JDB (Just Doing Business)
Lakai is splayed out on death's stoop, Tactics is on the ropes, Jamie Foy's on earnestness, Nyjah Huston signed a global ambassadorship deal with the devil, and more.
The definitive weekly ranking and analysis of all the skateboarding and other things online that I cannot stop consuming and how it makes me feel, personally.
JDB (Just Doing Business)
Rank: -1999
Mood: 🪦
In May, Luis Mora, then serving as something akin to a brand and team manager for Lakai Footwear, issued a public statement about the company's future. At the time, signs were pointing to the shoe brand's imminent demise. The Lakai website was (and still is) advertising a "warehouse clearance sale." All shoes were reduced to $50 CAD ($35 USD), apparel prices were cut, and a banner at the top of the site made things clear: "everything has to go."
When Marc Roca acquired Lakai from TSI Holdings in 2024, he quickly misstepped his way into becoming a figure of revulsion in the skateboarding industry. Mora was brought aboard to rebuild the skate team that had quit in protest and help repair the brand's image, which had subsequently turned radioactive. Now it appeared that Mora and Roca's relationship had become toxic; in his on-camera statement, Mora, who says he was granted equity in the company in exchange for helping steward the brand, alluded to Roca being in financial trouble and argued that he should take over Lakai's business outright.
"In the last three months, with our leadership alone, we've been able to stabilize the company, improve operations, logistics, and also just rebuild trust. There is a future now for the company. In [that] future, the company falls back completely into the hands of skateboarders. That's what we're fighting for."
Considering how the company had been behaving, those claims don't pass the smell test, but without access to Lakai's books and internal workings, it's hard to prove. It wouldn't matter either way for Mora; applying that public pressure to Roca backfired, as he'd announce on Tuesday, in another straight-to-camera video shared with his nearly 2 million YouTube subscribers, that he'd been "fired from Lakai."
A story in three parts | Screengrabs from Luis Mora on YouTube
To his credit, Mora appeared genuinely invested in the project, having assembled a quality roster of skateboarders for the brand, including Chris Joslin, the eventual 2025 Thrasher Magazine Skater of the Year. He also produced a handful of fairly well-received video projects. Mora is responsible for the only positive things Lakai has done since its acquisition.
For Roca, his purchase of the company has beget embarrassment after embarrassment for the self-described "turnaround" businessman, starting with a since-deleted galaxy-brained LinkedIn post where Roca declared:
During the 70-hour labor that culminated with the birth of my daughter Aurelia on September 28th, our team worked relentlessly on the final diligence and transition items of a deal that would change the future of skateboarding forever.
Lakai Limited Footwear will be the world's number-one core skateboard brand.
That did not come to pass. Less than two years later, Roca has distanced himself from the company he owns and the company he acquired it with, as I reported last month.
Inversal, Roca's investment and turnaround firm that acquired both Lakai and Tactics from TSI Holdings, wrapped up operations in April, according to Roca's LinkedIn page, and the Inversal website has been scrubbed. What that means for either company is uncertain. Roca has also removed all mention of Lakai from his LinkedIn page, where he previously listed himself as CEO. The sole role on his page is currently CEO of Tactics.
That leads one to wonder how Tactics is doing. The Pacific Northwest skate shop chain, like Lakai, has been around since 1999, when they opened their first brick-and-mortar store in Eugene, Oregon. That was the only Tactics storefront until 2016, when they expanded to nearby Bend. By then, Tactics already had an established e-commerce business, which gave them some national notoriety. In 2019, they set up shop in Portland.
In 2020, Tactics was acquired by TSI Holdings, the massive Japanese conglomerate that owns and owned brands like HUF and Lakai, respectively. TSI would push Tactics to expand further by opening storefronts in Sapporo and Seattle, the latter a controversial move, as Seattle is home to longtime core shop 35th North. In the spring of 2025, news broke that Tactics had been acquired again, this time by Roca's firm Inversal, which had picked up Lakai from TSI the year before.
At the time, I speculated that this was a play to help push Lakai through Tactics' storefronts and e-commerce wing, as a number of shops dropped the brand following Roca's ignominious takeover. Roca more or less admitted as such, telling Shop Eat Surf:
“The team at Tactics is full of industry experts. Since we are new in the industry we believe it will accelerate our learnings and allow us to grow faster by vertically integrating brands into the retailer.”
