Stepping Stones to Shredworthy

The path I took to build a skateshop.

Almost 3 years ago, I opened my dream business(a skate-able skateshop) in one of the toughest places to open a business — My hometown of Fresno, CA.

Skating by the shop, edited by Conner Poulsen

After graduating from the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas with a Finance Degree in 2011 — It was either join corpo land, or start something of my own. So, I did both. I worked at an industry leading consulting firm for the coolest professor/mentor ever, and started a longboard brand called Lavish. The job lasted 6 months, and the brand did extremely well for about 2.5 years. We created cruiser boards out of recycled wood, and absolutely nailed it with our target market.

Getting interviewed by the school paper, at the entrance to WCOB

As Lavish was maturing, I thought a natural evolution of the brand would be retail— So, I got with a couple partners and opened a full scale skateshop in Fayetteville, AR. Before we opened, there were only skate mall-chains locally. I was really pumped up about taking the eCommerce skills I picked up from the brand, and using them to enhance our brick and mortar shop(more products to experiment with online). But, that never happened. My partners took the shop in a different direction. They kept the skate focus, but wanted to stock trendy camping/outdoor equipment that I just wasn’t in to. I lost interest, told them I didn’t like the direction, and stopped showing up. I kinda regret it, but I’m happy things happened the way they did, and I do wish them the best(they’re still open today).

After that fiasco, I launched Shredworthy with a bad ass designer friend, and a couple developers I really liked. I originally got the idea while riding the Startupbus to SXSW about a year before. Shredworthy was initially a skate spot locator for iOS. It was pretty slick. The idea was to build a huge online community of skaters, and give them deals at their local skateshops through the app — Fighting eCommerce giants, and promoting local core shops at the same time. After about a year of building the app, setting up partnerships, fundraising, and getting users — My partner took another job, which was best for him at the time, I still had to move on.

My partner Gabe and I inside our office at Kingfish. Captured by Jade Howard

So, now what? I still had the skate industry dream, continuing with the app and finding someone immediately with the same skill set as Gabe was next to impossible on our budget, it was the biggest red flag ever that my partner left shortly after launch, so fundraising was out of the question. I decided to circle back to retail and open a skateshop in my hometown with the inspiration from my longboard company, and funds from freelancing. I had the same interest of using eCommerce to enhance the brick and mortar, but by this time, it was an insanely competitive FB ad market for skate stuff(thanks Zappos, Amazon, and Zumiez). At one time, with my longboard co, my cost per acquisition was around $4 using just FB ads(crazy, right?). 2 years later, using similar targets, that number went up to $29. Which after shaping, sealing, re-shaping, assembling, packaging, and shipping — It isn’t much margin to get excited about.

So early 2014, I went ahead and opened the doors to Shredworthy Fresno. The “yay for me — I’ve started something awesome” fog cleared very quickly, and the realization that I had an 1100 sq ft brick and mortar shop to work with, to fill with product, in a struggling retail market hit me very quickly. Margins on skate retail are super low(15–50%), so sales volume was the only way to make it selling purely skate stuff. Also, that volume would take time to build — So, I took a few shots at creating complimentary revenue streams from there to make things work. This is when the scramble and “hustle” kicked in.

Shot 1: I started designing my own boards again. But instead of manufacturing them, I outsourced production and focused on super simple blue tape and spray paint graphics on board shapes I really liked— Which was way more profitable, less time consuming, and sometimes more fun than designing/shaping decks. They’ve all sold, and I’ve made 100’s of them at great margins for the past 2.5 years.

Some decks I sprayed, each of them found a new home.

Shot 2: I came across a screenprinter for cheap, like FREE cheap. I had never screenprinted before, and I’m still figuring it out. This opened us up to building another high margin hustle inside our business. We’ve printed 1,000’s of tees for everything from foster agencies to breweries to death metal bands. We also print our own branded tees, which is a huge margin builder.

Shot 3: I created a ridiculous tee brand called “Fresbro.” One day while having beers with my dad. He said “chill out fresbro,” and a potential local legend was born. Again, 1,000’s of tees with high margins that help keep the doors open.

Shot 4: I freelanced the whole time(self taught through my initial longboard co), managing a solid amount of FB and Google ad spend for some really cool clients(I’ve worked with a few of them for 3+ years straight). Also, setting up shopify stores, and making simple logo/tee/direct-mail/poster designs in illustrator. So, if steps 1–3 didn’t work, I was fortunate enough to have income to save the day.

So, why the fuck would I do four hustles to maintain one? Is it worth it? I still don’t know, maybe I’m a little crazy? I’m chasing a dream.

I love skateboarding and I love my neighborhood, the Tower District — I always wished there was a good skateshop there, a lot of my older skate friends/mentors growing up did too— But they never did anything about it, so I did. I also thought that it would be fun and rewarding, which it definitely is sometimes.

Bottom line: Chase the dream, be ready to scramble, and make epic shit!