Terrible. Happy
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Hosted by Shannon Farrugia
Terrible. Happy
#240 - Cary Pogson: The Omni Boards Story.
From crafting surfboards in his parents’ West Pennant Hills garage, to becoming a renowned skateboard manufacturer with his brand Omni Boards, Cary Pogson takes us on an extraordinary journey through his life so far. Alongside this week's co-host, and journalist, Jim Turvey, we explore Cary's passion for supporting local skateboarders and his commitment to preserving Australian manufacturing in the face of global competition.
Cary breaks down the craftsmanship involved in skateboard production, emphasising the importance of quality materials and the balance between traditional methods and modern techniques. Cary candidly shares the lessons learned from producing boards for other brands and his journey back to reviving the Omni brand once again.
We reflect on his challenges and triumphs. Cary highlights his ongoing efforts to nurture the next generation of skaters as a key motivation for the vision of Omni.
Cary and the Omni Boards legacy is vast. It is one of dedication to craft, community and culture, a reminder that passion holds more value than profit. Always.
Enjoy,
Shan
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Hey, it's Shan here. This week I catch up with Carrie Pogson from Omnibords. Cary is a significant figure in Australian skateboarding. He has been manufacturing skateboards in Australia since 1986. The brand and the company has had various incarnations over the years but they're still going, in fact, stronger than ever. Akari's manufacturing processes are more refined than ever and we did this episode in the Omni Warehouse down in Ulladulla, new South Wales, australia. It was a really fun day, a big day. I'm joined by Jim Turvey this week as co-host and Jim and I drove actually six hours each way from where we live down to Ulladulla, recorded the episode and then drove six hours back. So it was like over 12 hours of driving, lots of conversation in the car, lots of shit talking.
Speaker 1:Getting to know Kerry was so interesting because he's quite an undercover figure. He doesn't really seek the limelight or anything like that, but he's been so significant. I mean he has sponsored some of the greatest skateboarders in Australia over the years and turned them professional and given opportunities where opportunities never really existed. So he sponsored Alex Smith, kerry Fisher, trent Bonham. So he sponsored Alex Smith, kerry Fisher, trent Bonham, steve Tierney, jake Brown, dustin Dolan you know he's given them pro models. He made my friend Cameron Guzev professional. I think Cam was the first ever Omni pro and Cameron actually got a skateboarding fine ticket and got that to be the graphic on his first ever pro model, which I thought was so rad.
Speaker 1:It was such a middle finger to the establishment and I'm like as if you're giving teenagers large fines for skateboarding back in the day when we had no money. Such bullshit when you think about it really. Anyway, I don't know if you've ever really considered the process that goes into the manufacturing of a skateboard, and Carrie breaks it right down, which is really interesting, and then it got me thinking about do we actually consider the manufacturing of anything that we use and the actual human labor that goes into these things? And it's significant. Carrie talked about the conundrum of competing with countries that have a third world economy and their ability to employ cheap labor and trying to compete with those, but ultimately he's an Australian manufacturer that still supports the scene. He has sponsored legions of skateboarders over the years, so it's a great history lesson.
Speaker 1:It was great having Jim there, because Jim's such a skate nerd. He is a skate historian, literally he's an article writer and, yeah, we're just getting to the nitty-gritty of it. So it's a long episode. It's a significant episode in my opinion, and I think you'll get a lot out of it. So sit back, relax and get to know Kerry Pogson.
Speaker 2:Cheers, cheers.
Speaker 1:That's pretty funny, yeah, but what a space that we have here. I don't know how many incarnations of warehouses have you had? Which one's this?
Speaker 2:Probably four, five, six, that's the sixth, six, something like that. Yeah, wow, yeah, because I was only just posting some stuff from Facebook the other night and I posted a picture, oh, this is the first Omni factory. And then I thought, oh no, there was one before that in another place. And then I've, oh no, there was one before that in another place. And then I pasted that, oh no, there was one more actually in another place under a porch we had. So that was going back 74, 75. Was the first one, yeah, so that, yeah, I was making surfboards then On the south coast.
Speaker 2:No, that was in Sydney. Which part of Sydney? That was West Pennant Hills, right, yeah? So we'd moved from Pennant Hills to West Pennant Hills when my parents split up, when I was like 10, 12. And then, yeah, got into surfing, so that was the first factory. When I started, there were some rooms down there under the porch and my brother was a rev head in motorbikes and so he had all grease and bloody shit there and my old little room was full of surfboard foam and stuff like that. So if you ever wanted to find me, that's where I was.
Speaker 1:So you were making surfboards in like sort of Western Sydney area.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Interesting. What were the sales like?
Speaker 2:Oh, non-existent. No, it was just something that I was making for myself. A couple of mates wanted a board and I sold a few here or there to sort of friends. But yeah, it wasn't anything big, it was just something that I liked. And yeah, I guess that's where I like the idea of making stuff, you know, and then testing them out, you know. Yeah, so board sports that's what I was into, sort of surfing. And then, obviously, not being by the coast, I could only surf on the weekends or just Sunday. If Mum would take us to the beach. You know, there was five mates, four mates and we'd go down for a surf on most Sundays and Mum would be the one dragging us down there, and so the rest of the week we'd be back in Pen-a-Dills. We got a skateboard, so we were sort of emulating surfing during the week, you know, on skateboards. So my first skateboard was that 24-inch blue Surfer Sam and that was a piece of shit really how old were you?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'd say 14. It's a bit sort of vague. 14, 15, it was around 74, I would imagine yeah how old were you when you first made a surfboard?
Speaker 2:about 14, 15, so I'm pretty sure it was the end of 74. Yeah, because I got a job, um, up the road pumping petrol. So I was a bowser boy and so that was where I was getting my money from. And I know I got the job before I was 14, that was younger than you're allowed to. So the guy had to ask mum you know, can he get a job here? He's too young to be legally working. And so she went, yeah, so it was probably not long after that that I had some money and, yeah, I think I'd bought two surfboards before then, and then my third surfboard was one that I rode that I made, so you had.
Speaker 1:and then something in you said hey, I reckon I could do that.
Speaker 2:I reckon I could make one of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think it was like the idea that you could make what you wanted. You know, like you look around for a board and it's, oh, I don't like that one, don't like this. It's like if I make one, I can make what I want. So that was always good and that's what I liked. Exploring making surfboards was making something that you know you thought you'd work. You know you'd do a certain tail or thickness or whatever angles, and you know concaves or whatever, and fin placements and you'd be playing around with that to sort of get an idea of what works, and hopefully the next one you make is a bit better. They were usually always oh, it was all right, but this was wrong with it, and so there was always something to make next time to fix that, make it better.
Speaker 3:So did um? Was there like a background of manufacturing or making things in your, in your family, like were you the first person or like were you influenced by somebody else in your family? Was your?
Speaker 2:dad manufacturing. Yeah, my dad was a I don't know if he was a carpenter, but he built a couple of our houses when we were young. I know that he built three houses before I was eight or something, but he was a church pipe organ builder, Right. So basically he had a place at home. So we had a big 4K garage where he made church pipe organs from. So there was always machinery and hammers and chisels and wood everywhere. So I'd always be in there. I'd probably swing a hammer before I could do anything else, you know. So, yeah, making stuff for myself out of wood and things. So I guess that you know. That rubbed off a bit.
Speaker 1:And he was passing on his skills to you.
Speaker 2:Oh, a little bit. He was still pretty busy with work, so you know, I'd just be the kid in there, and my brother was in there too. He nearly chopped his whole little finger off one day with a chisel. It was just hanging on by a thread. So yeah, you know, you've got to watch it when you've got little kids walking around with machinery and sharp implements.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean have you been pretty lucky in the injury department.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so Touch wood, nothing bad.
Speaker 3:He's got all his fingers. I can see them.
Speaker 1:Actually that was the first thing I looked at. I looked at that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a few old guys that are missing something from an accident. But no, I'm careful Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry. So you were saying, like Up until the age of about 14, you're in the Penn and Hills area, correct, yep? And then you said your parents split around what age. Oh, that was before then. Up until the age of about 14, you were in the Pennant Hills area, correct, yep? And then you said your parents split around what age.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was before then, so that was when we moved in with Mum. So that was living with Mum when I was making the boards there.
Speaker 1:Where were you before that?
Speaker 2:Oh, we were Pennant Hills, oh, pennant.
Speaker 1:It was still Pennant Hills yeah.
Speaker 2:Actually our ancestors that came out on the convict boat actually lived at Cherrybrook. They bought a place there. He got a conditional pardon that he wasn't allowed to go back to England, but he actually bought some land there and started an orchard at Cherrybrook. So from West Pennant Hills we moved to Cherrybrook and we moved in the same road that one of the old houses was originally in. So basically the Pogstons nearly owned the whole of Cherrybrook back in the day. Yeah, they're all still buried in this little church down at Cherrybrook, there a little sandstone church they built and everything. So yeah, we've got a bit of a history of Pogsons in the Cherrybrook area In the.
Speaker 2:Cherrybrook area.
Speaker 1:That's Borkham Hills, Cherrybrook, St Ives. Is that all the same zone?
Speaker 2:Oh, they're a bit far away from that, a bit further away.
Speaker 3:Pennant.
Speaker 2:Hills, West, Pennant Hills, Cherrybrook, Durrell's probably closer yeah so out there no way. Right on the edge of the bush. Yeah, I spent most of my childhood in the bush running around like an idiot.
Speaker 1:Do you reflect on those?
Speaker 2:times with fond memories, oh yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, there was a waterfall down there.
Speaker 2:We used to go down there and swim and camp all the time At my school holidays. We'd just set up a camp, you know a couple of tents down there and just be backwards and forwards from the house. But living in the tent down there, just all us kids, no adults, wow, wow so yeah, parents didn't know where you were. I think, there's something good about that. I was just down in the bush. That's fine Down there. Yeah, it's all good Walking around with machetes and bloody axes and chopping shit down.
Speaker 1:It's like classic childhood. Classic childhood Like appeasing.
Speaker 2:Had a slug gun.
Speaker 1:Do you think boredom is where creativity is born?
Speaker 2:Could be. But I think, like I don't think I was ever bored, like because I was always doing something. So it wasn't like, oh I'm bored, I want to do something. It was like I always had shit to do. You know, it was always you'd find me in that little shed there, first in West Pendant Hills. But yeah, you know, I guess, getting back to, we're all wanting to talk to you more about skateboarding and that.
Speaker 2:I want to hear about you too as much as I was surfing. You know it was only weekends because we couldn't get down there. So most afternoons we were riding skateboards and going up the shops on Friday and Saturday night and spending the whole time up there going down Coles Car Park and cruising the streets, you know, just on our skateboards, and that was another thing. Like I never really saw any other skaters, it was just us people, us mates. You know just a small handful of us just skating all the time. And, to be honest, I'd never really read the mags or got into what was going on overseas and seen the pool stuff. So you know, like in the early 80s when guys like Biff and all that and they were all riding the bowls, I didn't know any about that. I'd never seen that shit. We were just still doing the 70s stuff, you know, riding skateboards down the road and doing surfy turns.
Speaker 2:In and out of cones oh, not even that. You know, just down the road and doing handstands and the catamaran with the two people you know.
Speaker 1:I was gonna ask where were you getting your information from?
Speaker 2:like no, like you weren't looking at surf bags either oh, I probably was reading tracks and that, like when I first saw how to build a surfboard it was a in surfing world I think, or one of those it was a third um page little article, a little vertical spread of like 10 steps how to build a surfboard, and that was what I sort of okay, yeah, there it is, there, I'll get the materials and buy it. So I went to St Ives Peter Daniels from St Ives was selling surfboards at the time, surfboard materials and yeah, I used to go and buy a few blanks at a time and some resin off him and some knives and come back. I'd usually make them in batches of you know, three, four, five boards at a time. Yeah, you didn't keep that first surfboard did you.
Speaker 2:Nah, well, my mate called it the abortion board because it didn't come out that great. I thought it was all right, but you know, it had a deep concave in it and it was yeah, it was a 6'8 single fin. So yeah, it got nicknamed the abortion. But whatever, you know you live with that. So anyway, yeah. So we were basically skateboarding at nights and in the afternoons and making surfboards and mucking around in the shed.
Speaker 1:What did your dad think? What did your dad think of you making surfboards and mucking around in the shed? What did your dad think? What did your dad think of you making surfboards and skateboards?
Speaker 2:Well, he wasn't really around, I guess after that, so yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about your mum? Was she supportive of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah she was pretty good, she was tolerant. Like, our house was the drop-in house, you know, everyone would come around and you know, be down the down the shed with me and, mrs, please, carry around down the back, you know. So, yeah, that was basically it. I never went to many people's houses, it was always my place and people would come around to my place.
