WorkSpace: Culture Skate
August 26, 2008
Source: asr360
Blurring the cultures of brand and retail
By Kimball Taylor
Culture Skate at 214 Valencia Street in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood is as eclectic as the city that surrounds it. The shop sells vinyl 45s and LPs, organic cotton, hemp and bamboo apparel, skate wheels made from recycled urethane and a variety of skate decks. Cutting edge artwork covers the walls inside and out, and music, sometimes live even, pumps from the store and into the streets. Just a year old, it's not exactly obvious that Culture Skate is a flag ship store for Satori Movement and Creation Skateboards. True, both of these established brands fuse reggae, street and skateboard culture in unique and engaging ways—and the store does this well, too. But there are elements of this San Francisco neighborhood that provide an equal measure of Culture Skate's atmosphere. "If you don't let your environment influence your shop, you're not doing it right," says manager Terry Addison, who added, "This shop gives a lot to different people."
Addison was in the midst of planning for an upcoming party celebrating the store's anniversary. Culture Skate has already hosted a few of these kinds of happenings, so Addison knew what to expect. There would be live music, a DJ, spontaneous art creation and people filling the backyard and storefront. These events, Addison says, keep Culture Skate in the minds of its clientele, but it seems that the clientele help inspire the shop as well. The art in the space isn't just framed, it's splashed in murals, scrawled and inked on walls. All of it, between the mix of product and the vibe of the shop, seem to reflect the customers who get it.
What the umbrella brands -- Satori and Creation Skateboards -- bring to the shop is additional layers of support and expanded opportunities. "If this shop was independent," Addison says, "The result would be different. It's easier to get big things done with the brands behind the shop." Programs like their buyback of used skate wheels for the recycling efforts seem to move more smoothly. And the possibilities of working with outside brands to develop new products for the store are more available. Moving forward, Culture Skate will begin to offer skate decks from all of Satori's and Creation's team riders, even if those skaters have their pro models under other labels.
The umbrella brands also help focus and direct the message of the shop, and in the case of Satori and Creation Skateboards, that message is all about inclusion. "Some people are trying to make skateboarding only travel one route, but the people who have been around skating a while know that's not the history of the business. We're about changing people's expectations of what skateboarding can be," Addison says.
www.cultureskate.com
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