Thursday, February 4, 2010

Happiness......



To forewarn you, this will be a bit of a rant..I generally try to tone down my opinions on here but i’m really bothered by this. Ok, to start.. I’m not a fan of rip off logo’s in skateboard graphics. Maybe it was funny in the early nineties but it’s generally not now. The majority of bigger companies don’t do it anymore however, smaller local style companies seem to love them. I’m bummed when I see companies that I LIKE doing this.. It isn’t creative and I think they’re selling themselves short… So please knock it off. There are a great many local skaters that are great artists..use that talent! Sorry, this IS going somewhere, so please bear with me..

Looks like there is yet another micro brand in town!

I received the following email last week from a guy named Jeff:

"whats up bro. i seEN your blog space and just wanted to say what up.......give us a call at 614 xxx xxxx. .i just got our new shippment of decks .i am new to c bus and am looking to me new peeps and sponsorER kids to skate for the krew...also check out our website at 
WWW.HAPPINESSSKATEBOARDS.COM.........THANKS" 


I went to the site and saw exactly what I expected.. a hoakey website that looked like someone who’s never skated in their life put it together. The two team riders are 10 years old, and the company had ONE graphic to offer in multiple sizes…more on that later…

I pretty much wrote this off in my head and went on with my day. Well, to my surprise these guys have had a busy week. They’ve added six more riders all under the age of 12 years old. Well, all except for Kyle Decot and Jerrick.

My problem is..This “company” is trying really hard to get into all the skateshops in Columbus. This would be fine except that they are also undercutting those same shops by selling their boards for $35 via their website. They are also apparently flooding the “market” with free decks. I’m not sure how many they’ve given away, but it appears to be a lot. Just because it’s free doesn’t make it any good. Now back to the graphic… It’s a rip off Nike SB logo. (see the picture above) No matter what you think of Nike, this is a pretty lame way to build your brand’s image.. and in this case it’s probably illegal. It’s doubtful that these guys have done one onehundredth of what Nike has done for their riders or skateshops.

I really hope that the kids and shop owners in this town can see through this and avoid it like the plague. Just because you “sponsor” every decent little kid in town doesn’t mean you’re legit.

-mike

1 comment:

  1. Im going to have to cosign everything stated here. People need to know what they are doing before they get into the skate business, just because you played tony hawk games for all of your life and picked up acouple boards from target....mabe got a knockoff bam board from ebay, dosent mean that you have any place starting a wack ass company because you aint got shit going for ya. That dude is wack and needs to gtfo

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