Contrary to the devastating effects COVID-19 has had on many businesses since the beginning of the lockdown last March, the market for outdoor recreation activities has miraculously increased. One pocket of this category that has specifically seen exponential growth is the skateboarding industry.
“There was a good amount of statistical data that I found that supported the rise in popularity,” said team member Meghan Pickett. Various articles from other media outlets such as The Guardian, CNBC, and other California publications seemed to have noticed similar trends as well. For reasons ranging from boredom to TikTok, 2020 has produced some of the best sales numbers for skating companies that they have ever seen.
As my team member, Bailey Snow, pointed out, “One of the biggest skate companies is based in San Luis Obispo, which is something not many people know about,” he said. Operating on the outskirts of town, Skate Warehouse has grown from a small local business to one of the leaders in the industry, according to their website. We thought, ‘Who better to confirm the popularity increase of skateboarding than our local skate shop?’
When we asked the General Operations Manager of Skate Warehouse, Jill Johnstone, about the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown, she said that it drastically increased their business.
“Orders went up exponentially, overnight,” said Jill. “Highest numbers we’d ever seen.”
As a Vans employee myself, I was curious to see if our speculations were true, and Johnstone was able to verify it with flying colors. However, Johnstone did mention that there were also some downfalls to the quick rise in demand, such as manufacturing shortages. After hearing about Skate Warehouse’s challenges, we wondered if there had been any negative effects on the skaters themselves.
Tracking down skateboarders to interview and get footage from was one of the more difficult parts of writing the story. “We needed more input for the story, but skateboarders, apparently, are hard people to get in contact with,” said Lindsey Zang, one of our team members. Maybe it was their desire to keep skate culture out of the limelight, maybe it or maybe it was just our luck, but this was certainly a challenge. But, once we were able to get some input from actual skaters, the story really started to take shape. The full article delves deeper into the impact of the pandemic of skaters, the skateboarding industry, and skate culture itself.