Skateboarding tops baseball for summer fun

Sixteen-year-old Matt Hiemstra should be the $5.2 billion-a-year skateboard industry's ideal customer.

During the summer, he skateboards daily, and between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next, he breaks about eight boards doing jumps and other tricks. He also knows all about skateboards, including the names of the leading brands and the pros who endorse them.

But none of that knowledge really influences what he buys.

"When it comes down to it, a skateboard is a skateboard," says Hiemstra, who placed second and third at local competitions last year at Kuehn skate park in Sioux Falls, S.D. "It doesn't matter that it has fancy stuff. When you go through so many in a summer, it's too costly to buy expensive new ones."

Some 12 million teenagers skateboard -- more than play baseball in the U.S. today, estimates American Sports Data, a research firm based in Cortland Manor, N.Y. But Hiemstra and other skateboarders like him present an interesting marketing challenge. They are the industry's prime customers, both devoted to the sport and savvy. And when they started out, most of them invested in premium boards and other branded gear. But as they got more serious about boarding, many decided they just didn't care whether they used the industry's top products, including the pro skateboard "decks" with graphics and branding that can cost between $40 and $70 without the wheels and the axles known as "trucks."

In more mainstream sports like baseball, basketball and soccer, young athletes tend to respond to marketing by Nike, Adidas and Under Armour, paying top dollar for gloves, balls, shoes and other gear endorsed by their favorite stars. But many boarders think it's just fine to buy "blank decks," the plain, seven-ply wood boards that cost only $15 to $30, often coming from overseas and sold by big discounters or on eBay and at some skateboard specialty shops.

Mike May, a spokesman for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association in Washington, D.C., agrees skateboarders can be a tough sell. "I think skateboarding is sort of in a class by itself in that respect," he says. "There are some free spirits and independent thinkers in the skateboarding industry."

Serious skateboarders also have big expenses. On average, those who execute tricky jumps, spins and slides break their boards once a month. "For a young kid, every couple dollars count," says Issa Sawabini, a partner in Fuse, a Vermont-based youth sports marketing company.

Element, Zoo York, Santa Cruz, Flip and other top skateboard brands have been hiring the best of the estimated 800 professional and semiprofessional skateboarders to ride their boards and wear their brand-named clothes in competition, videos and ads. Many skateboard enthusiasts also admire top pros like Ryan Sheckler, Tony Hawk and Rob Dyrdeck for their ability to invent new tricks and for their celebrity lifestyles and clothing and equipment sponsorships.

But Hiemstra, who pays for his gear by bagging groceries at a local grocery store for $6.50 an hour, isn't buying. He won't settle for what he considers to be lesser quality boards sold at discounters like Wal-Mart or at toy stores. But he does sometimes bid for batches of closeout boards on eBay, and he trolls the four skateboard shops around Sioux Falls for sales, closeouts and other deals.

"Word travels around the skate park about what (various shops) have in stock," he says, noting he recently picked up two half-priced complete Crown boards from Scheels All Sports in Sioux Falls for $30 each instead of the usual $60 apiece.

The International Association of Skateboard Companies figures 50 percent to 70 percent of all the skateboard decks sold are blank rather than branded.

Fortunately for the industry, newer skateboarders, whose approach to the sport is more recreational than competitive, tend to appreciate branded gear more. Jack Lecci, 14, has been skateboarding for nearly three years with his friends in Pittsburgh. So far, he has broken only one board, a premium model by Element.

While the equipment failure was a mark of honor for Jack, it was also a breaking point for his mother, Mary Ann, who had bought the Element board for him for Christmas. She made him buy his replacement board -- he chose a $130 one from Mystery Skateboards -- on his own.

Jack is thinking of working as a golf caddy so that he'll be able to pay for gear. He also says he plans to keep buying pro boards. But, he notes, if he gets better at tricks and starts breaking a board a month, he might change his mind and start buying blank decks.