Vertically integrate or die
Marc Roca acquires Tactics to help sell Lakai, Tony Hawk takes the PJ to BC, Erick Winkowski goes big on big boards, 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.
Vertically integrate or die
Rank: ...
Mood: 📉?
It's okay not to know things. Most of us don't know much, if anything at all, in the grand scheme of things there is to know. The best way to move toward understanding is to run headlong into that unknowing by reading, studying, asking questions, and immersing yourself in whatever those things may be. Careful preparation and bumbling immersion can be equally effective.
When current Lakai Limited Footwear CEO, Marc Roca, first acquired the company in late September 2024, it was clear he wasn't clear on what he was getting himself into. A Spanish businessman with a lingering interest in skateboarding, Roca's career was built in the world of e-commerce, private equity, and "turnarounds."
Initially, Roca promised big things with Lakai. Better compensation for the company's sponsored athletes, an expansion of that team, more video content, involvement from the brand's co-founders, Mike Carroll and Rick Howard, and a streamlined, "head-to-toe" product offering. This was all wrapped in a pledge that his purchase of the ailing shoe brand would "change the future of skateboarding forever."
Cole Nowicki
If you've followed this story in the intervening months, then you're aware things haven't gone according to plan. Or, those publicly stated plans, anyhow. Roca would reneg on his promise to maintain Lakai's team, letting go of Howard, Carroll, and the rest of their sponsees followed, resulting in an embarrassing public fallout for Roca and significant damage to an already bruised brand.
Roca's Lakai rushed to get their rebuild and rehabilitation underway. Led by Luis Mora, who helped assemble a new roster, which the Lakai website describes dryly as "a global team of skaters representing competition, cultural diversity, and dedication to the craft," they would release a tour video in January, but have been relatively quiet, at least promotionally, since. Even the IRL reveal at a recent SLS event of high-wattage star Chris Joslin being brought into the fold — or, at least, being seen wearing a Lakai t-shirt — still hasn't been meaningfully acknowledged on Lakai's website or social channels at the time of writing this, despite Joslin winning the contest and including the shoe brand in his Instagram bio.
So what have Lakai and Roca been up to? News broke on Sunday that Roca's company, Inversal Inc., which also, in addition to Lakai, owns a weighted blanket company, a supplements brand, and a women's underwear brand, had acquired Tactics, the Pacific Northwest area skate shop chain with a significant e-commerce presence.
Tiffany Montgomery
They purchased it from Japanese brand management firm TSI Holdings, "the previous owner of Lakai and the current owner of HUF. TSI bought Tactics in April 2020," Tiffany Montgomery details in Shop Eat Surf.
So why is Roca picking up another TSI property? According to him, it's because he doesn't understand the market.
“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,” Roca told Shop Eat Surf. “In my opinion, there aren’t enough retailers in the skate category and that is detrimental because it lowers the amount of product a consumer can try and touch. This is why the industry has been declining with skate shops closing as well.”
His theory about the industry's decline could hold some water, but the main reason for the acquisition is obviously the "vertical integration." We don't know the full financial impact of the brand damage Lakai incurred following Roca's falling out with Lakai's co-founders, but there are, even anecdotally, a number of shops that have stopped carrying their product in the aftermath.
Lakai wasn't selling well before the acquisition; angering the core isn't going to help matters. But, if you own a grip of shops with a substantial e-commerce wing (the Tactics cofounders told Shop Eat Surf in 2019 that "ecommerce accounted for 88% of total sales"), you can push as much Lakai — and any other brands you acquire — as you wish.
That raises another question: what state is Tactics in if TSI wanted to offload it? In their announcement of the sale, TSI said that while Tactics (referenced in the document by the name of its operator, Efuego Corp.), "thrived" under "favourable market conditions" during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, "in the aftermath ... rapid inflation and changes in consumer behavior in the U.S. have heightened competition in the domestic street-casual market, leading to ongoing challenges."
According to Roca, "the company lost money in 2024, but 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.”