Speaker 3:So, um, yeah, what year did you make your first skateboard?
Speaker 2:I probably would have been around those early days after I got the yeah, because you know, I got that surface arm probably 75, 76. You know, it was just a piece of plywood and I just sliced up the tail and put a little wedge in it just to give it a bit of kick tail and that was about all, yeah, and that lasted me for quite a while. Roller skate wheels, trucks and all. No, no, I think remember we got some Cadillacs. Well, the place that I was buying my skateboard stuff from was Castle Hill Ski Shop. Now, that ski shop was owned by the Roustons, which they turned out to be that they were doing Adlon trading. So that was how they sort of got into skateboarding was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had a ski shop at Castle Hill and they had a little counter, a little glass counter, with some skateboard gear there. So I remember buying probably some gullwing trucks, I remember. And, yeah, we had the chalky wheels there for a bit, I remember, and they were the old ones with the balls in them, you know the cone ones. And then I do remember the day getting a set of Cadillacs, those like amber colour wheels, and then first riding that and it was like, oh, it was so smooth and grippy, you know, and that was just like next level getting those wheels, but that was still a cone wheel. So that would have, you know, probably 76, 77, maybe 75.
Speaker 3:When urethane hits late 74, really in Australia mainstream by 75 is urethane's really hitting. I think from memory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then, yeah, I think I don't know, when the Aussies came in, I remember getting a pair of Aussies or something too, but I didn't even know Burwood Skate Shop existed. You know, I didn't know that. And yeah, I just went down and got a few things from the Adlon Trading, which they turned out to be Adlon Trading later, but that was just the ski shop in Castle Hill. Yeah, right, so yeah, and I'd never seen other skate. We didn't know there was even skating going on, you know, and so we were just doing our own thing. And then we actually, when we moved to Cherrybrook was probably pretty awesome because we were one of the first houses there and it was just this massive. It spread for miles and miles, square miles of just these hot mixed tar roads, just with hills and lines everywhere, not a house on it. And, yeah, we just that was amazing. So, yeah, yeah, we had a. That was pretty awesome, you know, riding hot mix, smooth tar roads and not a car in sight and not a house there. Golden times, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:What kind of student were you at high school?
Speaker 2:Top of the class woodwork and metal work.
Speaker 1:It just came to you, naturally.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, it was pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, the rest of it not so great. I wasn't really interested.
Speaker 1:So when you were making those early skateboards with your friends, copying what surface hands were and stuff like that, was there something in the back of your mind saying like this is how I'm going to make my living.
Speaker 2:No, not at all.
Speaker 1:What were you thinking then in terms? Of like your next steps out of school.
Speaker 2:Well, probably. Then, yeah, out of school. I didn't even really know, because once school left I didn't really know where to get a job and a mate of mine, because I'd been making surfboards. His dad owned a fiberglass factory. So I spent the first year out of school which was 77, at a fiberglass factory. So I mean that was good, that's held me in good stead for what I'm doing now with making molds and fiberglassing stuff. And so I did a year of that. And then after that year my girlfriend's dad said oh, do you want a carpentry apprenticeship? And I didn't even know he was in the building industry. She was telling everyone at school he was a copper, like a detective, and he looked like you know, he was like six foot four.
Speaker 2:She was telling people that I think she was just keeping the, keeping the guys at bay. You know, you know all right.
Speaker 1:So you scored yourself a hottie then, didn't you?
Speaker 2:yeah. So so I'd go around there to see her and I'd be doing bloody work on his house because he was doing some extensions and stuff and sort of for a couple of weeks there he was on, I was on a jackhammer every afternoon. Like go around the sea would be like I have to do do an hour with a jackhammer before I can, so anyway, so he offered me a job as his mate with Kellan Rigby as a carpentry apprenticeship. So yeah, I got that. How?
Speaker 1:did you like?
Speaker 2:it. Yeah, great. Yeah. Yeah, loved it. Yeah, so I did really well in that. So Kellan Rigby was an old company from back in the 20s I think it had been started. It's been going on for quite a while and apparently I was their what? The youngest leading hand. So I got a leading hand at the end of the second year apprenticeship, so that was the youngest anyone in their company had ever sort of got that. So I think I was doing all right building-wise and carpentry, yeah, interesting, it was good work with the calendar. It was light industrial so yeah, it was sort of a bit of heavy stuff but it was. Yeah, it was always good, good, interesting work stayed in it for a while, or uh, I just did my apprenticeship and then the my girlfriend's boss.
Speaker 2:I wasn't with her by then, I think by the end of my apprenticeship, but, um, I was still best mates wasn't with her by then, I think by the end of my apprenticeship, but I was still best mates with his son. Then we were surfing a lot and we turned into we're still good mates now. But he had another building company that he was CEO of, which was Fabquip Constructions and they specialised in slip form and jump form high-rise equipment. And I think he kind of poached me because at the end of my apprenticeship, me and his son we went up the Gold Coast and he was doing a bit of a side hustle there with high-rise buildings there and we did a three-month sort of crash course on being a carpenter on the on the slip forms, to know how to put them together and do the operating side of you know all carpentry on the slip forms, to know how to put them together and do the operating side of you know all carpentry on the slip forms. And then at the end of that three months he said, oh, do you want a job being a technician with me? So I said yeah, no worries.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, from then I went straight with Fabquip and so I was a field technician, yeah, yeah, so it was actually a hire company where they'd hire out the slip form and jump form equipment and someone would go with the job to show the builders how to put it together and then also how to operate it. So that was my job operating and lifting the jump form and slip form systems Interesting dude. So yeah, well then it was all high-rise stuff. So I was working between Melbourne, brisbane and Sydney doing high-rise stuff and did some work out the bush like silo work and things like that, anything that was a continual vertical, concrete sort of structure we'd do.
Speaker 1:So what got you down to the south coast originally?
Speaker 2:Well, surfing. Because the moment we got our cars we was like basically most weekends we'd piss off down here and surf and spend the weekend. You know who went down here every weekend. Yeah, for a time there, like through the 80s, the early 80s, we were here every nearly every second weekend. I know I was, I was probably here out of all my mates, but generally there'd be three, four car weekends where everyone would go down two, three people in the car and we'd all be surfing and what have you? Camping Surfing? Well, just sleeping in the back of the car, as you could back then, and just camping, putting a fire up somewhere or whatever, and yeah, just spending weekends here surfing.
Speaker 1:And just had an epiphany one day and went I'm staying. Yeah, I really liked it. Well, let me guess. Well, Did you meet a girl? No, no.
Speaker 2:No, no, I just liked it down here. I've moved down here. That was getting into snowboarding, then sort of the early 80s, so yeah, the early 80s, like you know. So I'm into board sports, I'm wanting to ride boards, surfboards, skateboards, and then I saw all those winter sticks. I thought, man surfing in the snow, you know how good is that. And so I made a couple of winter stick type boards in the 84 and then 85, and they didn't.
Speaker 1:So just to clarify for those that aren't aware, like how would you describe a winter?
Speaker 2:stick. Well, essentially a snowboard, but not like that, probably a cross between a bit of a surfboard and a snowboard at the time, with bindings.
Speaker 1:Oh, they were just straps, Traditional ski binding.
Speaker 2:No, no they were just like straps. You were virtually standing just with a bit of strap, like almost water ski type strappy things. Maybe they didn't have metal edges or anything, so they were really only for powder. You know they were designed for overseas so they were really only powder boards and they didn't work here because we had hard pack. You know you couldn't. Only on very rare occasions could you ride them.
Speaker 3:Are you just wearing?
Speaker 2:normal shoes. Oh, I think you'd probably back then the Sorrels, you know, like Schemabil Sorrels, those high sort of ones, the lifties used to always wear them, so things like that, and you'd maybe put a ski boot inner inside them. But I never rode a winter stick, I never sort of got into that. I was trying to make this board and then, yeah, I gave one to a mate, gibbo the snowboarders will know who he is and he was a guy that I used to surf with all the time and one of my best friends I've known since kindergarten. So we went to school together and everything. And then so he goes oh 85. I sent him a board down because he was working on a ski tube and he went no, it's no good, it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:But I saw this guy riding a snowboard at Threadbow and that was Jeff Sawyer and he had one of the early Burton boards that had better bindings and edges and stuff in them. So he was the only guy allowed to snowboard at Threadbow. And I go oh man, I've got to meet this guy. So I went down there and missed him that weekend He'd gone up to Sydney and then anyway, we ended up catching up at the end of the 85 season over at Gibbo's place and he brought all these boards around. I brought a couple of mine.
Speaker 1:The moment I saw these I'm like, oh, I'm not going to show anyone.
Speaker 2:So you'd already made a few snowboards, yeah, before that. Yeah, they were just, they were like winter stick copies. Basically, yeah, but you hadn't seen an actual snowboard, you're just making your own kind of version that you'd created in your head. Oh well, I'd seen the winter sticks, that's all, but I hadn't seen that.
Speaker 1:I'm not familiar with them. Like there's no edge, like is the edge similar to a surfboard?
Speaker 3:I know what they look like. Yeah, or has it got a sharp?
Speaker 1:edge. It's got a metal edge.
Speaker 2:yeah, the winter sticks had a sharp edge.
Speaker 2:No, oh, they were like fiberglass with a P-tex bottom but they didn't have metal on the edges. But it was sort of sharp but it wasn't metal edges. That was the big thing that changed, revolutionised. You know guys like Burton and Sims and Chuck Barfoot. They were making boards which were pretty good, but again, I didn't see them in the mags. I think Action Now was the only one that had a lot of that sort of crossover stuff and I didn't really sort of see that. But the moment I saw the Burton board it was the Performer, the 85 version. Geoff was actually the distributor for Burton in Australia, but he only had a couple. He had like three on him or four. So that was very early days. No one was allowed to ride them. So, yeah, he came over to give out with all these boards. We had a big meeting. It was like dude, yeah, he came over with all these boards. We had a big meeting.
Speaker 3:I was like dude, this I mean, if you know Jeff, he talks, can talk like yeah, can't stop him.
Speaker 1:I don't know, he can talk on the water or whatever.
Speaker 2:But, Guilty. So I was just going oh man, these are amazing and he's going yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going overseas next year. I've got this big tour book. We're going to Kashmir first to do a film Some mates of his were filming a film for the Indian Tourist Bureau, so he was going over there to be the snowboarder and then I'm going to the US. After that we're going to spend a month in Kashmir, then a month in Vermont and I'm going to race in the US Open, and then a month in Colorado and in Vermont and I'm going to race in the US Open, and then a month in Colorado and I'm going to race in the world titles. So it was a three-month trip. So this was like end of October I'd met him and he was going in January. I said, mate, count me, I'm going. So I said yeah, I'd love to go. And at the same time you know he's sitting there, he's got his briefcase and he pulls out all these papers and he wants to form the New South Wales Snowboarding Association. So like I've met this guy for an hour and I'm signing documents with him as what.
Speaker 2:Well, I was the….
Speaker 1:Member president, vice president.
Speaker 2:Well, you had to get a president, a secretary and a treasurer. So I was the secretary, he was the president and I was the treasurer of the New South Wales Snowboarding Association.
Speaker 2:He'd already talked to the New South Wales Ski Association and we were affiliated under that. But yeah, we just had to get these three people to form an association. So I met him like within an hour, I'm signing documents and I'm going on a world trip with him. So that was pretty awesome. So I quit my job you know, high rise, yeah and then I'm off on snowboarding.
Speaker 1:So that was the beginning of 86, then Beginning of 86. And I just want to go back a bit, like you said, like you were interested in in board sports and then and the snow, and then you're like seeing the winter sticks. So then you just were like I'm gonna make one. Like was this always a mentality?
Speaker 2:anytime that there was something you wanted to ride, you were just gonna make your own like you weren't a fan of ever buying it off anyone else well, I saw some in the in the shop, some winter sticks in the shop in Hornsby, yeah, and I think they were a little bit overpriced for me.
Speaker 1:So was it an economical thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, maybe, I don't know. I always thought you could make something, but just tweak it up a bit.
Speaker 1:Just like I'm not paying for that, I'll just make it myself. Sort of mentality.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Was it a bit of figuring out how things work as well, trying to? Yeah, yeah, because you know, when you're making a surfboard, you, as you're shaping it, you're imagining the water going through it and you know how it all works and you know it's a form, function thing. You know and skateboards have evolved like that too that every little tweak and curve on the board is a there for a function and they, they come together as a form. You know surfboards like that, like a foil and fin, they all do something. So, yeah, it's all just getting in your head when you're making something how it's going to work and where your feet are going to be and the pressure points of stuff and and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so fast forward. Let's fast forward to now. How would you compare the manufacturing of a skateboard to that of a snowboard? Is the process much easier and less refined? To make a skateboard yeah, you think it's easier or harder?
