Do your kids go by the board?

Press, 11 June 1977, Page 13

Do your kids go by the board?

Skate-boarding is all set to become the craze of the decade . . . and a S3OOM fortune is going into the pockets of American manufacturers, writes SIMON MARSH ....

When Fred Astaire tried it in his Beverly Hills back garden he came a nasty cropper, and suffered a broken wrist. Along the St Tropez beaches it is reckoned to be a lot safer — and enthusiasts are doing it topless.

The new sport of skateboarding has become the international craze of 1977. In the United States alone it is netting manufacturers a cool S3OOM a year. In Europe, shrewd promoters reckon there is a market of at least SISM for the taking. Looking like a minisurfboard on wheels, a skate-board measures 18 inches long by five inches wide, hardly, it seems, the recipe for international success — but, says John Harding, of the American firm of Newporter. which is marketing skate-boards in Europe: “It is spreading to a dozen countries. “The sport is catching on furiously in Japan, and we * have even had inquiries from the Soviet Union.”

At the low-price end of the market a skate-board

is a simple affair of wood with four wheels at the back and an extra one for a brake. But already, says Mr Harding, this model is out of date. The top seller in California, soon to be sold elsewhere, is a smart $145 machine of fibreglass with a wheel assembly — “trucks” in skate-board jargon — of solid steel, and wheels of urethane. Urethane is hailed as the only material which gives a proper grip, and is used by the Californian, Guy Grundy, who claims to have reached the world’s top skate-board speed of 65 m.p.h. The country buying the most skate-boards outside the United States is Norway — indeed, the Norwegians claim to have invented modern skateboarding.

“The Norwegians aren’t content to treat their skate-boards simply as substitutes for rollerskates,” says Mr Harding. “They use them on hills when there isn’t any snow, and they organise regular competitions in slalom, speed-runs, freestylihg, and jumping." Skate-board sellers have

shrewdly encouraged enthusiasts to set up societies in their own countries. The salesmen then move in, and try to secure exclusive contracts to supply boards to the societies.

At least 10 companies offer juicy contracts to five associations in the United States, and other societies are mushrooming in Canada, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand. In Britain, there are two manufacturers of skateboards and two importers, competing fiercely for a growing market. But the money isn’t just in the boards themselves.

Mr Harding explains: “We are selling skateboarding as a sport and, like all sports, it has to have good facilities.” His sales teams are approaching interested countries with offers of blueprints of runs which he and his company would be prepared to finance initially, and then operate. “We have plans for a conventional run, measuring 200 ft by 60ft. It is con-crete-built, and looks like a snaking cresta run, with banked walls ending up in a bowl shape for the final

spectacular burst of speed,” he says. “Such an arena can be built for as little as $8000.”

Already the Japanese, faced with a rising tide of skate-board fans in such cities as Tokyo and Osaka, are planning to build two runs, and two seaside resorts in Britain are pondering on the blueprints. And in New Zealand, local authorities have provided skate-boarding arenas in several centres. In Christchurch, a parking building is made available to skateboarders on Saturday mornings.

There have also been enquiries from tropical countries, notably Nigeria and Jamaica. The manufacturers there will have to depend mostly on the sale of skate-boards because many countries in Africa won’t be able to afford elaborate runs. Mr Harding says: “We will show them how they can convert any derelict area into a run, provided it has a banked wall of asphalt. Cost will be practically nothing. We will then offer to supply all necessary equipment.” This equipment is becoming steadily more

sophisticated — including what is perhaps the ultimate, an American motorboard, costing about'Ss4o, with a two-stroke motor attached to the back wheels and capable of a top speed of 29 m.p.h. But the motor-board is likely to be a rare spectacle on skate-board runs. The boom is in sales of all the attendant kit that no s e 1 f-respecting skateboarder can be without. Mr Terry Conlan, of Slick Willies, London’s biggest store selling American sports equipment says: "We cannot get enough crash-helmets and knee and elbow pads. They have easily become our biggest sellers." Stores which are still selling old-fashioned roller skates have been hard hit. Most are going over to skate-boards —- ironically, even in Switzerland, where the roiler-skate was invented in the 1890 s. A spokesman for one major skate-board store in London’s West End said; “The place for the rollerskate is the cupboard under the stairs. Today our sales are outnumbering those of roller" skates by 20 to one.”