What is the future of skate shops?

During Covid business surprisingly was really good for shops, but afterwards stuff was piling up cause too much was ordered and the demand went down. How is the situation at the moment?

Pauli: It’s a difficult economical situation for every business, you only read bad news. We have a very high inflation. The energy prices are going up. People are losing their jobs. Everyone is like: “I don’t know, should I spend 200, 300 bucks for a new jacket”. And the other thing is, yes, the business is changing, but I’m in the business for over 20 years in a city which was never a focus city. That makes the situation difficult enough. But we managed it and we saw that the business going up and down. Our key to success is, first, we never got crazy when business was good. We always tried to keep things tight. The other thing is, we changed the concept of the store almost every two years. I think that’s the key for skateboarding overall. It never stays the same. In one year we are all wearing baggy pants from the ’90s. Maybe next year, we’re all going to wear the skinny pants from the 00’ years. You have to be super flexible and that’s why we always try to do something new, try to think out of the box. Maybe it’s going to be years of low business. But still, something like that always keeps an opportunity. Our opportunity is to build our business more on this outdoor lifestyle movement. We have two shops in the same street, so we still can be the core shop, but on the other side of the street, we have our laboratory where we can try things. We can see people coming from one shop, buying a deck, and going to the other side of the street, buying some hiking shoes.

Do you all agree that skate shops were always changing and it’s not something new?

Maddin: There are different kinds of skate shops, but if it’s a shop like ours, with a bigger focus on the culture and scene, then it’s just natural that you have to change and develop over time, since the scene itself is changing, too. The worst thing would be to get stuck.

Mackey: There are skate shops that are retail only. Their main function is selling hardware, footwear to general consumers, be it skateboarders or just general public. The three of us, we all have stores that are culturally relevant in our scenes. We have contributed to our scenes and to the health and the lifeblood of skateboarding. We’ve naturally changed over time because we follow skateboarding, we follow what our customers want, and we build trends. The Lost Art in 1999 was very different to the Lost Art in 2024. Over 25 years, as Pauli says, every two, three years, you change. We’ve been a tiny store in a large independent mall. We’ve been a standalone store with three huge windows, a big white box filled with lots of product. And we’ve been a small, hidden away, speakeasy style buzzer above a pub store. And we’ve also been now in its current interpretation, an event space coffee shop, skate shop. So we’ve definitely adapted and changed our business model slightly, but always with the same central thought and feeling that we are here for our community.

I feel like everybody is saying for years now about shops – same as for print – that they’re are dying. But I feel like shops are more relevant than ever, but their role has changed from the retail more to the cultural aspect. How did the demands from customers and brands change over the years? And what is a core shop nowadays?

Maddin: Bonkers turns 15 this year and since we started, everyone is telling us that skate shops are dying and the market is dead. Of course, there are a few shops that maybe don’t do good business. They die, but there are also coming new shops every few years. Skate shops are really important for the culture, but there are a lot of skate shops, they don’t actually do a lot of stuff. A lot of shops are still the same than in the 90s or 00s and they carry the same brands. They used to sell skateboards and snowboards, now they’re also selling scooters. All those guys were really big before the online market was there and they still have in mind how many DC shoes they sold back then. Now they’re crying that skateboarding is dead… but they stopped developing and lost the connection. They were sitting on their throne, thinking everything will stay the same, without doing anything for the scene. Now it backfires at them and others took over their position. For us the time right now is also not the greatest, but it’s not that bad as what everyone is telling me.

So you would say the different demands of customers change shops the most or has working with brands also changed how shops are?