What I didn't anticipate was Roca physically integrating Lakai into Tactics. According to a former Tactics employee I spoke to who asked to remain anonymous (and who I'll refer to as F.T.E. going forward), "[Roca] was losing his warehouse because Lakai shared a warehouse with HUF at the time. He bought Tactics, essentially, to house all the Lakai shoes."
"At that point, every pair of Lakais was sent to our warehouse in Coburg, Oregon, [and] Tactics was fulfilling every Lakai order. So he was double-dipping with our employees to try and save money in the shipping department.
"We had a lot of really good people at that time and we knew it was a bad thing. Marc just had bad vibes. We are all skate nerds, so we'd been paying attention to the Lakai thing. We're just like, 'Oh, shit, this is probably the beginning of the end.' And that's when a lot of people started looking for new jobs."
That cost-cutting didn't stop with storage and shipping. According to F.T.E., "[Roca] claimed he wasn't going to lay people off, but he just started to lay people off slowly." Those layoffs took place across the company, from the C-suite to the marketing department, which was cut by nearly 80%, with design work allegedly outsourced to the Philippines, where Roca is said to reside. The entire buying team was eventually axed. Tactics Seattle announced its closure in February of this year and the original Tactics location in Eugene shuttered at the end of May. The Tactics skate team, who were paid — a rarity for a shop roster spot — included names like Silas Baxter-Neal and Kevin Kowalski. Their contracts were not renewed. F.T.E. was caught in the purge.
Distributors were also allegedly getting stiffed. F.T.E. says Roca sent out a mass email to all of Tactics' primary accounts, the message of which amounted to, "This is the payment plan now: We can't pay you, but this is when we're going to pay you." Snowboard brands and distributors like Burton and C3 are allegedly "not selling to Tactics next year. They're done. They don't want to deal with it. So that's them losing [a significant amount of money] just to not have to deal with Marc." (I reached out to Burton and multiple distributors for comment and did not hear back by the time of publication. Marc Roca has yet to respond to an interview or comment request dating back to 2024.)
These are all serious indictments of Roca's leadership, but cost-cutting and restructuring are also just realities of running a business. F.T.E. acknowledged as much.
"Tactics was in a lot of debt when Marc bought it, so it's not all Marc's fault. It's TSI's fault for putting so much pressure on Tactics and expecting such exponential growth. But I think there was a path through. I don't know if there is any more."
You wouldn't know that from how Roca spoke about the business, however, telling Shop Eat Surf in May 2025 that "the company lost money in 2024, but [Roca] expects to break even this year. 'After some quick changes in April, we are already seeing double digit growth in gross profit year on year,' he said."
Roca also made brash claims when he took over Lakai, which was supposed to be "a deal that would change the future of skateboarding forever."
When I spoke to F.T.E. on Monday, they told me they had heard from old colleagues that Lakai was "done." The next day, Luis Mora uploaded his statement to YouTube, detailing Roca's liquidation of Lakai's stock and termination of the team. Many of those skaters were upstarts finding their footing in the industry, others were veterans in desperate need of a home. Now they're all out of a sponsor and a paycheque. Whether you could stomach the zombie version of Lakai or not, those are still people with families. That human element is always shoved behind the unimpeachable ideal of Just Doing Business.
"I'd say the biggest thing about Tactics, that's the roughest piece of this, is that we were truly a family." Says F.T.E.. "Each shop had such cool skaters working there. And then everyone would come together for [community] events and make new friends. The team would go on trips and help design Tactics gear. It was actually a really, really cool fixture of Oregon skating. And Marc managed to make all of his employees hate him by not trying, in my opinion."
Surveying the state of his business portfolio and how he's handled himself, both publicly and privately, it begs the question: What is Marc Roca trying to do?
It wasn't a fluke
Rank: 2
Mood: 🐊
Two-time SOTY Tyshawn Jones has made it clear on many occasions that he was intentionally working to win Thrasher's Skater of the Year award the first and second time around, and is even plotting a go at an unprecedented third title. That sort of confidence and candour is refreshing in this world, even if it comes off as cocky to some. To hear fellow two-time SOTY Jamie Foy recount a similar drive is just as welcome.
In his Epicly Later'd episode uploaded by VICE over the weekend, Foy details how, in 2023, the deadlines for several high-profile projects he was set to star in were beginning to settle in the fourth quarter of 2024. So he called up his sponsors and pitched them on the idea of making a SOTY run. As we know, he ran and he won. His motivation, as he tells it, is understandable and fascinating all the same.
