Once the hardgoods shortage started to materialize, though, they started placing limits on how much product account holders could order. In the pre-pandemic days, third-party distributors like Eastern Skate Supply made it easy for a shop to order a few sets of Independent trucks, a dozen Krooked decks, and a couple of Thrasher hoodies in one place, as opposed to calling three different companies and having to hit their order minimums. The only way to get a big section of their brands-Spitfires, Thunders, and Ventures-was to buy from the gray market, or from third-party distributors that stock several companies’ brands under one roof. Making matters a bit more complicated, Tenant didn’t have an account with Deluxe Distribution, meaning that the shop couldn’t order directly from one of the largest manufacturers in the game. “You don’t realize that a $20 difference is a matter of making $200, because they can’t buy the complete board.” He bought decks, wheels, and trucks from other shops that could spare them, and brought in newer brands like Darkroom Skateboards and Wayward Wheels because they had inventory available. I can’t even set you up with a complete,” he said. “I was turning people around, because I was like, I have everything but wheels. Product started moving quickly, and not just decks or sets of wheels, but completes, which burned through stock even faster. Yet, it wasn’t enough to meet the demand, which had been growing amidst the skate boom that exploded in the spring. “If they get a box from Venture or Indy, they’re maybe skating two pairs,” and the rest went into Tenant’s hardgoods case. “I was literally buying product off my sponsored friends, for a good deal,” he said. “I was literally buying product off my sponsored friends, for a good deal.”Īt Tenant skate shop in Brooklyn, owner Kasper Bejoian turned to a time-honored skate tradition when the hardgoods drought first hit: copping gear off local sponsored skaters. Why is the skate industry having so much trouble coming out of the slump? Wheels are even more inconsistent, and your local shop might still not list trucks on their webshops so that they don’t sell out in their brick and mortar stores. While the factories and foundries that make skateboard parts were caught flat-footed when the pandemic hit, most have sprung back, and are trying to make up for the lost time.īut at the same time, shop’s board walls have been as patchy as a teenage mustache. “Since we’ve been back up and running,” Burns said, “we’ve never produced as many boards as we’re producing now, and our customers have never shipped as many boards as they are right now.”īBS is hardly alone in the struggle. Today they average 10,000 a day, which is double what they had been producing four years ago. The workforce also nearly doubled, adding more doctors and nurses for the factory and hundreds of line workers.īefore the shutdown, BBS pressed an average of 7,000 decks a day. When the factory opened back up in May 2020, it doubled the number of busses transporting employees to the plant to limit capacity on the rides and added a tunnel that sprays disinfectant at the entrance of the factory. With the shop sitting idle, numerous skate brands that relied on BBS to press their decks lost their manufacturer, and their stock of decks was decreasing across the skate ecosystem. Less than a quarter of his staff took him up on it, and the government ordered the shop and other non-essential businesses to close two weeks later. The state of Baja California, Mexico had already declared that employees with pre-existing conditions should be allowed paid time off, and Burns, gave the rest of his employees the option to do the same. He emailed his staff to let them know that he had gotten sick on a Friday, and by Monday, people were nervous. The pandemic had already taken hold in Tijuana in April 2020 when Grant Burns, who owns BBS Manufacturing contracted COVID-19 across the border in San Diego. Unable to maintain production and distribution at pre-pandemic rates due to lockdowns and new health and safety guidelines, the demand for hardgoods is now bigger than the supply, and the whole distribution chain is struggling to catch up. Since the start of the pandemic, the demand for skate hardgoods has gone up, but manufacturers, distributors, and retailers have all been put in a pinch. Sadly, these days it’s not unheard of for a shop to be fully out of boards, trucks, wheels, or bearings. If you’ve walked into a skate shop over the last couple of months, you may have had some difficulty getting your hands on the product you came in for.
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