Speaker 2:oh, it's heaps easier than a snowboard easier than a surfboard oh yeah, probably, yeah, okay, yeah, I mean you just gotta press some wood together. You get seven bits of wood and put some glue on them and then stick them in the press because it seems like I've been looking at some of your boards.
Speaker 1:Steve tandy's been showing me some of the later incarnations of omni and my memories of them back in the day. That I'll be straight like some were great and my friend cameron guzzeff used to ride for him and I'd see him all the time and then some would be like it's not that great. The wood feels like it's not as poppy as the american wood is. What would always say yeah, have you heard that before?
Speaker 2:oh, yeah, but now from what you're producing.
Speaker 1:It's definitely on par. So what my question is like has it taken that long for you to refine those processes to get it to the standard it's at?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there's always refinement. Yeah, yeah, Probably the biggest thing that changed back in the day was when I first started. I was using epoxy resin and it wasn't until I got the glue. I found the glue. I went to the States in mid-late 90s and we went to Taylor the factory over there, yeah, and I saw the National Casein, the brand, and that was the stiff glue that Rocco were using. So that was when I found that glue. That I think that was a big jump. Interesting Was that Taylor Dekema Is that the company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep. So we went in there think that was a big jump. Interesting, was that taylor dakima, is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. So we went in there they were making snowboard cores at the time too and saw a whole lot of stuff there. So, yeah, we went to a few factories in in that that time. But seeing that, and then the moment I got back I contacted, you know, national case scene and the other company that was just started out I think they might have been doing stuff was franklin, which they're the only ones now, franklin National Case. And when I started pressing boards about three or four years ago, I called them up and they just closed up and gone out of business. 99 years in business and they just stopped.
Speaker 3:No way.
Speaker 2:So then it was like all right, well, I'm going to have to go with Franklin and that's's what I'm using now and that's what everyone uses the Moldy Bond Skate, yeah. So I think that was the big turning point yeah, the glue, it's really important. Yeah, so that gives it a crisper, sharpier pop, whereas the epoxy it lasted longer, but it didn't it lost. Yeah, it probably got, like you said, a bit soggy, even though it still held up.
Speaker 3:It didn't have that crisp pop, because that's what Rocco called it, the oh it's just gone out of your head the stiff glue, the stiff glue, yeah so we called it the stiff glue.
Speaker 2:So that's what gave the boards that stiff pop, wow. So, yeah, I think that was the biggest thing for me was finding that glue and using that. Yeah, there was other glues around and I tried a lot of Australian-made. Basically, it's a cross-link PVA and they just, you know, we pressed a whole lot of boards with all this different stuff and nowhere near as good as this stuff it's just levels above any other normal PVA. So, unfortunately, you know, there's PVA manufacturers here in Australia but they don't come anywhere near close to this glue here.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Did you know that, Jim.
Speaker 3:No, I mean Glue was a thing. I mean I knew it was a thing in manufacturing skateboards, but I, yeah, I mean not the thing. I wouldn't have thought it was the thing yeah, I probably hadn't thought about it that in depth. Yeah, it's only two things, wouldn't?
Speaker 2:the wooden wood and the glue. You know you got to use the right wood, which I always have I've been using.
Speaker 3:You know it's been rock maple from the, from the great lakes area and um, and the glue, yeah did you ever experiment like in the early days when you were first manufacturing skateboards and manufacturing like a lot of them as well, when you really got going did you ever experiment with different types of wood that weren't necessarily being used by the rest of the industry?
Speaker 2:Not really I did. When I first started out I didn't even know Really I did. When I first started out I didn't even know. I really wasn't up with all the US with what was skateboards were being made out of and I used some other wood that I got for my snowboards and I was pressing them but I think that was birch or something and yeah, it wasn't any good. I didn't make that many. It was just like, oh, this is not happening.
Speaker 2:You know, it wasn't really until I met Steve Sargent Ted that you know things got on track there. So you know, I'd been making snowboards down in the shed here in Ulladulla after the 86 ski season. That's when I moved down here in the shed and then, yeah, a mate of mine, a mutual friend, knew Steve and he goes oh, I know a mate that skateboards, you know, go and talk to him and see about that. So I think I'd closed the factory up because I just wasn't making any money. I'd just got a bit of money from a back injury from that year. So I was able to put on the snowboard event at the time in Guthager in 86. That was the first snowboard race ever held. And then after that, the end of the season I moved down here in Ulladulla and I'm going to make snowboards, so I ploughed all this money from my back injury into making snowboards and it lasted about nine months and I had no more money left and were they selling?
Speaker 2:Well, I'd given a lot away to you know, I had team riders and I sold some. Yeah, yeah, but not, it wasn't enough, it wasn't self-sustaining, trying to like, build the brand. So, yeah, yeah, and, like you know, back in that day, snowboarding was changing every day. Every time you turn around and look, there was new construction, new, and every day, every time you turn around and look, there was new construction, new shapes, and it was just like out of control. You just could not keep up with what was going on there. And so, yeah, I just had to move back to Mum's place in Sydney and go back onto the high-rise construction and it was probably easier for me then to start making skateboards because I thought, all right, well, they're cheap. I can't, you know, because I was making skateboards in this other factory, but it was. You know, the factory had skateboards, I was making snowboards, I also had surfboards there. I was set up making surfboards but, yeah, snowboards I really wanted to sort of do, but it just got out of hand with the pricing and things changing every day, I just couldn't keep up with it. And skateboards I thought, oh, I can just settle on that and just, you know, that's cheap, let's just get this sorted.
Speaker 2:And then you know I'd met Ted Steve Sargent, and then he was the one that said this is how you do. It Got to get the US Maple and I think he was talking about using epoxy, but I was also using epoxy in the snowboards anyway, so I had that sort of glue sitting around. He showed me how to make the concave and what to do at the time, and then he knew all the skaters so he became a team manager. So he honestly, if it wasn't for Ted, that wouldn't have happened. I didn't know anyone in the industry. I didn't know anything really about it because I was just so, what year?
Speaker 1:was that that you went into a bit of production of skateboards?
Speaker 2:Well, that was early 86.
Speaker 1:That was still in 86.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, 87. End of 86, 87.
Speaker 1:So 86 was the snowboard endeavor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, okay, and the name Omni. You already had the name omni to go with the snowboards before well, it was omni surfboards.
Speaker 2:I think I registered the name in 1978 as omni surfboards. Australia was my first business name and that was in 1978 and that was from omni, from the science fiction magazine.
Speaker 3:Is that where you got the name from? Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, it was a pretty heavy smoking session. We were some mates at a tech, a carpentry, doing our tech course and we were all sitting around at my place. We had a big, massive homework assignment to do and, of course, one of your mates went off and bought a bloody Buddha stick.
Speaker 3:We were all sitting around the table smoking, doing our homework.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, the topic of discussion got to oh, what are you going to call your surfboards? And people were throwing names up here and there. And one of my mates looked down at the pile of magazines in the corner there and that Omni science fiction magazine was on the top of it. And he goes oh, what about Omni? I went, oh yeah, that sounds pretty cool, but you know it's evolved from there, because I like Omni that it means all things.
Speaker 2:so you know, like omnipresent yeah, but like, if something's omni it's, it's usually multiple, so the idea of omni boards is all sorts of boards, so all boards.
Speaker 1:That that's, in a way, what was it in the back of your mind that, hey, I'm gonna be a manufacturer of all boards at the time, like not just skateboards? I might go back to surfboards, or I might keep doing some snowboards here and there at the time I I'm not sure, I mean I was really surfboards, you know.
Speaker 2:Just owned. Skateboarding was something that I had a well, quite possibly. If you ask anyone, it was probably one of the better Buddha sticks we've ever had.
Speaker 3:It's funny that that omni-connection is there.
Speaker 2:I don't really want to promote that sort of shit. No, you're not Me either it was the mid-70s and we were surfers and yeah anyway, it was pretty synonymous with that culture and era, though right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but Omni, it's funny that you got the name from a science fiction magazine, because Tim Dorr, who was also one of the other you know he was doing Aussie and everything like that he's a huge ufo buff, yeah, as well. And then the guy that started reflex skateboards in australia as well, that guy.
Speaker 3:He also started a company called ufo skateboard so there seems to be this crazy science fiction link between all of like these early manufacturers, aside from, I mean, darren burford up in queensland. He, I don't know, he might be into ufos too. I've never met him personally, I don, I don't think so, but I was always spun out by that. I was like wait, omni, yeah, tim Doors into UFOs, yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe Getting sidetracked.
Speaker 3:I apologize.
Speaker 1:Infiltrating the cultures, the aliens. I love it. Well, I mean, it does take a level of progressive thinking, I think, to break down the barriers and experiment and try new things. Would you agree? Yeah, yeah, were you considered crazy for doing this by, maybe, the mainstream? What sort of job is that? Are people criticizing you for it?
Speaker 2:No, I have had a lot of people talk to me about just what I'm doing like self employed, and all that you know, and what I'm doing people one guy in particular sort of said I don't have the balls to do that. That was when I opened a shop, um down in mount beauty, a snowboard shop, in the early 2000s, and when I was, I think, I was on the chairlift talking to him and oh yeah, I just packed up and went to Mount Beauty and opened a shop and want to get back into snowboarding and and he was just blown away because I couldn't do that. I'd. You know, it was all the unknown. You know, I think people like to stay in their safe zone and, um, yeah, I don't know how come you?
Speaker 1:weren't scared. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:How come you weren't scared.
Speaker 1:Oh, I really don't know.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'm an idiot. It's just like I just want to do what I want to do. It might go back to like when I was in primary school just early high school, I was in a play called Do your Own Thing and maybe that resonated with me. That it's like, yeah, do your own thing, everyone you know, whatever it is just do it.
Speaker 1:What about when times are tough financially?
Speaker 2:No, you've just got to hack it out. I suppose I really don't know.
Speaker 1:You didn't get stressed Worried.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just get through it, I suppose.
Speaker 1:For you, was it always the fallback of a trade as well, knowing that you could maybe get a little bit of carpentry work here and there?
Speaker 2:Possibly, but yeah, I don't want to go back on the tools. No, you know, I know enough carpenters and people around here that I mean, I'm probably a bit old now, dude. I don't think people would want to put me on Because like today I rang you and I said I watch it.
Speaker 1:I made a casual statement I watch your schedule, like, and you laughed You're like schedule, I just do stuff. Do you feel like? When you're in this space and for those that are listening, we're sitting in Kerry's awesome warehouse surrounded by his presses and wood veneers and color dyes and what else.
Speaker 3:It's like a skateboarder's dream really. I can see a stack of like Omni boards like that are already printed. I can see like his presses and his concaves behind him. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, screens, like you know, specific for skateboarding, curved screens. Like you know, it's been quite for Jim and I. I know we're just kind of like overwhelmed with what goes into it. He's overwhelmed with what goes into it. He's been pouring his own wheels about two meters behind you. Yeah, making wheels, I mean, I mean, does it when you're in?
Speaker 2:this space by yourself. Doing it does it feel like work? I think, is the question. I want to get to oh, yes and no, um, there's probably two sides of what I do. And you know, obviously you get orders in and you have to.
Speaker 2:I'm a modern-day slave, if you want to put it that way. I owe money, don't we all? Well, that's just it. I'm a modern-day slave. I've got to keep working to pay the bills.
Speaker 2:So you know, when you get orders in, you've got to do shit. You've got a pile of 50 boards that you have to sand. Well, that can be a bit mind-numbing, and doing those sort of processes can be a bit mind-numbing. But when people talk to me about, oh, I want to do a new shape or I want to play around with this or that, you know I'll sand some boards for half an hour and go, all right, I'm over that. I want to go over here and start marking out a board and doing a new shape, and you know that that I really like um, so, yeah, doing, doing new products, um, and new shapes and playing around with things like that. That's what I really like developing.
Speaker 2:So if I did have the factory running, good that that you'd have people doing the menial day-to-day stuff. You know that's what I'd be doing as you're at the spearhead looking at directions and playing around with with things. And you know I like playing around with new materials and and seeing how how things go and and testing and yeah, just all that sort of product development sort of stuff I like. So that's what I really like about it. But you know you've got the day-to-day grind. You have to sooner or later put that stuff down and get back to that pile and spend the next two hours sanding or whatever it takes. So yeah, there's.
Speaker 1:You know there's good and bad days good and bad interesting when, after you know, sarge started giving you the insights into what really needs to happen for a good skateboard. You know canadian rock, maple and all that stuff. You know when did? When did production start to really kick off and um brands started to come to you to be their, their board manufacturer?
