Haven’t used them in about 10 years, didn’t realise they’d become evil!
Long story but they were very active in killing the Skater owned shops around 2000 onwards. A kite shop
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Oh damn, never knew!
Not really but a lot of shops that opened years after Route One seemed to think they had a (skate) god given right to succeed in a capitalist society.
Well someone clearly works for Route One. Always nice to know.
I’ve never made secret of that in the best part of 15 years using the UK’s premiere skateboard shit-chatting facilities!
Oh it’s you. Fair enough. You’re still wrong on that by the way. Route One clearly were trying to move into places that had established SOS, it wasnt the first kite shop in the country ever you know?
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Haha! Totally. Appreciate all the posts in the Covid/news threads, Wally. Always an interesting read.
Haha, figured my identity was pretty obvious. First time not tatchelled by Cundall!
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Look, this conversation has been had a thousand times. I know R1, as part of its growth in the early 00’s, moved into a few cities with established shops, the shop I ran being one of them. And I’m sure a number of those shops didn’t behave the way I ran mine; I gave a job to the owner of the other shop as I recognised his value (someone from your neck of the woods Voods) and my shop was very much the hub of the local scene.
But, at the end of the day, business is business. Skate shops these days are surviving on Nike doing the exact same thing to independent skate shoe brands - there’s no room for any holier than thou morality.
My point was, I’ve seen numerous skate shops open decades after R1 and start decrying their existence. Route One is successful because the owner has incredible business accumen and breeds immense loyalty in his staff - being a small independent business it has the opportunity to move quickly but also take care if employees in a way a lot of places can’t.
Anyway, plenty of shops succeed despite R1, Rollersnakes, Slam etc.
So true. He just knew how big fidget spinners could be, and those ‘LOL YOU’RE GAY’ type t-shirts they used to do were classic.
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They sold. Cool is one thing, money in the bank is another.
I was working at RNR from 98-2002 and was regularly in contact with many SOS’s as there was an old sidewalk forum post warning of R1 underhand tactics. I looked into it.
Speaking to various shops around the country it seems R1 would see where thier mail order was highest and move in to the town not far from a long established SOS. Some were telling me R1 had approached thier landlords asking to take over the lease when it was up. Fucking wrong .
So once R1 had set up and undercut then established shops they succeeded in closing the SOS - only to close thier R1 shops a few years later to go mail order leaving the towns with out a skate shop!
Talk about ruining genuine skaters livelihoods .
Fuck route scum !!. They Don’t deserve to have a skateboard in thier shop in my book.
That’s just standard business practice. I’m surprised you find issue in this.
R1 closed a number of shops in later years as the economy tanked when they were no longer profitable. Given R1 had greater buying power and the ability to react to trends quickly I it’s safe to assume the SOS’s in said towns would likely have folded then too.
Route One didn’t set out to close other shops, it set out to grow its business and did it well. Simple as that.
They demand a discount on pre-orders and they send their orders in with the discount pre-approved by themselves. Because they order so much it’s hard for any distro to say no, yet all other shops are paying full whack because they can’t order as much.
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But people will buy their first skateboard from there and if they care about skateboarding, and learn about it, they’ll know not to go back for their second skateboard.
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Yeah, it’s called buying power. Standard.
You gotta remember, R1 started as one shop in Bath and through good business acumen built itself to what it is today.
If people don’t like it they can start an alternative, as you and brother have successfully. That’s business.
No shit sherlock
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Exactly, so why is it an issue?
where did i say it was an issue?
