This week was a pretty busy week here at The Solitary Life.
The first thing that happened... well, "the first thing that didn't happen" might be more accurate... was getting any sort of "further dialogue" going with IASC. Which almost everybody here totally expected would happen. After all, IASC does a lot of stuff very, very badly. But, they probably do "communication" worse than almost anything else.
The consensus around the office, though, is that we don't really need IASC for jack shit. We are skaters, after all. We're more than used to picking up the ball and running with it ourselves. It's what skaters do.
We saw a post last week over at Skull and Bones about a group of French skaters that built a DIY mini ramp out in the woods. The ramp looks absolutely killer, and it goes to show the immense contributions that everyday skaters can make to their skate scenes, just by pitching in and doing stuff like this. What's more: These guys are an inspiration to the rest of us, too.
With guys like this in skateboarding, who needs IASC...?!
You, as a skater, have a hell of a lot more power and influence over skateboarding than IASC ever will. Because you, the skater, are the most important person in skateboarding. Skateboarding wouldn't exist, if it weren't for skaters. IASC might do itself a favor to remember once in a while that if it weren't for skaters, their brands wouldn't exist, either. So basically, skaters don't exist to kiss IASC's ass. Rather: They're here to kiss ours.
So, The Solitary Life boycott of IASC rolls along as planned. And honestly, it feels really good to do it. I'm certainly not missing them at all. There's more than enough small, skater-run companies out there to support. They all make great shit. And most importantly: My conscience is clear. Out with the old, and in with the new...!
The other really cool thing that happened this week... which can be read as "another awesome place where we took the initiative, and told IASC to go screw"... is that we started to reach out to a few snowboard companies. Obviously, we started covering snowboard-related news right from Day One (as The Solitary Life began in November of 2009, right on the heels of last years' snowboard season). But truthfully, we just sort of "dabbled" with snowboarding last year. We didn't take it as seriously as we probably should have.
This year, we decided to get a little bit more "with it". Clue up. You get the picture.
Instead of treating it as a way to make a living, he decided to focus only on the sport. “This switch flipped on. From that point forward, I looked out for the sport and made sure that there was something there... that I was right [about its potential]. Once I got focused on that, everything started taking care of itself,”
- from Success Magazine's profile of Jake Burton. You'll see why this is significant in a minute...
Snowboarding is a major deal around the Solitary Life offices. Maybe moreso for me, than anyone else. Why? Because, snowboarding reminds me a lot of what skateboarding used to be like. It's free, easygoing, no worries, no vibes, and a gigantic adventure all day, every day. It's all about the riding, and that's pretty much the end of it. Everyone is so fixated on getting out and having fun, that there's really no time for the harshing bullshit that plagues vast continents of skateboarding.
So, I reached out to a few snowboard companies this week. And right away, something amazing happened: They got right back to me! Not just the obligatory "Thanks for the input" quick-hit reply, either. But, real letters that actually said very real stuff. As an editor... and, I might add, as a customer that has supported these companies in the past... I was pretty damned impressed.
Snowboard companies are a very different beast, from the average skateboard company. The average skateboard company is way too fucking cool to deal with some insignificant asshole like you. Or me, for that matter. Snowboard companies, though... they're actually really great to work with. Sort of like snowboarding, snowboard companies remind me a lot of what skateboard companies used to be. Friendly, outgoing, helpful, and even kind of caring. Or "really caring", depending on which one you're working with at the moment.
I might add at this point that snowboard companies, by their very nature, are generally huge, corporate conglomerates. Which sort of turns the whole argument inside-out, doesn't it...? After all, even the smallest snowboard manufacturers are oftentimes many, many times bigger than Sector Nine (widely credited as the "biggest skateboard company" out there, right now). Yet, one snowboard company actually found the time to not merely send me one e-mail response, but three...! They actually asked a bunch of questions, and followed up. If this had been an IASC brand, I would have been absolutely fucking floored...!
But, it was a snowboard company. And that's pretty much how they all work. It's just par for the course.
As I was researching the sales numbers of various snowboard companies in the industry, I came across an interesting article on Jake Burton ("Jake Carpenter" to those of us that have been snowboarding for long enough). Honestly, any article on Jake is usually a pretty good read. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Burton is the ginormous success story that it is, today.
But, the article mentioned something that I found uniquely telling. Jake was talking about his early days as a board manufacturer, and how Burton had gone through some really hard times in the first couple years as a company. So bad, in fact, that he actually gave some serious thought to giving up altogether.
But at some point, he changed his outlook, and his focus. He took the initiative, and turned his mindset around. Instead of working so hard to "grow" Burton, he would instead make "growing snowboarding" his main focus. The rationale was simple enough: If snowboarding succeeded, then so would Burton. And, Jake was right. Burton has done extremely well in the marketplace. And, that can absolutely be attributed to the marketplace becoming what it is today. A nation of fun-loving people that make the time to enjoy what they love, and spare remarkably little time for negative distractions. And Jake, in a very real sense, is the template for that. He's a snowboarder, after all. Not that unlike you and I. So, he doesn't just "lead", as an industry success story. He leads by example. He leads by doing it.
Skateboarding in general- and IASC, specifically- could learn a lot from guys like Jake, and from snowboarding. We sure have.
See the Success Magazine article that we referenced, here:
http://www.successmagazine.com/success-stories-jake-burton-charts-a-new-course-in-snowboarding/PARAMS/article/951
See the french mini-ramp project here:
http://www.jbgurliat.com/skate2.html