Speaker 2:well, that was 87 when we started with sarge and you know we were doing a lot of stuff. It was it was omni, you, I was making Omni boards. I was starting to get some shop sales and so I was still working during the day and then coming home at night and in the weekends pressing boards and cutting boards out. That's actually when I met Kerry Fisher. He lived around the corner, amazing, and he obviously sniffed out the rock maple or something and him and his mates were coming over and so they'd be sitting out the front waiting for me to come home from work because I had some kicker ramps and some rails and whatever there that they'd be pulling out and they'd be skating on the street and doing that while I was in making boards or whatever In Cherubook, cherubook, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So he was like a little grom. I really don't know, maybe 13, 14, something like that, 15, I think. So, yeah, him and his mates were sitting there, I remember driving in and they're all on the curb waiting for me to come home and open the roller door up and pull out the jump ramps.
Speaker 1:So the shops were stocking the Omni brand of yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was going pretty good and I really wanted to get out of the building industry. And there was a point where, near the end of the 80s, that I thought, yep, this is going good, I'm getting enough sales now to sort of carry on. And that's when I said I had a girlfriend at the time who's the mother of my kids now. I said I'm moving down to Isle of Dole, I want to go down there. That was 1990. And I said I'm going down, basically, you're coming. So she's going, yeah, yeah, we're coming down. So we got a place and yeah, so things were going all right.
Speaker 2:You know, I was selling boards and then obviously we all know what happened, sort of in 91 or whatever. So she was pregnant with my first son. And then next thing, oh, the phone's not really ringing, I better stop pressing. The pile of boards were starting to pile up and I'm going, oh, what's going on here? And yeah, it just stopped, like almost within a week. And I'm going, oh, what's going on here? And yeah, it just stopped like almost within a week. I just thought, jeez, what's going on? And it just, yeah, dead stopped. So you know, that was when the big shit fight hit.
Speaker 2:That the industry went to whatever. Yeah, and yeah, there were some pretty hard times. I had to go on the dole sell my car and yeah, they were some pretty hard times. I had to go on the dole sell my car. I think I got a little bit of slip form work here and there for some other people that were doing some stuff. I went to New Guinea and I went down to Jindabyne and did a job there and, yeah, up up in New Guinea we did some work up there in the gold mine, the Okchedi gold mine, but yeah, it was pretty slim pickings there.
Speaker 2:So basically, I was on the dole for a couple of years and then everything started to change. You know, the double kicks were coming in and things were moving. They changed the wheelbase pattern and so I was still trying to keep up with things. I think I was probably still making, yeah, I was still making boards, but it was nothing like what was happening then and then, yeah, so that was a bit of a new, things were happening and I suppose, yeah, I was making some boards. And then I got some. One neighbour complained about the noise and the council came around and said, no, you can't be doing this here, the noise of manufacturing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I was just working from a. You know, we were just in a rental place down in Brill lake, just in you know a little cottage sort of thing with a little little garage out out the front, and I was just pulling out my machine there and cutting out and, yeah, one of the neighbors complained and and I'd actually was lucky that I bought a little block of land with that, that back injury money I had. I sold it and that gave me a bit of cash to then move into a factory. I could rent a small unit. I bought a little bit more machinery, bought some more wood and that really kicked off. I had a mate that was coming around. He actually started working for me and yeah, we were starting to really get busy. That was probably 92, 93.
Speaker 1:And that's when I put on cam and so cam guzzeff was the first ever omni team rider oh no, we.
Speaker 2:so we had the 80s guys like you know ted and mitch, newell, yeah, and um, matt hoffman, uh got, yeah. Dann Vann was there for a while. Wow, biff was sort of never on the team, but he was always riding so he was always getting flow. Yeah, who else was there?
Speaker 3:I think it was mostly those guys, was Macca getting boards in the late 80s before he went to the US or anything? Not until he got back from the US.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think I met Macca then. It wasn't until quite then. So I hooked up with, like, gary Valentine. He was like the snake pit, so I started to sell boards in the snake pit. Jason Ellis oh well, the big breakthrough was probably when we got Jason Ellis and Jake Brown in the same day. Wow. So that was at the big day out. I think it was the one where Nirvana played.
Speaker 3:Now I've got all this mixed up, that's 92. Yeah, 92. 92. So yeah, I remember we went there.
Speaker 2:the whole day. There was a coke ramp there and Ted was there and he put a word into Jason and Jake's ear and at the end of the day, so we picked up Jason Ellis and Jake Brown that day. Yeah, and at the end of the day, so we'd picked up Jason Ellis and Jake Brown that day yeah.
Speaker 1:Sorry, some pretty heavy background noise, that's all. I'm just conscious of it. Tracks are going by.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, I think we had Gary Valentine.
Speaker 1:So how did that come about? Like Jake and jason ellis on the same day? Was it? Someone spoke to him at the big day out ted just on the side of the vert ramp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ted pulled him aside and hit him up and they were just I think they had scott spring at the time. He was riding one of our boards at the time. Yeah, wow, he was. So he was. Yeah, scott spring was there as one of the omni team riders. Um, I hope I'm not forgetting people.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to think of early ads. I can think of that. I can think of really early Mitch Newell. I can think of Mitch Newell ad. I can think of what was the first ad. Can I ask you that? Can we go back for a second, aside from the team?
Speaker 2:What was the first ad? I can remember one in Trax.
Speaker 3:That was Ted Black and white one in.
Speaker 2:Trax, it was just a logo. I did a couple of snowboard ones in some snowboard magazines. They were just basically photocopy stuff. Yeah, and were you doing? The graphic designer layout for those as well.
Speaker 2:Probably. Yeah, oh, I just was sending them photos and going here, do whatever you do, guys, you know, just put this photo in and here's my logo, and that was about all. I was really letting them do whatever layout that they thought. Probably one of the earliest ones was ted doing a front side air, I think at mona vale or something, and yeah, that was a you know, that was a good good ad color photo yeah I think it might have been a photo from sin he uh not sin um oh skin oh, yep, yep, skin, yeah, yeah yeah, so he, yeah, he, he took.
Speaker 2:he's got a big blow-up picture of that on his wall, so that might have been that first photo of Steve sort of decent one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, was that in Skating Life, that one?
Speaker 2:Oh, can't remember, Probably.
Speaker 3:I know there was half-page ads like kind of half-page ads in the first slams, in some of the early slams, yeah, yeah that was about a looking forward every second or third ad or something. They were great though Magazine or something they were cool.
Speaker 2:Oh, the ads were great. Like you know, it was a pity that that sort of thing you can't do that anymore because you know the sales would boom and I'd be getting shops ringing me up. You know wanting stuff. When we got a website going, I remember after one ad where we put the website in, I got a call from the website owner up in Nowra and he goes what are you guys doing? You nearly crashed me site. He's going. You were 42% of our traffic.
Speaker 1:So they were the provider? Yeah, they were the host.
Speaker 2:They were the host, yeah, the website host, and he was freaking me nearly and that was just when an ad came out after Slam.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So yeah, 42% of our traffic. You know he crashed us. What's going?
Speaker 1:on. Is it safe to say like to date? Would that be the busiest era for Omni?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was yeah around that.
Speaker 2:Like 92 to 95?. Yeah, we were sort of yep yep, things were going pretty well then.
Speaker 1:Who was the first brand or label that wanted you to make their boards?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's Amnesia. It was definitely Amnesia, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, that's cool For some reason. I thought it might have been.
Speaker 2:Criminal Skateboards. Oh, that was later, but no, I remember Chris calling me up and yeah, he had a. Well, there was like a dick.
Speaker 3:Top deck logo print it's actually still on the board. I got here somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, sorry do you have that board? Oh, I think it's gone now, but it was. It was on a board that I was using, we were using as a sanding board. We had it on a swivel thing and we put the board and it was. It had the print on the bottom of the board there. But yeah, it was, that was him. But yeah, no he. He was the first guy that we started making boards for.
Speaker 1:Let's run off some labels, names that you've printed boards for, come on.
Speaker 3:Time criminal.
Speaker 2:Well yeah, criminal, there's just so many. I honestly can't.
Speaker 3:Control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did some for Adam there no later, Because Adam was one of the team writers. Maybe I should ask you.
Speaker 1:Jim.
Speaker 3:I was just thinking time. Amnesia, criminal control Well, bent was kind of through you, though.
Speaker 2:That was your own in-house company. Yeah, oh, look there's honestly Grace. Yeah, andrew Curry, yeah, andrew. Yeah, that, yeah, oh, look there's honestly Grace. Yeah, andrew Curry, yeah, andrew yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good one. I didn't even think about that, oh Dwarf.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, dwarf Dwarf. Who was that?
Speaker 3:That's from Northern Beaches.
Speaker 2:Pete.
Speaker 3:Daly and all those guys yeah.
Speaker 2:You know we did a lot of stuff, like I did stuff for Sony and like a lot of music labels we did, you know, road Against the Machine ones, or promo boards yeah, just promo boards. So we did a lot of that sort of stuff as well. I think we did some for Koala there for a while.
Speaker 3:So you were manufacturing boards for other people, like for distributors. So if it was Koala, they were getting you to make boards for them, even yeah, I wasn't.
Speaker 2:I don't think it was exactly Thug he was doing. Oh, thug. Yeah, that was Andy McKenzie's zine and he made some boards.
Speaker 3:I rode one. I had a Thug that said support your zine on the bottom of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I mean a lot of these guys I made some boards for and then they ended up going somewhere else. I don't know if it was the know, and even now, so many people you guys wouldn't believe how many brands have gone through around. What do you mean? Just kids that start up labels that get 20 boards and you never hear them again. You know they just get their mates together and get some boards and it'd be 200 or 300 brands I would have made boards for. No way. Like, if you look in my customer artwork list at the moment, there'd probably be 50 or 60 on there and I only just kicked that off again about two, three years ago yeah, before that. Because, yeah, a lot of people you just don't hear from them again.
Speaker 2:They do one-off stuff or a lot of art people. You know they've got art and they want their boards done for art. I do stuff for the National Gallery of Victoria. A lot of their boards, you know artists. I'm doing a run now for them, so they've been pretty good. Wow, I mean a lot of people don't want to say you know who they're making their boards from. That's another thing too. So I never really say who I'm doing stuff for, okay, because I mean all those guys. They're past and gone.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like a trade secret thing, I suppose, if it's current.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean some people are happy to go, yeah, omni are making them, and other people. They want their brand to stand out. So they don't say and that's industry-wide. A lot of people don't want to say where their boards are made, from where they're made. But I just can't compete, price-wise really, with what's coming in from China or America.
Speaker 1:That was actually one of my questions. Has it always been like that, or has it just become much more difficult in recent times, competing with the price point?
Speaker 2:It was probably always difficult. But I think in the early days no one really knew where to go. You know, no one was making boards in China like in the 90s. You know there's probably one or there was a small handful of factories that didn't know what they were doing and obviously Chinese made boards back then were pretty bad. And then, you know, you had a lot. You had some factories in the states and um, but people probably didn't know or have access to that sort of stuff there, so that's why they came to me. You know, I'm making boards here in australia and I I think too. You know you got a district. You got to ship them overseas from overseas and it costs a them overseas from overseas and it costs a lot. Even though it might sound cheap, it costs a lot to import and so my prices weren't so bad by the time they paid for all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:That's right yeah, but you know I was always on the back foot with pricing, really, you know, with labour and all the other stuff you've got to do to import, all the parts and all the other stuff you've got to do to import all the parts.
Speaker 1:Random question how would you feel about me calling you a craftsman? Are you comfortable with that?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I suppose yeah. So Like I look at it as a craft, I try to do my best, and you know I don't yeah, I'm not into just smashing shit out. I really want to make sure I do a good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, because, like, as someone who's ridden skateboards for many years and just you know, sometimes just not respecting the board and just burning through it, sometimes snapping it, focusing it, you know, um, and then being in this space like I mean, I've never been in a manufacturing space. I guess most skaters haven't. And the thing that's just hit me is just like I can now see the craftsmanship. And when you said to us today, like sometimes I've got to make things so I can make things, you know, like a curved screen and the frame for that, or, you know, the plastic covering for a certain mold and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of jigs and things that you have to make to make something else or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why I want to see if you can I know this is a tricky question to ask, but for those that don't know, tell us what it takes to produce a skateboard from the very start to the finish. Can you break the process down?
Speaker 2:Most people have never heard.
Speaker 1:Step by step, even when you're talking about, like, dyeing the veneers today.
Speaker 3:Even just yeah, just a simplified version because a lot of people until I read that interview of yours in that early slam in 1994, I just really hadn't given it a lot of thought and that stuck with me. I mean what it's now, 30 years later, and that stuck with me.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, all right. Well, me, wow, okay, um, all right. Well, I guess you've got to start with the us maple, the rock maple. It's only grown in the great lakes area of the us and canada. So that's one thing that you know. That's for weight ratio and strength and that that's the only really timber to use. Um, you know, people might play around with all sorts of fibers and things, but basically you still can't play the seven ply board. That's been around since the 70s.
