Nearly 10 years ago, professional skateboarder Steve Rocco decided to take a stab at breaking into the manufacturing side of the skateboard industry. He charged $6,000 to his personal credit card to buy blank skateboard decks that he painted with colorful, edgy designs and sold to distributors.
The skateboards did fine, but his move into the T-shirt business took longer. His distributors weren’t interested in apparel and he was stuck with about $11,000 in unsold merchandise he had bought on credit. Rocco said he ended up borrowing $20,000 from a loan shark delivered in a paper bag to pay off his vendors. His payments were $3,000 a month for a year.
Rocco, now 39, survived that early round of funding and a decade later is one of a number of still-youngish skaters who are creating a mini-industry in Southern California.
About two months ago, Rocco’s growing skateboard and apparel business launched its World Industries brand as a separate company in Huntington Beach, breaking away from its El Segundo-based parent, Dwindle Distribution.
Rocco and his 75 employees join several other skate-wear makers operating in Southern California, including Lake Forest-based Sole Technology, a $100 million-plus footwear company whose skateboard sneakers are rivals to those of its predecessor, Vans Inc. of Santa Fe Springs.
“Orange County is a mecca for skate and surf,” said former Dwindle CFO and now-World CEO Scott Drouillard, 38, at the Action Sports Retailer Trade Show in San Diego. “The skateboard industry is gnarly and it’s very competitive, but there’s a lot of camaraderie.”
Drouillard is no skateboarder, but grew up in the surf scene in Huntington Beach and became an accountant in the natural foods business.
Dwindle and World were both founded in 1987 by professional skateboarders Rocco and Rodney Mullen, who have since launched 10 brands of skate apparel, hard goods and footwear under the names A-Team skateboards, Blind skateboards, Deca skateboards, Speed Demons (bearings and wheels), Tensor Trucks and Axion footwear.
A wholly owned subsidiary called Merge Inc. handles the apparel brands Dub and Droors. Rocco, Mullen and Drouillard are all partners in World Industries, which has about 75 employees including four artists, a team of a dozen skateboarders and sales representatives.
The new company has a one-year agreement to use sample makers at Dwindle.
Its skateboards are manufactured and printed by a Gardena-based furniture company and snowboards are contracted to K-2 in Los Angeles.
World Industries is best known for its flashy skateboards and snowboards and its logo a red smiley-faced devil clutching a three-pronged pitchfork that forms the “W” in World Industries. The logo is one of several graphics used by the company, but sometimes it raises the ire of Christian groups.
“It’s so ridiculous,” Drouillard said. “It’s just a little red cartoon guy; it does not represent Satan.”
But he says the company is trying to be more sensitive to those who may be alienated by its sometimes not-so-politically-correct messages.
It’s no surprise that the edgy skateboard and snowboard manufacturer, whose colorful board designs range from sexy to borderline pornographic, has had trouble marketing its products in various industry publications.
Rocco’s answer was to launch his own magazines, Big Brother and Blunt.
“Steve started them so he could get his advertisements out there, but he sold them to Larry Flynt Publications in March 1997,” Drouillard said. “It was a good fit. (Rocco) rushed to the bank and cashed the check.”
Blunt ceased publishing about six months after Flynt bought the two magazines, but Big Brother was recently a topic of controversy between a retailer carrying the magazine and radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who called it “pornography.”
About 43 percent of the World’s distribution is international business. Locally, stores such as Pacific Sunwear carry some apparel and skateboard items.
The company’s hard goods, or “laminated tree cadavers” as they call them in the catalog, are the thrust of its business. Other products are wheels and hardware systems that mount the wheels onto the wooden boards. And the same popular graphics on the skateboards have also fueled a growing apparel business with T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, pants, jeans and shorts, as well as wallets, belts, watches, mouse pads, lighters and even calculators.
Much of the clothing is made by local contractors. Outerwear and snowboard clothing are manufactured in Korea.
“We have no true in-house designer. We use our riders for input,” Drouillard said.
Meanwhile, Rocco says he still borrows money from loan sharks but “they are called banks now.” He added that the former loan shark who bailed him out long ago is now a partner in his company’s hat design and distribution business.