That's some interesting spin. Achieving "double-digit growth in gross profit year-on-year" after just a month at the helm sounds impressive, but coming off a loss in 2024, could mean pennies. It also raises the question of where this alleged profit came from in such short order. According to PNW locals familiar with the situation, Roca took a familiar route upon taking over: layoffs.
Allegedly, a number of well-compensated Tactics employees were shown the door. A brutal and unsurprising maneuver that's been normalized by the business class as prudent. And with Roca now holding the position of Tactics' interim CEO, it's clear that at least one person lost (or left) their job.
While the negative attention Roca has received is not unwarranted, little is known about him or his intentions (not for a lack of trying; Roca hasn't responded to multiple requests for comment from Simple Magic). Should people be worried that someone with a background in private equity is swooping into the skateboarding industry as it struggles to scoop up companies for a song?
As we've already seen in this industry and every other, private equity is a scourge designed to destroy and discard. It's parasitism as a business practice.
Hamilton Nolan
There's a remote chance Roca genuinely cares about skateboarding and is trying to figure out how to run successful businesses in this space, but is just bumbling toward understanding in a grossly disconcerting way. Given what we've seen so far, it's also likely that skateboarding is just a market opportunity for Roca; a space to carve out a fiefdom by collecting brand names to bilk.
There's a lot we don't know, but it sure would be helpful if we did.
Tony takes the PJ to BC
Rank: 1
Mood: 🦅😌
At the risk of already having blown too much smoke up the guy's ass, skateboarding is fortunate, on the whole, to have someone like Tony Hawk willingly take on the role as ambassador for the sport, industry, and culture.
It goes without saying that Hawk owes all of his incredible wealth and success to skateboarding, but he also gives back tremendously. His philanthropic efforts are well catalogued with The Skatepark Project, which has also teamed up with organizations like Skateistan. This was enough to get him status-affirming honorifics like a spot on the 2025 TIME100 Philanthropy list.
Sure, this could all be seen as a means to burnish his brand and reputation, but he's actually going out there and making things happen. Thanks to the tireless work of Steve Rodriguez and many others, including The Skatepark Project, the big banks of the Brooklyn Banks are now skateable again, as of this week.
Snack
Last week, Hawk flew out to Smithers, BC, with the Birdhouse team to put on a demo celebrating the opening of the community's new skatepark. For the unfamiliar, Smithers is a thirteen-hour drive north of Vancouver.
It's not a terribly long journey to take in the PJ, but it's still significant. And Hawk did it all for free, creating memories for the locals that will last a lifetime. He seems to genuinely care about facilitating those experiences. It's beautiful, really. It's almost enough to erase the memory of his NFT project. Almost.
I could see him on Krooked YouTube
Rank: 1
Mood: 🎂
Mark Gonzales turned 57 on Sunday. I was made aware of this thanks to a video uploaded to his YouTube channel that day titled, today is my birthday. It is nine seconds long and features Gonzales executing a pretty solid switch-360-kickflip. For the last seven years and 1,400+ videos, this is more or less how he's made use of the platform.
There are no thoughts of audience or engagement optimization. Despite his 45k subscribers, it's doubtful Gonzales is concerned with growth metrics; it's just a platform for one of the most beloved and influential skateboarders of all time to commit intermittent vlogging. It is silly, unpolished, pointless, and feels like what the internet once was: a place to amuse yourself by creating for yourself.
As more professional skateboarders turn to YouTube to supplement their personal brands and marketability in ways that feel far less than authentic, it's surprising that more don't take the Gonz's approach. Forgoe stilted, structured segments and unboxing vids and just fuck around.
No need for a nose
Rank: 1!
Mood: 🎱
Throughout the '70s and '80s, skateboard decks were predominantly and luxuriously shaped. Like the shillouttes of fish or bullets or ivory bed post caps, they were large, unwieldy, asymmetrical from nose to tail, and set for extinction as the popsicle shape took hold in the '90s, with the proliferation of technical street skateboarding. Two fully-formed kicktails were better than one, you see.