Speaker 1:Get the timber.
Speaker 2:So you get the timber. There's mills over there around the Great Lakes area that supply it. You've got to get it cut up to the face sheets. That's a better grade quality, no knots or anything in it. Then you've got cores and then cross-ply, so that's imported from the Great Lakes. So that goes on a truck and then goes to LA and then shipped by water. I get the glue from a factory in LA so that's also shipped over from LA.
Speaker 2:So once you've got the veneer here it's raw and I get the face sheets unsanded. You can buy them from the mills, sanded face sheets and coloured dye. But yeah, like I said, the amount you've got to get for the colours is I prefer to have more control here to dye them. So I've made a dye tank there. So that's pretty much. The first thing is you dye your veneer, put that in a tank and vacuum it and then pressurise it with a dye, water-based dye, dry them out and then smash the face sheets through a sander to sand the faces of them so they're nice and smooth.
Speaker 2:Then put them in the press. So you've got to run them through a glue spreader which puts the correct amount of glue on each time so that you know. That's the thing about being like the same all the time. You know everything has to get down to a process and do everything the same so that you know where you are and how much you're putting on. So I had to make a glue spreader. And the other thing is the glue dries very fast so you can't be mucking around with it. You've got to smash it through the glue spreader, stack it up and throw it in the press as quickly as possible. So that can be a flaw, that if you take too long to glue your board up, it'll be semi-dry by the time you start to clamp it and it won't dry properly. So putting the glue through, putting it in the press, the big guys can leave it in for an hour, two hours Sometimes. If I'm not busy I'll leave them overnight, but you can.
Speaker 1:In the press. Yeah, does that mean they're going to be better?
Speaker 2:Some people say, yes, maybe, but you know BBS, they're one of the best factories in the world. They're in for an hour, okay, and they pull them out, and then you've got to leave it cured for about three or four days at minimum. Then from there, so the blanks they're a square blank they come out, they've got pins in them where your centre lines are and that lines up with. Then it goes to the drill jig. It's a four hole drill jig. So you line it up with the pin holes from the blank, from the moulds, drill the holes and that basically sets the board then to the center line of the blank and the concave and then your cutting template will log into that. With the pins, pin holes where your truck holes are, vacuum it down, cut the board out with a router.
Speaker 2:There's a number of ways you can do it. Some of the bigger guys have got CNC machines. They put in and I'm still cutting it out on a hand router which, to be honest, I could probably do two in the time of CNC machine could cut them out. But obviously you don't. You know it's not the wear and tear on your hands, you know my hands.
Speaker 2:So once the cart, then you round it off on a little edge edge rounder like a little route a bit, then sand it on a drum, sand of the edges. So I only only sand the edges. You shouldn't really have to touch the faces, because once you've sanded the face you shouldn't really touch it. It should be good. Then we're up to sand the edges, then give it a bit of a buff on the slapper wheel and then into the spray booth where you spray a sanding sealer on it, let that dry overnight and then hit it back on the buffer wheel to get it smooth again and then hit it with a gloss coat and then from there you might screw and print it or put a heat transfer on it and then shrink, wrap it and that's about it. Sell it, ship it Yep, ship it. Pack the boxes, wrap it up.
Speaker 1:Send the invoice.
Speaker 2:Do the bloody labels?
Speaker 1:Give them a 90-day invoice.
Speaker 2:No, don't have to answer that question. Well, no, I'm fine with it. There's money up front. Is that how you?
Speaker 1:work now though, because I mean I know cash flow. I've been burnt so many times, because I know cash flow is a thing, right, you know you can't make stuff if you don't have money to buy stuff.
Speaker 2:No, and then you sell stuff and you've got to wait for the money to come in. It's hard. I mean, you know a lot of. You know most people are reputable and I'll say they're all good, they've been good, but you know I've been burnt. You know I sent 100 boards to some guy and I never heard from him ever again. Ouch, after all that work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, after all that and now we've known how to work it just happens yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, like I said, I've probably 300, 400 brands that I've done stuff for people and you know most of them are just kids from out of the blue. Can you make me some boards? Yeah, mate, this is how much it's going to cost. When, when you've paid me, I'll start, because you know you're making especially when you're making stuff special for people that they want this, that and the other, and a special shape, or, and put this special graphic on it. It's like what am I going to do with it if you don't pay me?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know it's not so bad if you're selling the shops and selling your brand. If the shops don't pay. Well, it's either bad luck or you know. Can you send me stuff back and I'll. I'll sell it to someone else, but if you're making something special for someone, what are you going to do with it if you get stuck with it? Yeah, so yeah. Unfortunately, after many years of being burnt, it it's just down to mate. This is how much it's going to cost. You pay me the money and I'll get cranking on it.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of people maybe haven't put in the thought to where their skateboard has actually come from. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I don't think a lot of people realize the amount of craft that goes into it. And maybe some of those people I mean this is right anyway. I mean you pay for. You know if you've asked for something and you've ordered something, you should pay for it. You know, but I don't think people understand the amount of effort that's gone into making them and so therefore, if they're not paying you for it, they might just think a machine's spitting them out. You know what I mean. Like I know that sounds ridiculous, no, they do, but people just think they're coming out of it. You know that someone's insert some wood into like this big skateboard making machine that looks like something from a looney tunes cartoon and then out the other end spits out. I mean, is that what's happening?
Speaker 1:in china though no no, no, no, there's still people. I went to a wheel.
Speaker 3:I went to a wheel manufacturing plant when I was working for a wheel company in china almost 10 years ago and there was people sitting there running the the print like the print pad onto the wheels. Those people like putting them on a lathe to like to cut the air tool them down and and it was amazing, it was actually a really fantastic um like factory. All the people that were working in there were like kind of like my age at the time, all just wearing like punk band shirts and stuff. It was not the stereotype of like my age at the time all just wearing like punk band shirts and stuff. It was not the stereotype of like what people assume would be in like a big factory environment at all. These were hands-on manufacturing and this was a big manufacturer too, not you know.
Speaker 2:No, it is, it is. Yeah, you know, you go into most factories and there's tons of people that touch 20 times or more I suppose, and yeah, a lot of it's by hand. You know just some of the bigger guys with the CNC machine. They've still got to put it on the CNC and press the button and it'll cut it out. But hand sanding it and gluing it up, yeah, it's very labour intensive yeah, how many skaters do you think you've sponsored over the years?
Speaker 2:I think it's around 64, something like that. It's on my website, but I've got a few young blokes now that I haven't added to the list, so it'd be up around 70. And then, yeah, a lot of guys that just get flow and have had a few boards here and there and oh, this guy's pretty hot, you know. Or you know, some kids are just they've got talent coming out of them but you know, their parents might be poor. So there's a lot of kids like that that I've given stuff to that, you know, just need a bit of a. Oh, this guy just needs a new board. You know he's riding something in trash and look how good he is.
Speaker 2:What's your main motivation, though.
Speaker 1:Is it to build your business, or is it to just support the culture?
Speaker 2:I'd put both.
Speaker 1:I mean you can't be giving too much stuff away.
Speaker 2:It depends on how well maybe business is going, if you can afford it or not, I suppose has it really.
Speaker 1:Do you think it's helped? Yes, as you reflect.
Speaker 2:I think so, yeah, yeah, you know like I do like being able to help people and give people a product. That's what I really like about an end product is watching someone write it. You know whatever I'm doing there's. You know, you've thought about it from the very start to carve the mould, to make the concave to. You know everything, you think about each aspect of the board and how it all goes together. And then finally seeing someone writing it and it's like a real product. It's not a toy, you know, it's like high-end, performing equipment. So that's what I like.
Speaker 2:To see people riding stuff. And that was the other thing with designing skate parks is, you know, when you get the park in your head and then you finally build it and see people skate it and see them all taking lines that you sort of were imagining in your head when you're sort of trying to design it. So it's all about, yeah, just seeing someone excel on something that you've conceived of and you've taken from your mind to, you know, to a finished product, something real and tangible. So that's what I like, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think the writers give you like not you, but I mean companies in general like it's not just about also them helping promote the company, but it's also skateboarding is such an insular industry that it also gives, like the company, legitimacy as well.
Speaker 3:So if you just were manufacturing skateboards, even if you did skateboard yourself, if they were kind of just coming out of nowhere without somebody kind of endorsing them in some way, and it's almost like it's not even about people purchasing them, it's it's also about it brings you up another level in people's eyes, almost as well, you know, as far as that, as far as the culture goes, I suppose yeah for yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all about. You know what the brand is. You know, like legitimizing, that's what you need to be careful who you're sponsoring and who you want to represent your brand. Who are you? You know.
Speaker 2:So I've always sort of wanted you know decent people. You know, if some guy was hot and he was an arsehole, there's no way I'm going to sponsor him. You want that good person. You want someone that's going to look out for your company, but also it's an image that you want that particular person to portray. So yeah, like you could make the best boards in the world, but it's not. Who's going to know about it and how do they relate to what it is that you're doing and your brand? So that's what you know.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean I suppose there's plenty of other brands, not skateboard brands, but you know other brands that are doing all sorts of stuff. You know watches and cars and it's all about. You know the image and what you're portraying and who are you as a company and what it is that you want to convey out there. So I mean it's a bit hard sometimes to pin down and it also gets into your artwork too what sort of graphics you're putting on it, you know, are they skull and bones, or are they little cartoony sort of kiddie stuff, or what's your scene, what's your brand?
Speaker 3:Have you ever had to kick anybody off the team?
Speaker 2:I don't think we have. No, everyone's been pretty good. I mean, you know, they're a bit of a process of who you sponsor, you sort of always vetted and and you know, looking out for who's who and it's always the word on the ground. Like we've never really sponsored anyone by a Sponsor Me tape. You know that never really is not how it happens. Although we did sponsor one guy from a Sponsor Me tape and that was Dustin Dolan man. That tape just blew over.
Speaker 1:We were sitting around looking at it. Have you still got that somewhere? I do.
Speaker 2:I do somewhere. Yeah, yeah, you know, know, they're on the train coming in from out west. Where was he from like?
Speaker 2:Katoomba yeah, they were on the train and Omni, can you sponsor me and that. And then they get, they're into town and man, he's doing all this stuff and we were just sitting there just going what? So you were blown away. Sponsor this guy. You did, yeah, so he was the only one we've ever sponsored from a sponsor me video.
Speaker 2:Wow, the rest of it's all been, you know, word of mouth and you know like usually it may be through the shops.
Speaker 2:You know I've got this young kid or other team riders that say, yep, you know this guy's good, and because they've got to fit in with other people in the team too, you know, that's probably what we haven't had. Like you know, the time guys they were all mates, they all skated together. I don't think we sort of really had that in a way, because a lot of times there, you know, I had, you know, like Seb and Trent and guys up in, yeah, up like the Goldie, and then had guys in Melbourne and guys in Sydney and other people that might have been in regional areas. So we didn't have that, like you know, like team bond thing, like you know, like Time did or whatever, that they're all just mates that skated together all the time and you know that was good for them because they would make all the videos they did and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, it was no, but still we had good guys and it was good to get the name around, sort of Australia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing. So I know like. So it seems like there's a resurgence of Omni of late in the last couple of years, correct I'm?
Speaker 2:trying yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I know, it feels like Omni went pretty quiet though around 2008, would you say?
Speaker 2:Well, 2007? It was probably earlier than that, I think. So what happened was I basically shot myself in the foot by making boards for other companies and, like, our brand fell by the wayside. And probably the biggest thing there was, I started making shop boards. So, you know, shop would be selling heaps of our boards and, oh, do you, do you do a shop board for us? And oh, yeah, but you know, make sure you keep buying omni. Oh, yeah, yeah, and you know they'd be, they'd be buying a lot of shop boards, which was good, but then they'd stop buying our boards. And really that's, I think, was the downfall that we were making boards for all these other companies and shops, that they weren't selling our boards. Oh, you want an Omnia? Omnia are making our boards now, so you buy our shop board.
Speaker 2:So you were getting sales, though that's a sale if you're making well, they were buying bulk, so they'll probably get in a little bit cheaper than what our wholesale was as well. So you know, but yeah that that that was probably really my downfall. That was, I don't mind making other brands like skate brands, boards now, but I I don't think you know doing a shop board is doing yourself any favours, because they're not going to buy your brand.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So early 2000s. That's when I moved down to Mount Beauty for a while and started making boards there. And that's when it got to a point where I was mostly making boards for other companies then and they were all going oh you know, can you do a better price? And it's like, matey, I can't beat that price, and I was starting to lose a lot of customers, and that was really. It forced me then to think all right, well, am I going to keep making boards and doing boards for other companies, or close up, because I wasn't making that many boards. So I actually then thought oh well, I've got to go to China and get boards made over there.