Maddin: It’s both. There are shop like ours. We have all the special products that you can’t buy everywhere. But we are not the shop where the kids start to skate. I remember how scared I was as a kid to go into a shop for the first time. At our shop people meet and hang out, they shittalk, that can be intimidating. So the kids go maybe to Titus to buy their first deck and we are the shop they’re coming to when they are already part of the scene. Regarding the skateboard culture thing, we are completely different than Titus for example. But you need those shops because it’s easier for a kid to go to there to buy the first board. The thing with the brands is. There are always trends. You have a new brand everybody wants to have and people recognize it, if you have this board you only get in selected shops. Then they open more accounts and the core customer, that bought the product for years, is not interested anymore and the mainstream consumer doesn’t understand the brand and in the end nobody buys it. I understand that brands want to grow, we want to grow as well with Bonkers, but it’s important to remember your roots and don’t just chase the quick buck. How many shops that have been in the longboard hype are still relevant in the scene?

Pauli: We’ve seen that a lot in the past 20, 25 years. But to also answer your question, what is a core shop today? We have a coffee corner where people can hang out. We have some spots to sit outside the shop. We try to be a meeting point for the scene. We also try to bring our customer a very mellow, relaxing shopping atmosphere, which they don’t find on big shopping miles. And we try to show them nice, exclusive, hard-to-get products with an extraordinary service. This is the brick and mortar concept. But overall, we’re more an online shop than a retail shop because our online business is about 60, 70%. So we see a ourselves like a showroom somehow where we show our best products, but our business is running in the back office at the moment. We’re also doing a contest, demos, video premieres, but that’s the things we always did. The only thing which is new for us was developing the online business, developing the social media business, and getting a totally new focus on the retail because at the beginning, retail was 100%. At the moment, you could tell also that the big major companies like Nike, they try to do their own B2C business. But at the end of the day, they recognize that the brick and mortar business for them is also crucial for the global business developing. Skateboarding can’t develop in the online and social media world. It only can develop in the real world with real people.

Maddin: We started 2010 as an online shop. Then we opened our first store, now we are in the second store. For us, it changed a lot. Of course, online is still really important for us, but a few years back it was like 80% online and 20% in-store and now, especially after Covid, people want to go to a shop, want to talk with someone. So for us it’s right now, 60% in-store and 40% online. People want to experience the shop. We have a lot of customers from all over Germany. They come to Frankfurt to skate and they visit Bonkers. They all buy some stuff because they want to visit the shop and the city. For us, it’s changed from online to in-store.

Pauli, you said that over the years, you did what a skate shop has to do, premieres, contests, all that. But we’re talking to you guys, cause besides that, you all found your own way in rethinking your shop. Mackey, how did you adapt?

Mackey: The reason for change was always necessity. In ’99, when we started, 100% of our customers were skateboarders. 100% of our brands were core skate brands. That changed over time. We tried to adapt to the online business model as it started. We did have one of the first Nike SB accounts. It was still 100% skateboarding. Then it was enthusiasts and sneaker collectors, which drove energy. So there were these other people coming into the store that weren’t skateboarders. They also want to buy a Stüssy shirt or a Alphanumeric jacket or an Elwood pair of pants. We also were moving into a larger space so we can attract those people. We built the business over the next decade and weathered the storm, perhaps took our eye off the ball in certain areas, which then led to us not being as successful as perhaps we should have been. But after we moved above the bar, we realized that we didn’t have to have the big shop to attract those customers. In fact, it worked in our favor to have a store that you had to find again. And people felt like they’d found a gem when they arrived. We lowered our overheads and we started to rebuild the business again. Last year we moved to a new space, probably at the worst economic time that we probably could, but you just have to go with your gut instinct. You have to stay true to what it is you’re trying to do and that’s what we have done for 25 years. Yes, we’ve made mistakes. Yes, we will continue to make mistakes. But the learnings from those mistakes will hopefully either give hope to other skate shop owners that they’re not alone and they can build and rebuild as many times as needed, but also to younger skaters that, instead of creating a brand, might open a skate shop. Martin, you mentioned a few stores open every few years. I definitely don’t see as many skate stores opening in recent years as previously.

Martin, when you started you wanted to bring something new to the table and now with the new store you updated your concept again. What’s your recipe to keep the shop going?