"Shaped" boards never fully went away, as the reissue market remains strong, but they returned in force as a fad during the 2010s, as upstart brands like Welcome Skateboards began to offer an alternative to the reign of the symmetrical popsicles, which had become so dominant that "popsicle" no longer seemed to count as a shape, but was simply the standard. This era is when the public first learned about one Erick Winkowski, whose first sponsor was, according to him, "Unfortunately, Welcome Skateboards."
Eventually, that fad would fade, and Welcome would become a self-described "visual design studio" whose primary focus appears to be as a vessel for brand collaborations, like recent associations with the video game Elden Ring and the animated series Adventure Time.
It wasn't a trend for Winkowski, however. In the years since, he's stuck with the shaped, stunted noses of his now Santa Cruz-branded signature model boards. Considering the skill level of the modern professional skateboarder, this could be seen as limiting — how is a person supposed to progress and evolve if they can't pop a nollie off their nose?
How naive.
In Macrodose, Winkowski's latest effort for Santa Cruz, he displays a full arsenal of abilities. He does a bunch of his patented ho-ho plants, including one where he pulls on a spliff while upside down. He grinds a massive double-kink rail and executes, to perfection, a gap to kickflip-backside-tailslide on a ledge. When he needs to nollie, he simply turns his board around and uses the tail.
Most startlingly, he switch-frontside-shove-its down 14 stairs. The same stairs that two-time Olympic gold medalist Yuto Horigome 360-kickflips.
If you're keeping pace in any capacity with Horigome in the streets, you are not limited by your equipment or a novelty for using it. That said, and even with him being a presence in the industry for over a decade, it remains absurd to watch Winkowski do these tricks on that board.
Call it a gimmick if you must, but Winowski is sincere. He maintains an on-board individuality missing from the contemporary professional skateboarding landscape, where everyone is good at everything to the point that it often becomes griege. He just looks different in action. That itself is special.
Is he testing us to see how long of a ho-ho plant we're willing to sit through? Perhaps. Hopefully you passed.
Making the most of the moment
Rank: 1!!
Mood: 👟🎨
There's a lot to moan about in the world of professional skateboarding (and by god, have I ever), especially when it comes to skaters' shoe sponsors, and how the signature shoe has, for the most part, been usurped by the colourway. A big business-brained way to give a sponsored athlete a shoe without the risk of an untested design selling poorly.
That said, one can only talk about Hayley Wilson in superlatives, as she recently received her own Nike SB Dunk Low colourway, and treated the moment with the importance it still deserves, releasing an excellent video part to mark the occasion on Wednesday.
Imagine if this were in support of a Wilson signature model!
Something to consider:
Adrienne Matei
Good thing:
Another good thing:
Sure, another good thing:
As Dirt x Simple Magic's Sensuous Skateboarding series comes to a close next week, keep tabs on Pearfat Parfum's website on June 9 if you're interested in picking up a bottle of Nosegrab, a scent they've created that distills the essence of skateboarding into an olfactory experience. It contains notes of curbside violets, tobacco, upper lip sweat, paraffin wax, and hot metal. It smells great, I'm wearing it right now. Don't ask questions! Just buy.
Good thing about a bad thing:
Patrick Redford
A thing about posting and not posting: I was back in The Tyee over the weekend, with a piece about the decline of the social web.
Cole Nowicki
Unfortunately, another good thing about a bad thing:
Jason Koebler
A nice repost thing: The pals at Village Psychic reposted Mike and I's chat about books, skating, and other junk.
Village Psychic
Until next week… we must all rally to support the Edmonton Oilers as they continue to battle the sickening evil that is the Florida Panthers.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage
NEWEST PRESS
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My new collection of essays is available now. I think you might like it. The Edmonton Journal called it a "local book set to make a mark in 2024." The CBC said it's "quirky yet insightful." lol.
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.
