Start a skate shop?

This but nicer :joy_cat:

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Like I said, everyone starts somewhere and I’m in no hurry to start something without understanding what I’m getting into. Thanks for your honesty.

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If you wanted to open a physical shop and do stuff for your scene and pay for ramps and have a team and make videos and have comps and all that fun stuff, you’d be onto something. You have to be very good to succeed at online, and fortunately for us these people currently exist.

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In fact actually straight up - Parade has ended that game for online only basically. Palomino aside.

So I would even bother unless you are opening a physical store.

Who does SEO for Parade? They are a fucking weapon.

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Mrs asked me what I wantes for Xmas and I just said go on parade world and search what ever and you’ll be buying from a SOS

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I’ve worked in both skate and high street retail in a different forms since 2003. I have enough connections to probably be able get the right stock in at the right price and now live in a UK city without an SOS. There’s not a chance in hell I would consider trying to break into a market that is served by well established retailers for every demographic you can think of.

Parents will get their stuff from Skatehut and teens will get theirs from Route One, Slam or Rollersnakes; they have the advertising and buying power to utilise Google SEO and buy in stock cheaper than everyone else (and also have the infrastructure to supply a wider range than most).

Everybody older will either support their local SOS, an SOS/Independent that is highly regarded nationally (again Slam or Rollersnakes, plus the likes of 50:50, Welcome, Legacy, Black Sheep, Skate Pharm etc) or use the afore mentioned Parade Marketplace

Don’t mean to rain on your Parade (see what I did there :wink: ) but you might as well try and start up a football club with the hopes of getting into the premier league.

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Orson Welles gif.

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Someone has started a shop in my town. A unit in the old market hall. Unfortunately he opened in November and we’ve had nothing but lockdown since.

I normally would back this even though he’s clueless to the industry (claiming to be am on blueprint). But he hasn’t got the funds to get anything decent in. No shiner account equals nothing worth buying.

Oh yeah, and rollersnakes is only 7 miles north and youd make your petrol money / bus fare back in savings heading up there.

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What is Parade World and why have I not heard of it before?

I think Wally has said it best, most people have their favourite shops and so breaking in to the marketplace is one thing, but being able to then take customers from the competition is another. If I’m buying skate stuff, I buy from the same few places that I have for years, Rollersnakes, Welcome, Flatspot, maybe Note, and Palomino and the only reason I’d shop somewhere else was if there was something really specific I wanted and somewhere else had it cheaper.

Ultimately with online shopping, to succeed, you can either go cheap or niche I think. Cheap I would imagine would be difficult, so maybe go niche?

For example, Palonino, who are online only, would be the first place I think of if I wanted to buy a skate book or mag. That’s their usp for me as a consumer.

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It’s like a skater amazon, it links all the skate shops (that sign up for it) together, they can pool all the skate shops stock in one place. So you’re more likely to get everything you want on one website, even though it might be coming from two different shops say (depending on what you’re buying).

https://www.paradeworld.com/uk/

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I might be wrong but isnt the fun bit of owning a skate shop the interaction with people? Otherwise you’re just moving products from distributor to customer by clicking buttons?

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I can’t think of anything less fun than doing an online skateshop, constantly shifting stock that you want to use but can’t because you’re too busy and that’s if by some miracle it was successful. There is slim to no chance of it being successful too, skaters are either fickle or really loyal, rarely anything in between, you cannot waltz in like the Pied Piper and get a stream of sales.
Your figures are crazy low, it’s going to need to be a real labour of love for you to accept the small profit you’ll be making on each item.

If I had £10k lying around there are probably a million things I would spend it on before I started a skateshop.

Like 25000 Curly Wurlies. At least then you’d have 25000 Curly Wurlies.

What everyone has said on here about skaters is true, you either have the loyal ones who buy from their mates/favourite retailers anyway or you have kids/poor people who dont give a shit about loyalty and the only way you’ll get them is by being the cheapest. But this undercuts all the other shops who have to start a race to the bottom as one guy is undercutting the market.

And you’ll still have to pay everything even if you dont make a sale. Plus online you’re going to get people that dont know if something’ll fit so they buy a size either side and send it back tying up your stock so £10k really REALLY wont go as far as you think.

Take shoes for an example: when I worked in retail your standard size break was sizes 6-11 with 123321. If you assume that each pair at trade is £30 thats £360. For one style of shoe with one brand. If you have 6 models thats £2160. If you have three shoe brands thats £6480. We havent even got to decks yet and youre already two thirds through your budget…

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What would 10k even get you? The services of a developer for three months?

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I had one matey from my 'ometown who moved to Bournemouth and opened up a shop with no experience whatsoever and whom didn’t really know anyone within skating other than our country bumpkin asses.

No one would open an account with him from what I can remember. He couldn’t get anything good in despite him saying he’d be getting in all the ‘good stuff’ and used to come back to sell most of his stock to us for next to nothing. I always remember he only had boxes of these chunky Globes in with a huge ‘GLOBE’ logo down the side…shortly after he moved back and that shop closed down.

I do have a point amongst that, that being what others have better put already - people will probably already have their own shop they go to locally and/or buy online anyways. You’ll be undercutting the current shops, who are already established within their own scene.

Plus with it not being an actual store won’t help, either.

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Or 25000 Curly Wurlies (I actually checked)

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Not even, he’d never get the deals that established shops get from distros.

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What you really wanna do is start your own brand. Guaranteed cash cow lad

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Running a skate shop is retarded unless you have infinite money or want to sell stuff you hate to keep it afloat.

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Rule 1 skate shop in Exmouth. Run by a guy who has a large Facebook group 4.5k members. His skate shop is built along side his garage Exmouth auto service or similar. I haven’t got a problem with the guy running it etc, but for instance he can get anything from Shiner. And he has been told if he wanted to get bigger name brands in then they would need other bigger brands to sell alongside them. For instance during the pandemic wheels, bearings etc have been hard to get hold off. He posts in his group saying I bought all the wheels and bearings the distro had, they were all fracture. I’ve not seen fracture in years other then when you young and skint and take what you can get. If I went into a skate shop and didn’t see “cool” brands I like etc I probably wouldn’t by much if anything.

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