Maddin: We started Bonkers because the skate shop in Frankfurt back then wasn’t interested to order these new brands like Palace and Polar but we wanted to get our hands on their products. It was a time when skaters clearly wanted to set themselves apart from the mainstream and were no longer interested in the standard brands from the USA. Right now, when I go to Copenhagen, Berlin, London or Paris, it’s completely different. Skaters wear way more lifestyle brands or vintage. The skaters grab the product they want themselves. When I grew up, you had skateshoes for skating and walking. Now, skaters are wearing running shoes after the session. I think when you really want to sell a product to the culture you have to open up a little bit more. You have to go a little bit away from just selling skateboard products. You have to see, what fits into the culture. What maybe comes from the culture but is not really a skate brand. But we still have a cultural background and it’s important to not lose it. Sneaker or lifestyle shops, their cultural background is consuming. They don’t have one thing everybody can connect to, except from buying product. In skateboarding, we do it for our guys. So it’s still important to support the culture, to do events. But you also have to look what’s going on outside of skateboarding, what’s going on with maybe some tattoo artists, with some punk rock bands etc. and you have to mix it a little bit more. I think a skate shop has to be more of a culture shop with a skateboard background. I think that’s the future. But you have to be careful that you don’t do too many crazy things and leave skateboarding. Sure you can make way more money with sneakers but you can’t leave you culture because the culture made the shop what it is.

You mentioned two interesting points. Back in the days, all I wanted to wear was skate brands and skaters nowadays wear all kinds of brands, also lots of second hand, which obviously influences skate shops. And the other point is, with a skate shop you can’t just do what you want, because you have those cultural rules. How do you guys see those limitations?

Pauli: I was always against limitations. That’s why I choose skateboarding. Like Martin said, every shop has to rethink themselves all the time. I’m still a skateboarder, and I always will be a skateboarder. Unfortunately, I’m 48 years old, and I cannot do the same tricks that I did 30 years ago. But skateboarding is my DNA, and that’s also the DNA of the shop. But as I’m getting older, I explored new things and my friends did as well. Now we’re hiking, cycling, running. But we still dress, like my wife said, like 18-year-olds. I will offer the older customer’s cool stuff that doesn’t make them look like 18. So that’s one of the ideas of the concept. And of course, our environment here in Vienna is a totally different one than in Frankfurt or in Liverpool. We are surrounded by woods and mountains. So people like to take a hike during the weekend. Outdoor became a lifestyle. There are brands who understand this lifestyle, and these brands want to reach a certain customer. We can offer this connection to those customers. And that’s why we try to develop our concept with the outdoor shop, but we’re always going to be skateboarding in our DNA. And we also try to develop our own brand. I think this is our next big step. We try to build our own products with a certain quality. Because at the moment, we don’t really see any trends or companies picking up. So we said, we’re going to be the ones to bring new shit to the store.

Mackey: Our local scenes and the areas where we are, are very different, even though we are all skateboarders. We need to tailor our offering in-store and online to the customers that we have. Skateboarders come from all walks of life, and they encompass absolutely everything, from music, art, graphic design, hiking, running, football, cricket, tennis, fucking golf. There isn’t one cookie cutter mold of a skateboarder, and even more so now. I’m a 50-year-old skateboarder. My habits, my thoughts, my lifestyle has changed, and I’m into other stuff. That does not mean that I don’t follow or try to understand what young skateboarders are after. In the case of Lost Art, I’ve always trusted the vision and understanding of the younger skateboarders because they are driving the future. They are seeing the brands that are coming through. They are telling me what I need to be looking for. I’m here for guidance and understanding, but they guide the ship. For me, in the same way as Pauli is saying, building your own brand is the way that you have complete control over what you do. Bonkers has done it very well. Shop merch has always been something for the locals to get behind. And the more that locals get behind it, the more energy it has.

Talking about local scenes, do shops face different problems in different countries? Or do the same things work everywhere?

