Working: Big wheels in longboarding
Longtime friends turn passion for niche sport into Landyachtz
VANCOUVER — They were just two young guys who loved the feel of wind and motion.
Mike Perreten, a former ski racer, built himself a longboard so he could glide around the University of Victoria campus. Tom Edstrand, Perreten’s friend since elementary school, needed to write a mock business plan for a UVic entrepreneurship class.
That was 1997, and longboards were a California phenomenon virtually unknown in Canada. Today, 15 years later, Vancouver-based Landyachtz is one of the top three longboard manufacturers in the world, selling to more than 30 countries, with product in 500 U.S. stores. Their biggest markets are the U.S. and Canada followed by Australia, Brazil, Scandinavia and Germany. The company employs 60 people in Vancouver and 15 in California, produces 2,000 longboards a week and owns its 9,000-square-foot East Vancouver building.
Longboards are essentially more stable skateboards. They have bigger, softer wheels that roll smoothly over rough pavement. They are great for transportation, and for carving down hills in a simulation of surfing and snowboarding.
“You’re getting a little ski run in between your classes,” Perreten said. “All of a sudden it was making your walk to class, to school and back, fun.”
For Edstrand and Perreten, both 36, innovation, creativity and persistence have been the keys to success.
As students, they secured six weeks of workshop space in the Blackcomb ski club cabin by installing a wax-room ventilation system.
It cost “a couple of days work and 100 bucks in materials,” Perreten said. They built boards from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day “because those were the hours I was used to working (construction) for my ski coach,” Perreten said.
But skateboard retailers “almost laughed us out of the store when we first came in,” Edstrand said. “The guy would say, basically, ‘Get out of here. Those things are stupid.’ ”
The guys learned to cajole ski shop and bike store staff into trying out their unusual boards. “We’d set up a meeting with the manager and try to get them to come out into the parking lot,” Edstrand said.
On the advice of a family friend, they steadfastly refused to sell on consignment, but happily left demo boards in stores. Their first slogan was “Slightly more expensive, way better.”
They maintained faith. They quietly followed chat forums where converts rhapsodized over Landyachtz boards. The forums opened up U.S. and global markets.
After three years of working part-time out of garages and basements, they rented commercial space and went full-time. They worked trade shows, sponsored riders and events. Edstrand, who won the International Gravity Sports Association 2005 longboarding world championship, met distributors at competitions worldwide.
“That’s how we got some of our distributors in Brazil and in Europe,” he said.
But ultimately, racing wasn’t the focus.
“Longboarding is a niche sport and the racing aspect of longboarding is a niche part of longboarding,” he said.
An early challenge was securing repeat end-users.
“The regular skateboard industry is really based on consumption,” Edstrand said.
Skateboarders will buy six or seven boards a year because they break. “But our boards didn’t break. How do you sell them six or seven boards? The answer is in variety.”
Constant innovation has been critical. With their staff, Perreten and Edstrand almost obsessively modify and refine board stiffness, concavity, shape and materials. Changing the angle of the pivot point on a truck (the metal part holding the wheels) dramatically changes board performance. Four years ago, they hired a fulltime engineer from Toyota.
They moved some of their truck casting from Ontario to Asia because they needed better quality.“The factories in Ontario are not as modern,” Perreten said. “People aren’t really investing in aluminumcasting factories.”
Landyachtz now maintains almost 40 different models of boards, 20 wheels and six or seven trucks, and introduces a new lineup each year. They don’t worry about copycats.
“We just try to stay ahead of the game,” Edstrand said.
An unanticipated influx of high-school-aged customers using the $130 to $300 longboards for the thrill of speeding down hills has driven sales volume, “but kids don’t understand the rules of traffic as much,” Edstrand said. Landyachtz has responded by focusing on a hybrid product to shift the emphasis from speed to tricks.
“From Day 1, we’ve been building a sport as well as building a brand, so we really have to think about how this sport interacts with society,” Edstrand said.