Speaker 1:Actual how many boards made in China?
Speaker 2:Well, I was putting other people's brands on them. By then People, they wanted a cheaper board and I was like, well, I can make it for this much, but it wasn't in the economics of their business to pay that much. So basically, yeah, I went to China and found some factories and started getting boards there, because then the boards were coming in and I was putting their graphics on them and they were going out the door and that's basically I stopped. You know, I've still got boxes of all those Omni boards up there from one of the factories in China, but they've all got Omni boards up there from one of the factories in China, but they've all got Omni from a Chinese factory. But yeah, basically I was just making boards for other people.
Speaker 1:Then so the Omni boards that were made in a Chinese factory and they're just on the rack and never to be seen again.
Speaker 2:Probably Is that. Yeah, I've had a few people say you know, I want to get 20 cheap boards or something. I think they'll probably scratch the graphics off and put something on. So I've been selling them that way, but they're just going to sit there. I'm not interested in them, you know like that. So basically, yeah, from the early 2000s 2005, I was supplying a lot of other brands with Chinese-made boards and putting their graphics on them, and I was. You know, I was doing all right, I was turning over a lot of boards, but I wasn't doing Omni. How were you feeling?
Speaker 1:I kind of had Omni on some of them, but I just how were you feeling, though, about that, because it seems like it goes against everything you kind of have.
Speaker 2:Well, it was yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know I was starting to get more and more people coming to me wanting boards made. So I was actually reasonably busy. So you know, things were ticking along all right and I was, yeah, doing tons of boards for other people. But you know so that, yeah, that was like 2005 and it wasn't until about I've been sort of trying to get back here now for about five or six years that I've been pressing boards here again now. So it was all that time that I was just making boards for other people, pulling, shrink, wrap off a box, smashing it through a heat roller and shrink, wrapping them and packing them off again. So that was all that consisted of for 10 years or more. So I got a little bit soulless there for a while and not really knowing where to go, because you know making boards here was too expensive and you were just trying to adapt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. So when?
Speaker 3:did you pull the press back out again?
Speaker 2:Well, it's probably been about five or six years now since I started. I just went stuff, this, I need to get Omni back up and running, I need to get that going. Then it was like, oh, I can't put omni on, I don't want to put them on a chinese made board, I've got to make them here again. It's like all right, and I had a whole lot of stuff sort of basically sitting in this back corner here just all gathering rust and shit, and and then that was the mission to get everything back ago. I pulled everything out, ripped everything down to pieces, cleaned them up, repainted and everything.
Speaker 2:And and yeah, it's, it's probably solid three or four years of seven days a week, 12 hour days. I mean, I've been working seven days a week now for since then at least here that getting everything back up and running. So and then, yeah, you can see I've made a whole lot. So that was the original press there. There's three beauties here, and then I've got the snowboard press and I've made the dye tanks and the drilling rigs and another sanding machine and all the screw print stuff.
Speaker 1:This is all you, no help. No, can't print stuff.
Speaker 3:This is all you, no help no, can't what you see is what you get can't, can't buy this stuff.
Speaker 1:You've got to make it. Yeah, I know. I mean you buy the raw materials obviously but even the set up then, like I mean, how long before you were actually starting to press boards again?
Speaker 2:well it was probably a good three years three years of like set up. Yeah, yeah, it's taken a while To get the presses going. Well, you know, I've sort of got some veneer from a few places and just starting to test, you know, play around with stuff. So yeah, I was making boards, but not sort of what I was doing. Now the numbers, now what about? Oh sorry, oh, what I was doing now the numbers.
Speaker 3:Now, what about it?
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, oh, I was just getting everything back up and running and testing everything. You know you don't want to sort of start smashing hundreds of things out and having something wrong. You know, and then all of a sudden you've got 100 boards there that there's something wrong with them. Wow, you know. So you do little bits at a time and just work each process out as you go.
Speaker 1:So what about three years of setup and development? Yeah, yeah, no way.
Speaker 2:Making all this equipment and that. So I mean, I was still doing boards. I think I still had some boards from China left over, so I was still sort of you know, it was tailing off that and bringing in my stuff. So I lost a lot of customers that were getting the chinese stuff, because once I told them the price of my boards it was it's almost double of what I was selling the chinese boards for, um, and they were like, oh, that doesn't work with our business model. So, um, yeah, so I've lost a lot of customers, but you were just regulars.
Speaker 1:Are you more in a mindset now of like well listen, this is what I charge and I'm more of like almost like a boutique sort of range.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the whole thing for me is I want to get my brand up and running and so for me to sell to a shop at like wholesale price, that's fine, but not at like what I call oem price, which is sort of you know, mass original equipment manufacturing price. You, you've got to be below the wholesale because people have to sell that and sell that to a shop, then that's what they and so. So my wholesale price is fine but the oemEM price is not, and that was the big turnover. You know a lot of boards. You know when you do an OEM order it's a lot, whereas you know the wholesale stuff. Shops might buy only a couple, but there's not really any shops at the moment still taking my stuff. There's really just Trilogy in Canberra at the moment that bought a few Nice. So yeah, but you know it's a whole thing. It's getting the graphics back up and running. Yeah, there's a lot to do here and you feel happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you seem happy.
Speaker 2:You feel like I don't know it's all right, I'd like a little bit more time to myself. Like I said, I haven't surfed all winter because Take photos I haven't even done that. No, no see. When I was just doing boards with the heat transfers, I had plenty of time to do that. I could go out and walk around the bush and take landscape stuff and go here or there, but now it's yeah, like I said, it's been 12-hour days, seven days a week for probably six years now here yeah, You've been pouring your own urethane too.
Speaker 3:How did you get into that Like? At what stage did you decide you were going to put your fingers in that as well? Oh well, of course I thought it would be easy.
Speaker 2:you see, I don't know. I saw a few videos of some guy pouring some stuff and I thought that doesn't look too hard. But yeah, hats off to him though, mate, it's. Yeah, it's a lot harder than you think. You know a lot of these guys that were pouring stuff.
Speaker 2:it wasn't good urethane, it was like a lower grade so you know, once you find the people that I'm getting the urethane from they. So you know, once you find the people that I'm getting the urethane from, they've actually got offices in the States and they sell. It's a skateboard urethane and they sell to some of the skate brands in America that make skateboard wheels. So it's a good formula but it's very finicky and you know, to mix and hand pour, that's the thing to hand pour high-end urethane, that's the thing to handpour high-end urethane, that's the trick. So yeah, that's been four years now since I sort of thought I'd give it a go, and probably thousands and thousands of dollars in moulds. So yeah, just getting all the basic stuff, you can see there's not much over there, but there's probably about six grand's worth of stuff there.
Speaker 1:I believe it.
Speaker 3:In your slam interview in 1994, you said that you were thinking about like casting your own trucks. Did that ever go ahead? Did you end up ever?
Speaker 2:experimenting with making your own trucks.
Speaker 3:It was something you said you were interested in.
Speaker 2:I made some sort of cast molds or sort of stuff out of plaster and played around with it. But yeah, no, that's I mean, I know how to do it sort of thing. I've seen, yeah, I've been to plenty of factories in China that make them and I've seen how to do it. But yeah, that's a whole other thing. Again, I kind of think it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But again, yeah, I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, but again, yeah, a lot of set up and you know.
Speaker 3:So if there was some kind of Catastrophe where Australia Was cut off From the rest of the world, essentially, omni, we could come to you and you could make us. We would still have Our own skateboarding industry Right here.
Speaker 2:Yes, you're our only hope.
Speaker 3:Kerry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, between everything else I'm doing. Yeah, hope, kerry, yeah, that between everything else I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty amazing. If you had your time again, would you do it?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, yeah, okay yeah, no, like I said, it hasn't. Like I said, it just kept me going. I don't have much to show for it, all you know. But yeah, you know it's been good yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't I?
Speaker 2:you know like there was a big. There was a point in 1990 and I said I was, things were going pretty well and I was thinking of coming down the coast here and I was like, no, I'm going to Ulladulla and I'm going to make skateboards. Well, right at that time I was offered a five-year contract in Singapore to build those double towers, and so, yeah, that was going to be five years in Singapore, and so that was the choice I had then to go down to Ulladulla and be a bum and make skateboards or go over for a five-year contract in a high-rise and probably do pretty well for myself money-wise. Did you ever wonder if you had went down that track? Oh, well, for a start, I wouldn't have had my kids. You know, who knows what sort of on that side of things would have happened over there. But yeah, it was a five-year contract to Singapore. Yeah, to build those twin towels I forget the name of them now.
Speaker 1:How does it feel when your son's in the factory doing his thing, making stuff? Yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's been working with me a bit Like when we started making indoor skate parks back in was it around 2010 or something he came down and sort of helped as a labourer and that. So, yeah, he's getting pretty good with his hands to build stuff. He hasn't stuck out a trade as such. He's done landscape gardening and that, but yeah, it's good to see him. Now he comes in and builds snowboards, so he's doing the Om Snowboards, he calls it, or om snow surf. So that's um, his instagram is uh, at om underscore snow surf. So he's.
Speaker 2:He goes to japan a lot. He's been snowboarding man like non-stop for well, when I was in mount beauty in 2004 uh, he was probably only about 12 then or 13 or something and I remember trying to snowboard with him and I was having trouble keeping up with him. Then he was like 12. And he's snowboarded every year since. He's done sometimes back to back, where he'll go down to Jindabyne and work there and then he'll come here and do sort of work around landscaping or whatever and then then off to japan. So he usually spends a month in japan.
Speaker 2:So, um, so yeah, he's building all the snow surf type snowboards, you know, the biggest sort of uh, early rise sort of um, yeah, snow, surf type powder boards. So he's got boards here. So yeah, it's great, you know he can come in here and make a snowboard. I don't really have to show him much anything now. He's done quite a few. So no, that's cool. Me other young bloke he's in Canberra. He works for the Salvos. He's almost a manager or something. He doesn't want to be a manager but yeah, he's having a happy life there. He's not into anything sporty at all.
Speaker 1:There's no grandkids in the mix.
Speaker 2:No, not from these guys at the moment. No, yeah, well, my oldest son, joel, he's having too much fun. I've told him that last year he was my age when I had him and he just shook his head and couldn't understand it. There's no way we're having too much fun. It costs too much. So yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, no, it's all good. Do you feel like this? I feel like Omni's? I mean, it's a legacy you know that don't you, yeah, yeah I'm.
Speaker 2:You know I'm getting on a bit now, but you know I've got to keep doing it. I've got nothing to fall back on, I've got no super. I haven't put anything away. I've got nothing going on. I've got debts that I've still got to pay the bank. So it's like, man, I've just got to make this thing happen. There's no way I'm walking away from it. You know I've. I really want to get things up and running and get the business going so that it does succeed. I mean, yeah, I've been doing it for what?
Speaker 1:35 years, I don't know has it succeeded, yet okay, I'm gonna put on the spot again like define, how do you define success?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, you know, at the moment it sort of gets down to money.
Speaker 1:What about supporting some of the greatest? I'm just still struggling. But what about supporting some of the greatest skaters in Australia of all time?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a good legacy. I'm happy with that.
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, the impact you've made culturally? I don't. I mean there's no. I know obviously you need to eat and you need a roof over your head, but there's no amount of money that you could put on that. I mean you'd be. I was saying earlier that you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody that was mine or Shannon's age that has not had either an Omniboard under their feet or a board that had essentially been made for another company by you. Yeah, everybody like I mean we all knew people that wrote for you. We've all written your boards. I mean we've all looked at your ads like I mean it's the culturally that legacy is really really impressive. And I and almost as far as how fickle skateboarding goes, it's almost unsustainable when you look at the history and turnover of skateboarding companies in australia. I mean darren burford's been making blanks up in queensland for a long time. I know he makes surfboards now not skateboards, but even that, the amount that you put out the you know the as far as like sheer volume, nobody else can come close to that.
Speaker 1:I know it's incredible With minimal help, like it's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like this one man kind of army of producing. Yeah, nobody else You've touched more people's skateboards in Australia than any other individual person In a good way. In a good way. Yeah, there was a lot of boards.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of boards made in the 80s, I'll tell you, like Burford and I think Righteous and all that.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I forget about that, gary Hambly is that his name from Righteous?
Speaker 2:I think so, yeah. Is that his name Righteous up in Queensland?
