where he was working other jobs and on the brink of going bust. Most are living large off energy drink money these days. I remember Wade Spayer saying BITD how he had a pro board and still worked full time in construction.
A contract is also agreed by both sides before being signed too. They are not forced into them. If they had better offers then they’d surely take them? They are most likely taking what they can get. To compare Lakai contracts to Nike or adidas is crazy (even if Crail are known for short shifting their team riders).
Not every pro Tennis player is at Wimbledon and some professional lower league footballers are plumbers too.
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Different level obviously, but Rocker never stopped working at the steel plant. He’d be there either four or five days a week, then skating contests every weekend. The guy was in every mag every month, had seven pro boards and was sponsored by Airwalk. And it’s not like Sunderland is exactly London prices.
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Presumably British guys like Baines or Shier had a small window early-mid 00s where they earned a solid income, they were in that sweet spot of having a US shoe sponsor. Sure I remember an interview with Baines where he said something along the lines of he was able to earn enough from skating to buy a house - presuming that meant save a deposit, not buy a mansion.
I’m sure there must still be a few UK dudes who earn enough that they don’t need to work another job (not including guys like Knox), but it must be less now than at any point.
If you can pay rent only from riding a skateboard and don’t need to sit in an office, that’s probably best case scenario right?
And to add that in your early 20s, you’ll get by on a low amount of cash, especially if you’re “just skating” and chasing the idealized pro lifestyle. Huge difference 10 years later with a partner and or kids in the picture.
Ned’s original post then it forwarding onto bastien and Lakai got me thinkin that do you think some shoe companies maybe tried to do too much re a rider/brand image- like instead of paying 20 dudes who are all different a minor amount they should have focused on 5-10 core riders who they massively push, trying to give the team and brand more of an image that would resonate more with a dedicated customer base?
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Feels to me that they were still trying to live up their Fully Flared glory days with a 20 man squad.
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Yeah also and this sucks but maybe those kinda companies keep older riders on who have little influence to a younger generation who actually buy product rather than old heads who for the most part don’t skate through shoes as much or get homie discount etc. like legacy riders getting paid the same as they did in their heyday without really having a decent output? And maybe this comes down to having those friends and relationships. As sad as it is to say maybe the sportswear brands more cut throat approach to kicking off long term riders is actually how business stays good.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/DGZsDn4R67p/?igsh=dDBhMnp2OWY1YW1t
Isle officially done.
Sad, but writing had been on the wall for a long while. Will any of the riders get picked up by anyone else?
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Ah fuck, I guessed that was going to happen this year. Gutted, I loved Isle - their art direction was excellent, a great team, an era defining UK video. It’s a shame they couldn’t continue their momentum but it’s definitely felt like Nick, Shier and the team were moving in different directions since Covid.
Probably the right decision to call it but it’s a loss for UK skateboarding
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Seemed inevitable there’s been nothing from them really for a while.
Kyron hasn’t had much luck with board sponsors shutting down has he?
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