WHY THE HECK WOULD I START A SKATE COMPANY?

So, to answer the question, I don’t all the way know. However, I am willing to share what inspired me in this direction. As a kid, I loved art, drawing, and making things. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s skate culture was on the rise, and the stuff coming out of it as far as art and style was awesome. I remember getting that cool looking skateboard as a kid, and although I was not very good at it, I felt like a king when I stood up on it. I remember seeing all the magazines, boards, and clothes. To me it was just so cool because the expressions and characters, the cool logos, and the lettering just gave me a inspirational feeling, I cant really describe (that’s why I used the generic phrase inspirational feeling). In a lot of ways I idolized it.

As time went on and I got into my teenage years, I kinda stopped really creating much. As I moved toward different mediums, and in many ways felt that I had to be good at realistic drawings, I lost interest. From the beginning of High School, until a few short years ago, I didn’t really draw at all anymore. At the end of High School, I sought out fun in much less productive ways, running around as first a punk rocker, and then going the electronic music, giant pants route, but we don’t talk about that much, and most those pictures are hidden pretty well. However, experiencing that time in my life I was again inspired by art, in the form of street art and going to all the local shops and picking up flyers for the events. It gave me the same kind of… “inspirational feeling” the skate stuff did. At that time I was a little too lost and confused to really make art.

Fast forward to recent years, I am a Dad, Husband, and Nurse. As my kids grew up and started taking interest in art, it got me remembering how much fun I used to have. I would draw little goofy things for them and try to teach them how to draw. I went other routes with my own exploration, like remodeling the house, building furniture, making fishing lures by hand, and building strange bikes for me to ride around. Several years ago a buddy of mine kept talking about making shirts for “Mushroom Camp.” In the spring we would go and meet in the woods and hunt for morels. He wanted to make a shirt, but it didn’t happen, so I decided I would take it on and get it done. This process really got me excited about a medium for the first time, but the first run was really expensive, leaving me to search out other processes. I didn’t want to ask a bunch of money from my friends so I just gave them as gifts. From then I made a new shirt each year, but did them with iron ons, which made them vibrant and cool at first, but they didn’t last long, so I kept searching. Regardless it got me drawing again.

Being a parent can be a really rough job, but it also gives you the opportunity to recapture a part of yourself long forgotten. As my kids got older, they really started to get into skating, especially my son. He would spend endless hours pounding away out front in the driveway and the cul de sac just trying to land the next trick. As he got into skating and we were coming up on his birthday, I was looking for skate stuff and hoodies. I found some I really liked, but they were $80 each!!!! As I looked through the stuff, I was honestly underwhelmed by what I saw out there in the market. So, I asked, “what if you had your own brand?” He loved the idea, so I set out to create it. Then I had to figure out what the heck it would be.

I have for many years really enjoyed watching shows about hunting for cryptids and spent many late nights listening to Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, and thought ok, a lot of these would be really cool to make into cartoon and skate characters. I thought about naming it cryptid, but I didn’t like the “C” for lettering purposes, and then my son and I watched the show, “People Just Do Nothing” about an underground radio station called “Korrupt FM.” They would go on about how much cooler it was because they spelled it with a “K” so we decided on the name Kryptid, and I started working on the lettering. I made him 5 different creatures and put them on hoodies for him. To be honest, I was kind of surprised, my kids wore the shirts I designed a lot.

Then a couple years ago, COVID happened. Work was crazy, being a nurse at the bedside, and so much of the world was shut down. I could still go to the woods and the water, but most other escapes were not an option. To be honest it had me looking for ways to escape what I was seeing on a regular basis, so I leaned into drawing again. With my son doing COVID school, he would hurry up and get all his work done, and then just go skate. A bunch of the neighborhood kids were out all the time, and skating too and the group got pretty big. As spring rolled around, and kids were getting out, they were looking for places to skate. Our local skate park had plans to upgrade, but when the pandemic hit availability and costs went through the roof, and the park was left covered in caution tape. All of a sudden I noticed we had a rapidly growing group of kids hanging out skating our driveway. This only went on for a few weeks, but it was really fun while it lasted. I think there were a number of times we had 30 or more kids in the cul de sac. and on our driveway. My wife would take them water and grapes and stuff. It really gave me some insight into the community and all amongst skaters and the people who surrounded them. Once again got those “inspirational feelings” and it gave me a drive to go with it some and keep creating stuff.

I am not hating on big name brands for charging what they do, because they make the industry legit and survive. They sponsor skaters and the events, and that costs money. I wanted to create a brand for the normal skater, that they can afford to wear when they skate. My designs are created from my interpretation of old school skate style and graffiti featuring my version of cartoon cryptid creatures. I hope somewhere in that rambling, it all kind of makes sense. My goal is to put out good quality items with cool designs at a low price. Take good care of your $80 hoodies, and skate the crap out of mine!