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, only a couple of years ago I was talking to the manager of Briggs Veneers and he was the guy bringing all the veneers in and he just could not believe how much veneer they were bringing in in the 80s. He was like, well, it wasn't me buying it, he was just going container load after container load. He was dumbfounded by the amount of veneer they were bringing in and, like I said, I was only just starting out then. So it was all those other guys using all that veneer. It wasn't me.
Speaker 3:Well, Burford Blank was I mean every surf shop in Newcastle, where I lived at the time, had Burford Blank. Yeah, I'm sure there was a lot of other brands Before I saw Omni's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, and I mean I think there was a place at Seven Hills that were making some of those early boards.
Speaker 3:Is that where Aussie boards would be? Aussies would be impressed, it might have been.
Speaker 2:yeah, there was that Bowmanite stuff and all that Bownite, bownite. Yeah, carboard.
Speaker 3:Aussie and Bonzo. Yeah, yeah, so there was probably them In the northern beaches.
Speaker 2:I In the northern beaches, I don't think a lot of that was rock maple. I'm not sure, because I've got a couple of the boards up there and they're just falling apart. So you know.
Speaker 2:But you know I'd say it'd be Darren and Righteous, those two guys up in Queensland I don't know what was going on down in Melbourne or whatever, but yeah, he was just shaking his head at how much veneer they were importing, container after container. He said in the 80s Amazing, so it's really dropped off. You know, and that's a sad thing, the sort of manufacturing here for that sort of stuff, you know there's probably about 10 guys that I know of that are making boards here, but you know they're very small numbers. You know they're high quality but yeah, they're very small numbers. You know they're high quality but yeah, they're very small numbers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a guy near us that makes death breath boards. Yeah, Chris, he's a lovely guy but he yeah, I mean that's a really boutique thing. He makes kind of custom boards for people and for himself to ride.
Speaker 2:He's a you know good skateboarder himself as well. Yeah, so there's that sort of stuff going on here now. But you know, like what they were saying how many boards were being made back in the day. It just was mind-boggling. So, yeah, it's really gone downhill. But like you said about me wanting to be a bit more of a boutique brand of some sort, I think people are going back to the old school of doing things like hand screen printing and you know, like you see all these boards now coming out. A lot of the big brands are doing that. They're 6, 7, 8 colours direct boards printing and they're selling for a lot of money and that sort of money is doable. You know, I think it's a long time coming, that prices of skateboards need to come up.
Speaker 3:They've been the same price since 1985.
Speaker 1:They were $120 back then and they still virtually are now Someone's tried to explain it to me numerous times and I just never understand why the price never changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it was the way the manufacturing was going, that it was going from, you know, the States and then to Mexico, and then it went to Taiwan, I think, and then China, and then there's you know, I think that people are trying to do it in India. So the manufacturing is going to sort of more and more third world countries for labour and a lot of these big companies in China. They're actually importing their logs and peeling their own veneers and you know they're still US maple.
Speaker 1:but yeah, it's labour, I think it's got to this point where they just can't go any cheaper anymore. They can't find anywhere third world enough. Well, maybe I don't know. Like it's hard to say, Is that true?
Speaker 2:Well, the glue, you know you've got the board, the maple that still comes from the Great Lakes area. It's got to come from there and that's been going up forever. For the last three years, every time I've ordered more boards, the veneer's gone up only by a little bit, but it still goes up, you know. And so these, these big factories, they're trying to find ways to, you know, make boards cheaper and cheaper, but yeah, materials are still going up. I think it's hit that point where the price has to finally go up, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you do custom one-off orders and stuff for people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm getting all my stuff still printed in China because it's good quality. It's done by one of the biggest factories over there For the heat transfers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you heat transfer them on. Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, like a one want off something to do like screen printing or something that would cost you $300 to set up burn screens and do all that to print one board. But that's not right. So, yeah, they can do a heat transfer, a digitally printed heat transfer, for pretty cheap. So that's the best way, that way.
Speaker 3:But you still do a lot of screen printing in-house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm doing more now, but you still do a lot of screen printing in-house. Yeah, I'm doing more now. So I've done those reissues with you know, kerry Trent, steve Jake and Alex Smith are the first five. So, yeah, they're all screen printed. Kerry Fisher's one was a digital heat transfer, screen printed heat transfer, but the others have been screen printed. And that's what I want to do is bring all those old graphics back and screen print them. But again, sales are just not there to do the sort of numbers at the moment, so it's hard to set up like that. But that's the direction I want to go with. Most of our graphics is just direct print it again and, yeah, just sort of bring some of that old school good stuff back. Wow, man. So I'm happy with the quality of the boards. Now, like you know, I said it's taken me five years to get the the factory equipment up to speed and that I'm happy with the quality of the board.
Speaker 2:So now, I'm working on all the graphics and side of things. Yes, so that's a whole other deal there. Graphics, yeah, like what sort of graphics do you want to put on the board? Who are you? You know, what sort of graphics are you going to put on? And it's like I'm a little bit lost there at the moment. I don't know. You know, it's easy when you've got a team.
Speaker 1:Writer and a pro board.
Speaker 2:It's like, yeah, I want this on it. It's like, okay, cool For me to think who the hell I am and what it is that I want to, what message I want to get out there, and all that sort of shit. It's like I don't know, I'm still trying to.
Speaker 1:And are you kind of trying to think what's marketable as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, I think you've got to just like what it is you're doing, but you know, there's certain things you can do that kind of can look good too.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean, at the moment I'm tossing up stuff to do like whistleblowers. Okay, I don't know if that sounds kind of weird, but you know you've got like Assange and Snowden and then you go back to people like Serpico and Silkwood Karen Silkwood Dude, I like it. Yeah. Erin Brockovich, you know they're all people Profiles, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like portrait shots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they could look boring, but I think it's the way you could do it, that the graphic would look good, but it's also, you know, sending some sort of message there that you know stand up for what's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like that. I'd write a Serpico board any day.
Speaker 2:Really, yeah, yeah, frank Serpico, yeah, I've been researching them all. I know, you know, I know what I'd write a Julian Assange one yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:And that's what I mean I'd like to make you know you could put some Davey-looking picture of him there, or you could do some really sweet art and screen print it and make it look, really make it pop. So yeah, they're things I'm tossing up. Yeah, because I'd like to be able to sort of say something or have some message, not just I don't know, just not pump stuff out for the sake of it, just weird sort of shit, you know, and disconnected stuff too. So anyway, that's just a thought I like it.
Speaker 1:So, Again, just another layer of what you do. Like then you've got the you know, the hard skills of manufacturing and then you've got to have like the creative soft skills to come up with the ideas. Like that's exhausting in itself. Like it's mentally exhausting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is Thinking about it. I'm a hands man, I like to work, I'm good to get down there and do stuff, but yeah just think that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:What about getting input off some of your writers, like Steve Tierney, for example? He's an artist, did he?
Speaker 3:change the Omni font. Did he do that font at some stage? Well, he did that, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not exactly the same as what that is, but it's very close.
Speaker 3:The one that's on your shirt?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Yep, yeah, I just. I mean, you don't like to touch up nice art, but yeah, it was just a little bit, maybe unfinished, but it was essentially 98% what you see here now yeah, and did Steve just draw that on a piece of paper and send it to you? Yeah, I've still got the yeah, there was a couple of pictures there He'd go, oh, just thinking about this and that it was just a line sketch, yeah. And I thought we all looked out and went, yeah, that looks cool, wow.
Speaker 1:So we just sort of trimmed it a little bit just just cheese it up a bit and yeah, then you're gonna pay artists for the time and energy too. That's another thing you do. Get an artist to put something together for you, and well, that's another thing.
Speaker 2:I don't have the money for it.
Speaker 3:That's why it's another thing keep it all in house, and then it's yeah, tricky man.
Speaker 2:Well, I got a young bloke. He just come in the other day and he just goes, oh, can you make me a board? And he brought this egg shaped board in. He's he's just moved back down here and he's been living in germany for the last 10 years and and he'd done a board. Some graphics uh looked a bit like maybe the welcome sort of graphics or something for a mate of his, a board company Germany, and I said, oh, that's a cool graphic. Oh, yeah, I did that. So I cut him out of board and he's going to work on some sort of graphic.
Speaker 3:Do a graphic for you as well.
Speaker 2:Write a deal, you know. So that's about the best I can do. I can't, I don't have dollars to pay people and, like I said, I've got no idea what I want. So I'm a bit hopeless. I can't get an artist in and go do this. Read my mind, please, and draw me something. Dude the whistleblower.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I like the whistleblower's idea personally, man, yeah, so do I yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd like something that can sort of send a message and, you know, try to help instill some young you know the young kids with some good ideas, and yeah, just don't lead them down. That, you know, weird, I don't know. Yeah, I like some sort of message there. You need to have something behind you, who you are and what you stand for. So anyway, yeah, that's the idea.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, yep, how are we?
Speaker 3:all feeling. How are you feeling, jimim? I'm just like it sounds really corny and it's almost embarrassing to say, but I'm still like I'm on a high because because of the paint glue or the glue, no, no, not because of the epoxy, no, because I mean, like I said earlier, like we've all ridden summer carries boards and I think that the earliest skateboarding magazines I ever had had like your ads in it then like I had magazines that had interviews with you in it and like you were kind of this um had friends that were sponsored by you at various stages and I feel like you were this kind of always in the background of, like my era of australian skateboarding culture. Yeah, like you were always. You're like the name omni omnipresent, like omni was always there, whether or not like even if it was like I mean, amnesia skateboards is from newcastle, which is where I'm from.
Speaker 3:All the first amnesia boards were omnis, like without omni, like so much of my like really formative years just don't like I don't know it sounds weird when you break it down like that, but like so important to like I don't know who I am. Even now I mean I like write for slam and like all these things in some way like without like writing those boards or like, or without you supporting those other companies that were really influential, like in australian skateboarding, like you know. You know people like Shannon and I wouldn't even be here to interview in the first place. So it's pretty, I'm pretty like excited about that. I fan out on all these. You know, when I get to meet people like you or like people in like the right magazines or whatever, as maybe basic as that might seem to some people, for me it's really important and it's really important to our culture as well. Nice.
Speaker 1:It is I agree.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I mean, I think when I spoke to you on the phone first up, I always felt like I was an outsider. I didn't really feel like I was part of this, you know. Is that why? Well, you know I felt like an outsider with surfing because I was a Westie. You know you go down to Narrabeen and you know you're a Westie and that's why I like coming down here, in a way, because I had almost a home here surfing, because I wasn't a local at a surf break Skateboarding. Well, mate, I just was still skateboarding in the 70s, in the 80s. You know I didn't know what was going on. I wasn't a skater, you know I skated, well that makes you a skater.
Speaker 2:You are a skater, then if you skated, I skated most afternoons and you know I can stand on a board, I don't look whack. You know I can push and turn and kick, turn and do things and not tray flip and 10 steps.
Speaker 2:Well, no, no, you know, like I didn't see proper skateboarding until like the mid early 80s. You know, we were still riding our boards and then some another mate of a mate came over. Oh, you know, there's a skate park at north ride. No, fucking what. You know, we were riding some stupid little bank in the school Shit, you know.
Speaker 1:There's Adrian Jones Just surfing bank.
Speaker 3:What school was it with the bank? It was just.
Speaker 2:West Pennant Hills Primary School. It was the shittiest bank because it had a curb like a square curb at the bottom. That's the one that Aaron.
Speaker 1:Brown had a photo doing the kickflip to fakie on. I knew you'd know Kickflip to fakie on.
Speaker 3:I knew you'd know you on.
Speaker 1:So I knew west pennant hills primary. Yeah, that bank was still there in the 90s. Are you kidding me, jim's? Jim's a skate historian man.
Speaker 2:We spent every fucking afternoon up there just surf skating that bank and there was a little corner where we'd do a hip and yeah, yeah and then you'd have to jump down the little thing there that that was our spot yeah, that in the in the 80s.
Speaker 1:Do you remember seeing the likes of like adrian jones Gray?
Speaker 2:Well, this is when this guy said hey, you know, there's a skate park at North Ryde. And we went fucking what? Yeah? So we went out there. We went out there probably five or six times, and so the first time we go out there it's been closed, so it had been and gone. We didn't even know about it. So we both, both, you know you go through the fence.
Speaker 2:There was an opening in the fence at the side there and we we went in there looking around and the guys there there was five guys, I remember to this day. They were all dressed in black, they had a big boom box there, yeah, and and they had big wide boards and we all had these little skinny shit things. And you know, we were little surfy sort of guys with our blonde hair and and colorful clothes, maybe because these guys, you know, they were all black. And then they were sitting in the grassed area over there with their boom box going. You know, dead candies going or whatever. Oh, those guys are punks, you know. And so then we started seeing them skate on the big half pipe there and they were getting air out of it and it was going. What the? That's the first time I'd ever seen like real skateboarding. And who was it then Do you remember? Because I went back a few times and I ended up getting some Super 8 footage of them. So I've got nine minutes of Super 8 footage of those guys skating there.
