Unlike most things in skating, I have no shoe loyalty, I feel like skate companies (not all) sold us shite for years (like Neddy said). Saw skaters start to get greedy themselves, like Muska dropped a £100 shoe at éS then straight bounced to Circa then Supra, just following the money, even in the early days. Having no loyalty themselves. Rick and Mike leaving DC to get a slice of the pie, Jamie Thomas jumping from Emerica to do the same, skaters themselves just saturated the skate shoe market. Think about how many shoe brands there were at one point, 88, Dimond, Huf, Vox, ect… it was madness and not for the good of skating. No-one is ever going to make me feel guilty for what shoes I wear after all that greed within skating.
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I’m loyal to the sportswear brands fuck it.
I seem to be more loyal to the skaters using the product.
The fuck is on eS I’m stoked on? Kelly hart? No thanks.
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Wade? I quite like Asta as well.
Yeah I get that.
I rate Wade but I’m not gunna his Ed shoe.
Total opposite for me, Id wear anyones shoe if it looked good, couldnt care less about who the riders are. At this point i could probably walk past 90 % of the pro skaters in the street and have zero chance of recognising them anyway so I couldnt care less
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Yeah Nike always get that said about them but adidas would send shops shoes they didn’t order, deny returns and take the money when it suited.
Who did that? Which skate companies?
Could reasonable be any big US board company. Want the Nyjah? Gotta take all these others! Bam boards? Minimum order of the other stuff!
I can’t think of anyone who did that. Sometimes the distributor can try and play games with pre orders and stuff I guess.
Damn, I’m so bummed to hear that Osiris, No Fear, and Darkstar were fucking over my local shops 
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Jim mentioned skate companies. Thought we’d moved on to boards.
Yeah if it’s just shoes we’re referring to then I remember E’s launching in Schuh before skate shops. That was a bad move. I don’t remember them stitching up skate shops with ‘you must order this to get this’ though.
Osiris, all joking aside, might have pulled something like that as I recall…but I’d need to talk to people who were dealing with them at the time.
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I think Vans are pulling a load of shop accounts too. So it’s not just Nike.
That was nothing to do with éS.
Really? What was that down to?
Over-ordering on the first order from the distributor I think.
The distributor over-ordered? I mean, there is always some confusion when you have a distributor in the picture and I think that’s part of the reason why the bigger brands who deal direct, be it Nike, Patagonia or adidas, get more flack than distributed brands.
I get it, it’s hard for big companies to deal with lots of little accounts, but equally it’s hard for small companies to deal with the big brands when they all have their own terms of business.
Nike just happen to be very accomodating at first, but very good at turning the screw to extract maximum value from small accounts. When you’re on the receiving end it doesn’t feel good, I can tell you that much.
In recent times Soletech et al have eaten some humble pie and are now back to being flexible and friendly to smaller accounts. It feels good.
Still nothing like dealing with legends like Nick Zorlac or Lovenskate of course.
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Cunts is skateboard industry shocka!
Just kidding
We all know that every brand has probably done some questionable things to get sales.
