The future of skateboarding
Where have we been, where are we now, and where is skateboarding going?
The beginning
If we’re going to try to figure out the future, it’s probably a good idea to go back first and see how this started.
It all started in the 1950s, when Californian surfers began attaching skate wheels to planks of wood and riding the local streets. Skateboard manufacturers began to emerge in the early 1960s and a new lifestyle was born.
Urethane skateboard wheels were invented in 1972 and are still in use today. In the mid-’70s, the first skateboard parks began to appear, naturally spawning new riding styles, new tricks, and new boards as skaters went vertical. Also in the mid-’70s, a new competitive scene was born when a slalom and freestyle contest was held at the Ocean Festival in Del Mar, California. The famed Zephyr team turned the skateboarding world upside down with their aggressive new approach to freestyle skating. In 1978, the most famous skateboard trick of all, the “Ollie,” was invented by Alan Gelfand (the ’70s were a great decade for skateboarding).
The ’80s were a comparatively slow decade for skateboarding, although there was a boost that came with the popularity of the VCR when the first skateboarding videos were introduced. The Bones Brigade Video Show was particularly popular and made Steve Caballero, Tony Hawk, Mike McGill, Lance Mountain, Rodney Mullen, Stacy Peralta, and Kevin Staab household names among the skating fraternity.
The first Extreme Games were held in Rhode Island in 1995 and the skateboarding competition received a lot of attention, leading to increased interest in the sport and raising its profile in the community at large. Skateboarding was also a part of the early Winter X games back in ’97 and competitive skateboarding had really gone mainstream.
The biggest thing about skateboarding in the 2000s is the enormous popularity of the video game console. Skateboarding games lend themselves well to the format and there have been blockbuster video games every year in the 2000s. A new generation of skateboarders was born as kids traded in their console controllers for the real thing.
The future of skateboarding
Competitive skateboarding will establish itself as a legitimate mainstream sport in much the same way as surfing and surf culture. Just a few decades ago, surfers were looked down on as reprobates who couldn’t be trusted. These days, parents don’t think twice about walking into the surf shops that exist in every mall and loading up on clothing with surf tags for their children, who may not even know what a beach looks like. Kelly Slater, Mick Fanning, Rip Curl, Quiksilver and Billabong are now trusted global brands. Whether you like it or not, keep an eye out for skating going the same way. We’ll see mind-blowing tricks that harness energy and athleticism that would seem unimaginable today. Skate heroes will go mainstream and expect to see a much more advanced global competitive scene. Once again, it is instructive to take a look at the way of surfing. The competitive surfing scene was flooded for decades before coming together in the late 1980s, when the brave step was taken to give ultimate control of the sport to a single governing body. A new man vs. man format was introduced and contests were brought to the best waves at the best time of the year. The general good of the sport finally overcame parochialism and commercial interest and poor and uncompetitive competitions were discarded. Now, surfing has hit it big: it has a sophisticated, multi-tiered competitive scene with massive media coverage. Can skating go the same way? Yes, if you’ll let it.
When it comes to local ramps and skate parks, expect bigger walls, bigger bowls, and more of them. As the current generation of skaters grows up and gets their turn to weigh in on council spending and infrastructure, that’s good news for skaters who like parks and ramps.
Technology will affect skateboards in the same way that it is affecting so many other products. Stronger and lighter materials will appear and the rapid distribution of information means that the design of boards and trucks will advance even faster. The impact of the internet is both a challenge and an opportunity for the local skateboard shop. The growth rates of e-commerce are huge and more and more people want to buy skateboards online. The web allows for a distribution model that effectively brings the consumer closer to the skateboard store. If you’re longing for the good old days of the 70s wooden planks, this might not do you much good, but if you’re a kid on a budget, it’s all good news. Expect better, more technically advanced products at lower prices.
If skateboarding follows the same lines as other markets, then we could see further consolidation among the big brands, similar to Billabong’s acquisition of Sector 9. Other big players in today’s skateboard market are brands like Birdhouse, Girl, Zero, Plan B, Element, and Ciego. There is a good chance that a large company will buy a bunch of big skate brands to get the price benefit that comes with volume, which can obviously help with product pricing, but doesn’t always result in design and creativity. original product (when was the last time Ford or GM came out with a great product?). In any market, if the big guys get bigger, opportunities arise for small players to carve out their own niche for local markets and less brand-aware shoppers.
Maple is still the premium deck construction material, but the day is surely coming when maple will be replaced, at least for some deck styles. New styles of boards will continue to emerge – the humble skateboard of the early days has already evolved into longboards, cruisers, retro boards, pool boards, old school and mountain boards. In addition to lighter, stronger trucks and better quality wheels, there will be new forms of deck plans and original artwork.
So there you have it, a quick look at the past and a look at the future, and the future looks good!