Speaker 1:Who was it?
Speaker 2:Well, after showing it to some other people later, many years later. Biff, adrian Jones, sin John Fox, matt Davis no way, have you still got it?
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got to get it digitized, it's all. It's good footage. It's clean like nice, super great footage. I've got three rolls of it, three three-minute rolls of it, dude you've got to do some kind of collab on that with. Cockroach, don't you worry, I've got a lot of shit.
Speaker 1:I'm talking to some other people that do some sort of stuff, you know what. Just give it to me and Jim, we'll look after it for you.
Speaker 2:You know I've got hours of snowboard stuff too. You know, when we went over that big trip to the states and went to cashmere and and raced in the us open and the world titles I've got three hours of super 8 footage there. I've filmed everything and it's amazing. So and then you know when we came back to australia and so, yeah, I got all the snowboard stuff. So I've got a lot of snowboard stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm talking to some guys one guy that was actually posting a lot of stuff up recently in some of the skate mags Campbell Drummond, and I'm noticing all these photos and he's got photos of North Ride and all this sort of shit. And I said, hey, mate, your name rings a bell. And I looked on the sheet I've still got the sheet the running sheet of the first Australian Open, the Omni Oz Classic, and there were 17 guys in it, 15 guys and two women, and he was one of them. He came in the comp and raced on a snowboard in the comp. So I rang him up not long ago and had a big talk to him and he did talk to me at the comp as well.
Speaker 2:He remembered he goes oh yeah, we lived next door to you back in Normanhurst and like I was two, two then, so it was neighbors with him then and um, and then then I started talking about snowboarding and I seen that I saw this yellow winter stick in the hornsby shop and he goes yeah, I bought that. What? So? Yeah, I saved up for it and I put on lay by and I bought that, so that that board that I was frothing over in the window, you know he bought it. He ended up for it and I put it on lay-by and I bought that. So that board that I was frothing over in the window, you know he bought it. He ended up selling it to a mate of mine that lives just down the road for five grand to Mick Mackey. He's a surfer.
Speaker 3:Campbell Drummond yeah, he's on the Australian Skate Archive pages. I see his photos lately. They've been brilliant.
Speaker 2:So we talked for like three hours on the phone and he does video editing and he's talking about, you know, putting all this stuff together. So you know there might be something. I haven't heard back from him yet. But yeah, we just ranted and raved. It was about that, wow. So that was the first time I saw like real skateboarding. So I didn't feel like I was part of that either. You know, I wasn't a skater, I couldn't do that shit and I'd had a back injury by then. My shoulder dislocated all the time, so interesting. And you know I was like 24, 25. I said I'm too old to learn this shit. So I just went no, I can't ride bowls and shit, it's just interesting because you're so significant as well.
Speaker 2:You're so significant to the culture, but I don't feel like I'm, you know, not being a skater that can do all that stuff. You know I was there, but I was probably a bystander.
Speaker 1:Has that been hard in developing your shapes, your boards and understanding concaves and stuff. Oh no, well, I can write a board, I know but like and like. In the early 90s I had a couple of mini ramps in my backyard, but I mean if team riders giving you feedback like.
Speaker 2:Well, that was important one with less concave.
Speaker 1:Or, yeah, you know, make the wheelbase wire longer, or what shit like that, I don't know yeah, well, it was all that was.
Speaker 2:integral to designing things is having team riders and they were test. You know they were test riders. I was testing stuff out and seeing what you didn't. They'd always have an idea of a shape or whatever, but yeah, so that was always part of it. Of having team riders is making sure that you know you're not going off in your own little world thinking, oh, everyone's going to ride this super-duper thing I've just made. But you know I could skate, I could stand on a board and you know I could ride a little mini ramp, I could do kick turns, I could do rock I can do rock to fakies and you know, like all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, just the basic stuff on a mini ramp.
Speaker 1:You weren't going to street league or anything.
Speaker 2:No, no, and I think I learned to ollie when I was about when was that? Early 90s too, I think I remember in the house, so you know that was a long time afterwards. Yeah, just practicing sort of ollies on the house. So you know that was a long time afterwards. Yeah, just practising sort of ollies on the carpet. I remember the next door. No, it was like 9 or 10 o'clock at night and I'd been doing it for like three hours. And he yells up from the next door shut up.
Speaker 2:Classic man, but anyway, yeah. So yeah, I feel like a bit of an outsider there. Yeah, Now maybe snowboarding again, but I never really felt like I was in the scene down there. That was always a bit of a rich man's sport. You know it is, but you know I like it too. And then now getting onto the new product I'm doing with the snow skates is that's another thing altogether. So we're actually doing what we did in the 80s with the snowboards trying to get it approved and getting it allowed on the resorts. That's what we've been going through in the last three years now to get the snowskates going and designing all that Interesting With Dave Kelly and Tim Blandis. He's down there at the moment.
Speaker 1:Tim Blandis. That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, tim's living with Dave at the moment, so they've been helping out and going to see the resorts and talking to them about getting them approved and all that. So cool, yeah, so that's another whole new project again. That's something to you know design in and getting the teeth around.
Speaker 1:No bindings on those bad boys eh.
Speaker 2:No, it's just a skateboard deck with a metal bracket and a little ski like a special built sort of width ski.
Speaker 1:Have you seen the ones that they like the actual snow skates with?
Speaker 2:they just slide directly on there Just the flat decks yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're made from a laminate or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they're mostly out of plastic. I mean, those things have been around for quite a while. I mean, I made some snow skates in the late 90s. That's when I started doing some snow skates.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:But no, we really don't want anything to do with those here because they're not directional, and that's what the resorts. The resorts will not let you ride those things there, and that's the thing. When we talk to resorts about snow skates, that's probably one of the first things they see or think about. It is those things. It's like no, these, you can turn and stop, and they're directional.
Speaker 1:And so that means they're more predictable and they can carve lines.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So then they're actually safer. Yeah, people can. Other riders can predict where they're going on a busy ski hill. Is that right? Is that their?
Speaker 2:mentality. It's not so much the other rider, it's just being able to control, being in control of what you're doing. You know the.
Speaker 1:That looks hard to control.
Speaker 2:No, they're intuitively like. You stand on them and they turn and work under you like you wouldn't believe. Okay.
Speaker 1:But they're still not a snow. They're not like, it's not like snowboarding. You're still cutting an edge. I can heal on a toe edge right, yeah, yep, but you're not strapped in. No, so no, that's the big difference.
Speaker 2:That's the big difference, it's just a skateboard deck a wide skateboard deck with soft boots.
Speaker 1:How do you?
Speaker 2:navigate chairless with them. Oh, you just pick them up. That's some of the issues that we're working through with them at the moment. Sometimes they're talking about putting a rubber, like a big rubber band, on the nose.
Speaker 2:You know that you just front foot sort of hooks into, but most of the time they just pick them up and then when you go you just put it down and stand on it and roll off. It's all quite easy. So you know, you just put it down and stand on it and roll off. It's all quite easy. So you know there's different lengths boards. I've seen a big long one over to a guy in Colorado. He does all that downhill skateboarding. You know downhill stuff with the sliding and all that sort of stuff. He does that in Colorado in summertime. In wintertime he does the same thing on the snow skates.
Speaker 1:He's hitting 80 miles an hour you've seen that stuff man yeah, it's really impressive it's like I just I get sweaty palms watching it I get so nervous. Yeah, so this guy does that on snow skates.
Speaker 2:And yeah right, yeah so, and, and then you go all the way down to a short snow skate that, uh, like a double ender thing, that that you can kick, flip and yeah, those guys are insane, do board slides and things like that on, and then everything in between a few different models there where they're just really cruiser, sort of just all mountain cruising. You know, you just go down the groomers and what have you? Crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's again Omnibords. It's part of the snowboard sort of thing Omni, omni. So anyway, we'll see where that sport goes, but I think it's looking good now. It's been coming and going for the last few years. I've only made a biodeck snowskate back in 2000. Yeah, and so it's been that long since. Yeah, I think they've finally been refined to that point now where they're ready to go.
Speaker 1:Have you ever been described as the Paul Schmidt of Australian skateboarding? I?
Speaker 2:don't know, shit sticks I don't know.
Speaker 1:Because, that's what Jim called you in the car.
Speaker 3:No, I think it was Steve, when we had him on the phone.
Speaker 1:Steve Tindy did.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Professor Schmidt yeah, but I don't know. It seems like you're very driven by progression, and I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's what it seems, well, that's all I like to be able to spearhead the you know that sort of stuff, yeah and um. I mean you know it's pretty hard to progress now, like I don't know where skateboarding's gonna go. As far as designs, I think they're pretty cool, you know. I mean you got that stuff like the egg stuff now.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, there's still a shape they're still coming back.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, you got the, the flight decks, I think. As far as construction, you know that sort of stuff. I don't know how much, you know that's just very expensive. A lot of people say obviously they're great, but you know they cost a fortune. So I don't really know where, what further point to go with that sort of stuff. You know the seven plies of rock maple, yeah, stood the test of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but in terms of shape. I mean at the moment, you know, the egg shape boards have become super. It's really popular right now. It's like trending almost.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep. Well, that's what I did. Only two, three days ago I made a new egg shape. Yeah, you said that. Yeah, days ago, I made a new egg shake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you said that, yeah, yeah, and there's one particular brand.
Speaker 2:Well, who's those guys, you know?
Speaker 1:yeah who's really pushing them and they're everyone's writing those ones. Yeah, how do you feel about that? No, I was fine. You think it's cool? Yeah, I like it. I like the progression there yeah I mean, is it trending? Will it stay? I don't know. It'd be interesting to yeah I'll see how it go.
Speaker 2:I think people they get used to sort of stuff sometimes and they're just happy on a double kick or you know, there's a lot of that shape sort of stuff going on where people are wanting the sort of the 80s look, but with the double kick sort of new feel concave to it.
Speaker 2:You know that's sort of big but there's still most of the board, 90% of the boards that go out are just round tail 7-7.75s oh you know, you must sell more of them than any other board right, there's 8.5s, 8.6s, 8.7s up there and I'll never sell the 8.5s, all right.
Speaker 1:Sorry, 7.5s. I was going to say 7.5s, 7.6s. You've got some 7.5s here 7.5, 7.6. You've got some 7.5s here, yeah, yeah, I've even got some 7.4s, but yeah, I see I can see Look bent to 7.75. Was that 7.625? Yeah, Bent yeah yeah, that was your brand too, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, no way.
Speaker 2:You still make bent stuff oh well, I've got all new graphics and everything's in the works there. But yeah, we'll see how it goes. Yeah, I'd like to just get Omni going first. But yeah, I mean you know that went really well. Yeah, you know we had Corbin Harris and oh wow, See this is amazing who's who? Who else? Oh, Jake Duncombe.
Speaker 3:That's right, yeah, brad Smith. Nathan, that's right, yeah, brad Smith.
Speaker 2:Nathan Fraser.
Speaker 3:Nathan Fraser.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, amazing yeah, Nathan Fraser had a choreography as well as Brad. Smith, you know they had a good graphic. It's a really good team yeah.
Speaker 1:Man, nathan Fraser man, that guy was well, he was known to be really good, but I think he was underrated as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so good, yep.
Speaker 1:Get out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if you had a few girls. It's one of the hoops, isn't?
Speaker 1:it. Yeah, like Virginia Maddock, do you remember?
Speaker 2:No, sally Affleck, have a ride for you no, no, oh, just man, I need a list in front of me. I'm forgetting all these people. I'm really sorry. Yeah, because we had two girls on the team. I'm, we'll look it up. Tiffin Batong. It's on the website omniscapecomau. Go there, look out the team writers. They're there. Nice, they're all on there. Yeah, so many people 64, 65, something like that so.
Speaker 1:I'm up about 70 now, so amazing Kerry, anyway amazing, I don't know what else to. It's been epic. Thank you for your time and energy. Not a problem, is there anything you want to end on any messages you want to send out there?
Speaker 2:no, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'll jump in and say listen, support local and get onto the Omni website, check out their range. And yeah, if you see Kerry, maybe have a chat with him, because he's got a lot of history in that head of his. He just can't remember it all and thank him too.
Speaker 2:It's hard to be put on the spot. No, but thank him. If you see him, I think. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3:Because, you know, like I said before, there's a real kind of bit of a backbone there for our culture and, yeah, we all really appreciate it. So cheers Much appreciated.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to do what I can. It's the Kerry.
Speaker 1:Pogson, everyone, pew Pew, pew, pew, pew, Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew Pew.