"Getting SOTY the second time was just for me... I needed to do it for me 'cause I didn't know if I could do it again. I didn't know if it was a fluke the first time."
He just wanted to see if he could. It doesn't get more straightforward than that. That's also the crux of the episode: by sheer force of will, Foy went from earnest Pink-shirted contest grom to one of the most talented, successful, accomplished, and earnest skateboarders to grace this blue marble. For whatever reason, the episode doesn't mention his appearance on Thrasher's debut "Am Scramble" tour, which is, along with a Welcome to Deathwish video part and closing section in Ty Evans' The Flat Earth, what helped put him over the edge into 2017 SOTY contention more so than the several minutes dedicated to his stint on "King of the Road," a separate Thrasher property that, like Epicly Later'd, also aired on VICE — oh, that's why. Anyway, it's a lovely portrait of Foy and gives us great insight into a skateboarder who just wants to be the best they can be.
It also revealed that Foy loves the jockeying and rumour-mongering around SOTY season.
"We're a bunch of little babies that love to gossip, man. It's sick. I mean, I love it, too. I'm a gossiper." Me too, brother.
Scruples scattered on the pavement
Rank: -10,000,000
Mood: 🤢🤮
If anyone in the professional skateboarding space was going to become a "global ambassador" for the shady online crypto-casino and sportsbook Stake — the one that has lost its gambling licensing in the UK, is the subject of a massive class-action lawsuit "alleging racketeering and consumer protection violations," was recently found to be promoting artificial big-money wins for big-name streamers like Drake and Adin Ross, has been accused of purposefully getting literal children addicted to gambling, and is the financial backer of the odious streaming platform Kick — it was Nyjah Huston.
Neil Mead
To quote from the above press release:
In a first for the brand exploring ambassador roles with skateboarders, the partnership also reinforces Stake’s continued investment in skateboarding through existing partnerships with X Games and Street League Skateboarding.
Akhil Sarin, Chief Marketing Officer at Stake, said: “Stake is proud to be home to many world-class and iconic athletes in their respective sports. Adding Nyjah Huston, a true legend of skateboarding, to the Stake family is something we are really excited about...
“Nyjah embodies so many qualities which perfectly align with Stake as a brand, and we can’t wait to begin working together in what is set to be an exciting partnership for our followers.”
Personally, if someone said I embody "so many qualities which perfectly align with Stake as a brand," I would take it as an insult. As for Huston's PR-polished thoughts:
“It’s a great sign to see a company like Stake investing into X Games, action sports athletes and skateboarding. I’ve always thought contest skating needs to get eyes on it, and brands like Stake being involved is a step in the right direction.
“I’m stoked to be working with them, and I have a feeling we’re going to do some epic things together.”
Epic things like promoting gambling to children and ruining their lives before they're old enough to drive a car. Again, this isn't wholly surprising from Huston, whose remaining scruples seem to have gotten knocked loose at the foot of that handrail in Arizona, but it is utterly disgusting. Anyone who stoops to this level and promotes that noxious predatory garbage should be ashamed of themselves, which includes, and it brings me great pain to type this, Dylan Jaeb.
You know what else is underrated? Becoming a paid subscriber. Nothing on Simple Magic is behind a paywall, but your hard-earned dollars will get you stickers and swag, go towards paying contributors for their great work, and put some dough in my pocket as I write these each week. You can also leave a one-time tip.
Some things to consider:
Sabrina Imbler
Just a couple of hours left to donate.
Good thing:
Farran Golding
Another good thing:
Detailed thing on a bad thing: "They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket — but None of It Was Real" by Katherine Long, Caitlin Ostroff, Neil Mehta, and Brenna T. Smith for the Wall Street Journal.
Another good thing about a bad thing:
Matt Simmons
Updates from the iÓS vérité field:
Cole Nowicki
A varied selection of very good skateboarding:
JF on The Process:
spencer harding
Mike on The Logo:
Village Psychic and Mike Burrill
Patricia Lockwood on Catholicism:
Patricia Lockwood
Until next week… it's summertime, and as such, the living is easy. Act accordingly.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS
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A collection of essays that I think you might like. The Edmonton Journal called it a "local book set to make a mark in 2024," The CBC said it's "quirky yet insightful" (lol), and it won Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards.
Book cover by Hiller Goodspeed.
Right, Down + Circle
ECW PRESS
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I wrote a book about the history and cultural impact of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that you can find at your local bookshop or order online now. I think you might like this one, too.
Photo via The Palomino.