Mackey: I think we’re all challenged with the same economic problems, local and international. We’re all affected by energy and transport prices, these things are out of our hands. And what we really do always need to come back to is servicing the people that want to buy our shit. That’s it. I hear so many people say, “Skateboarding is dead”. Skateboarding has never been in a better place! There are more skateboarders. There are female skateboarders incredibly energized by what’s going on. The most exciting skateboarding is happening. If you want to follow the Olympics, you can follow the Olympics. If you want to go and street skate, you can go and street skate. If you want to go to a park, there are thousands of incredible parks everywhere. So I think that there’s a lot of people that are either resting on their laurels or they’re just tired. I think it’s fucking hard work, and it’s tiring. And I think all of us at some point in time have probably thought, “Fuck this. I’m going to go get a proper job”. But knowing and hearing the way that kids talk about skateboarding and understanding their needs, Martin, you do it very well. You have a vintage section which is absolutely on the money in terms of what skateboarders want to look and dress like now. They want individualism, which is exactly why we started skateboarding in the first place. We wore skate brands because no one else was wearing skate brands. We felt part of a special club. As skateboarding became bigger, people only have to google skate fashion. They can have a skate kit delivered to their door in the same way as a football kit. But now, skateboarders are looking for their own individual styles, and you’re catering to it very well, Martin. Something I think a lot of skate stores could learn from is just about listening to your customers, seeing them, understanding them, and not rubbishing what they say, not thinking, “I’ve been in this forever. You don’t know”.

Maddin: I’m also always checking what’s going on on social, what new brands are coming up, even if they just print two shirts. I think the best thing is when a customer comes to your shop, finds a shirt and says, “Hey, this looks dope. Can you tell me something about it?” And you can introduce them to the brand and what they’re doing. Same with the vintage corner. Some young skaters might have not heard about Alien Workshop and you show them a video and they’re like: “Oh, that’s so nice”. I think that’s the thing why people like Bonkers because they know they always find something new. But I also see a lot of shops, that act right now like our local shop did back in 2010, waiting for a distributor to bring them new brands. No, you have to check social media. You have to know which shop you have to follow. You have to know which people you have to follow all over the world to get the newest shit. Don’t wait for the fucking distributor. Find a way to import the stuff yourself!

Mackey: Which is what we did originally with Bronze, Quartersnacks, when that changing of the guard happened. But that’s how it’s always been. There could be some crazy golf brand that no one has heard of yet, but they’re doing some sick shit that our customers will also be tuned into. It is about following what’s going on, tuning in to social media. It is about educating yourself, and it is about not being afraid to take those risks that we’ve always tried to do. Like I said before, it’s tiring.

If I break it down what we talked about so far, especially with your last answer, it’s like, if you stay the same, then you’re dying. Skateboarding is always changing, so the shops always have to change. If you do that, if you put in the work, it will pay off in the end. Is that the conclusion to this?

Maddin: I think that’s right but you still have to give yourself some rules to not get too far away from skateboarding, because then you’re the same like every sneaker store. It’s really important to find your own image and what works for your shop, your city.

Mackey: Changing and building and servicing our local scenes has always got to be the first and foremost point that we have to focus on. Because if you lose that, you lose everything. What Bonkers does, doesn’t necessarily achieve anything in Liverpool and the other way round. But we can inspire each other. Being inspired by what’s around us, by what our friends and family do with their stores, with their spaces, can give you an idea. The space that we moved into, I knew straight away that it was a space that can be multi-use. It can be a skate shop in the daytime, it can be a nightclub at night. We’ve now got a fully licensed bar and we have a 75 person cap venue, which is very small but allows us to do intimate gigs or DJ sets. We are going to lean into that in the coming years because that way we find we have a more diverse group of people coming to the space because they are people who aren’t maybe familiar with skateboarding, but certainly are familiar with the groups or the bands or the DJs that they’re following. We’re definitely leaning into that now, but that’s because we’ve found ourselves in this situation. I didn’t set out 25 years ago to have a bar, nor would I want to just have a bar. But having a space that allows itself to be a venue, but also a store, right now, I see is going to be key to how we build in the next 5, 10 years.