Rumors of Darkspeed's demise have been
greatly exaggerated. Darkspeed is officially back and this time we're
serious. Better late than never.
Back in 2008 we were just a couple of
skaters mucking around in the garage, making our own slide pucks to
put on gloves we modded ourselves. After some experimenting with
different plastics and shapes we found a formula that was extremely
slippery but also lasted extremely long. It didn't cost us much more
to make a couple dozen pairs of pucks than the few sets that we had
intended to make for our personal use, and thankfully our friends at
Local 124 put the extra sets we made up for sale in their skateshop.
Remarkably those first sets sold out in
days and a business was born. By late summer our pucks had made it
all the way to the Maryhill WA World Downhill Skateboarding
Championships and on to the hands of many of the attending pros
including the eventual champion's. Darkspeed had rapidly reached the
world stage and we were on our way.
After seeing how many pro riders were
buying Darkspeed pucks to replace the stock pucks that came with the
new gloves that they received from their sponsors, it became obvious
that we should have our own glove to be the perfect companion for our
pucks. Low on cash, we solved this problem in the same DIY way that
we started the pucks: we went into the garage and started
experimenting with ways to "soup up" a stock pair of
mechanic's gloves into decent slide gloves that could take the kind
of beating downhill skateboarders dish out.
It was a lot of work to modify the
gloves but when the first batch rolled out in the spring of 2010, an
amazing thing happened: just like the pucks had done two years
previously, the gloves took off immediately. Once again strictly via
word of mouth in the longboarding community, requests for our gloves
started pouring in from around the world.
Unfortunately the timing of the new
glove's release coincided with a couple of events that almost stopped
Darkspeed in its tracks just as the train was leaving the station.
Within a couple days, one of
Darkspeed's original founders had to resign due to time restrictions,
and the remaining partner severely injured his leg playing skateboard
hockey at the Danger Bay race. Being on crutches made getting around
extremely difficult, and so manufacturing gloves and pucks, taking and
shipping orders and all the other chores related to running a growing
business by himself was overwhelming. But rather than quit he
enlisted team rider Nick Breton to help make the pucks and gloves to
fill as many of the orders that were coming in as possible. But it
was still not enough. We had to turn down at least a dozen orders for
every one we were able to fill.
So at the end of the season the
decision was made to design a glove from scratch and have it
manufactured in a proper factory. Pro team rider Patrick Switzer
helped test the prototypes and gave good feedback until we got the
glove just right. This new glove debuted in the spring of 2011 and
was an immediate hit because it was a properly designed slide glove
with the kind of features WE wanted as riders.
However throughout 2011 and into 2012,
the badly injured leg and other lingering health issues continued to
plague Darkspeed and its ability to keep up with increasing demand.
For the sake of getting healthy it was decided that Darkspeed would
be put on hiatus for awhile. Going from a backyard hobbyist to an
internationally known business in such a short time was a wild ride
that we were completely unprepared for. Darkspeed became a victim of its own
sudden success. So the next step was to enlist experienced business
people with the same passion we have for making Darkspeed run like a true company.
And that is where we are today. We
eventually found the kind of people that can inject new blood into
Darkspeed so that it can hopefully continue on the rapidly rising path that it
had been on preceding the hiatus. Much has happened in the two
seasons since we were more active on the scene but we are confident that our
products are still the best out there and that quality and
performance are still the most important things to riders (along with
cool looking designs of course). We are looking forward to the future
because despite our early success we feel we are still just getting started. We have a lot of exciting
ideas beyond slide pucks and gloves and clothes that we are working
on that we know will be exciting to other riders too.
Check out our new website where you can
purchase gloves, pucks, T Shirts and Hoodies:
http://www.darkspeed-concepts.com/
