Birdo explains his side of the Don’t Do It campaign
After getting a lot of feed back on the post I made about the Consolidated Don’t Do it campaign. Birdo, the owner of Consolidated Skateboards got in touch with me to explain his side of the story. You can read the entire letter below.
“Hello Chris,
I read your article about the Don’t do it campaign. The Don’t do it campaign isn’t anti big business and its not anti making money. The premise behind it is that the large sporting goods companies are trying to cash in on something that they didn’t build. Lets go back in time a bit. If you think about the existence of skate shops or specialty stores, they exist because whatever existing channel of distribution there was, didn’t want these products. So what I am saying is that when skaters made good “performance” skateboards, they took them to the sporting goods stores and tried to sell them. The sporting goods stores didn’t want them. So the long hard skateboard struggle/journey begins. Skateboard shops slowly started popping up to supply the demand and to help spread the enjoyment of skateboarding. The skateboard manufacturers would have sold to anyone who would have bought their products, but only the core shops would. Same thing in surfing and snowboarding. The industry, after a lot of hard work, now had its own distribution channel. Now the large sporting goods companies. Had they gotten in from the beginning, there wouldn’t be so many skater owned companies. For the same reason there are no soccer, baseball, football, basketball player owned sporting goods companies. Now these large sporting goods companies want to cash in on what this industry had built. Sure, its a free country and they have every right to try. But what’s at stake? All these “core” shops that they are being so nice to. Flying them to their campus, making them custom shoes. What do they need them for? Distribution? They already have a distribution that can serve almost everyone in the entire world! So then what? They need them for the stamp of approval. They know they can’t enter the industry, unless they go through these shops. But then what? They are handing these shops a knife to slit their own throats. All this ass kissing. Flying the magazines around, team manager series, exploiting core elements like minor threat, pabst blue ribbon and artist shoes. So they can take our industry and plug it into their distribution. I understand the “who cares” attitude. Part of me wants to go that way because its hard work to fight. To spread the word. To try to show people one by one that the soul of this industry, the thing that attracted them to it in the first place, is in danger of getting swept away. But I know I have to. Because the ones who are passive become victims. I am a part of this industry, and I feel that if no one in this industry is willing to take the wheel and steer it where it needs to go, someone from outside is going to do it. And I am not gonna let that happen. At least not without a fight.
Birdo “
sux post comin up
Is that good or bad?
I’m still not sold (or sole-d) on why we should care who gets into the skateboard SHOE business. It seems more important to worry about Chinese skateboard manufacturers eventually driving most of the production overseas, leading to more skateboards being carried in sports stores, leading to the death of the independent skate shop.
Well for those who dont know, selling shoes are one of the only things that helps keep independent shops in business, because we dont make shit on hardgoods. But on the other hand I do have an issue with Birdo making his decks in China and on the other hand leading the Dont Do It campaign. When other companies (tum yeto, Deluxe) making there shit USA.
The scene here in MN is up in arms about this shit. Everyone has a fresh Nike shoe collection here. Everyone is pissed that Seth Mcallum and Emeric Pratt got the boot for their shoe sponsor. Consolidated stuff has been banned from all of our shops. Don’t get me wrong, Seth and Emeric are my favorite skaters from MN, but I’d wish they would’ve ditched Nike and stayed on Consolidated. I cannot belive the overwhelming support for Nike over Consolidated around here. Good luck to Seth, Emeric and Consolidated, and Fuck Nike!
I like this article, it explains it pretty well. But i could tell Birdo was only talking about Nike when it came to “Large Sporting GOods Companies”. HE didnt mention Adidas, Puma or anything. All those references to Nike : “Flying the magazines around, team manager series, exploiting core elements like minor threat, pabst blue ribbon and artist shoes”, and nothing else.
As for the post that Big E made about the footwear being one of the few selling points that makes shops money. The footwear industry, from Nikes to Etnies, Globes, to Vans, has a very very low markup. We’re talking a shoe that wholesales for approximately $80 and sells retails for about $100. That is an average for low end Nikes in th retail equation. Look at Vans, they hold an average $18 markup. Nothing fancy but definitely nothing that really makes them a shit ton of money. Look at the reality of it Bid E, thats not where the dollar signs stem from. Tees are a monetary goldmine for most stores that order big and stock heavy. Thats the one goldmine that still exists, and thats the one aspect that can’t change, cotton and inks remain low cost for startup or heavily invested company of old. The real issue should be the Chinese manufacturing of decks, taking the US market out of the equation. Consolidated needs to step up and be realistic about their campaign and the hypocrisy that is evident to all of us.
Step up guys, don’t do it to yourselves…