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Editor’s Note: The following piece comes from Kyle Jax, the founder of Kick+Push. This is his “how-to” account of taking a unique idea and turning it into the world’s newest most creative skateboard company. 

Earlier this year, I was part of a board launch campaign with an extremely talented photographer. That photographer also happens to be a good friend, Keegan Gibbs. The print he chose, “Umbrella,” is part of a much larger collection sharing a glimpse into the lives of people in their own little private space amongst a much larger public space. These prints are hard to get your hands on, to say the least. So we asked ourselves the question, why not make it accessible to everyone? Blending the worlds of expression, fine art photography, and skateboarding. It’s accessible, mobile art.

So we took a Kickstarter campaign page, tied it to our MVP site with some custom firebase scripts in-between, and our scrappy product was ready to go. The rest is a timeline of how we went from idea to reality:

March 4th — The Umbrella campaign went live, and we anticipated a tsunami of orders to come rolling in immediately after Keegan posted to his Instagram. Only the tsunami didn’t show up. A few backers came through, followed by a long period of no activity. To be honest, we began to question our approach, but Keegan stayed confident we would exceed our funding goal.

April 14th — We see life!

April 16th — All of a sudden, the growth picks up. We dig into the details and notice that RVCA featured us on their Instagram and blog, something nobody saw coming. Except for Keegan, of course. It turns out he had the collaboration in his back pocket the entire time.

April 17th — One of the top pro-skaters in the world, Curren Caples, pre-orders an Umbrella board. Bryce Lowe-White, a Kick+Push co-founder, is currently the video producer at Surfer Magazine and did a feature on Curren earlier in the year. Bryce reached out to Curren to thank him for the support. Curren liked what we were up to and thought the board was sick. We were over the moon. When was the last time Curren bought a skateboard? Who knows, and who cares.

April 20— The Umbrella Campaign comes to a close. Total boards pre-ordered were 87, which was 37 more than our original goal. The campaign was a success and knowledge gained is still paying off. A few weeks pass, and the Umbrella boards are shipped to our backers. Inside the packaging we included a wallmount to hang the Umbrella board, free of charge. I am a firm believer in a quote from Paul Graham and Brian Chesky: “It’s better to have a 100 people love you than a million people sort of like you.” I probably repeat that quote to the Kick+Push team on a daily basis. With the wall mount, we included a note announcing an Instagram contest to win a signed print from Keegan. The response to the contest is overwhelming.

So What’s Next?
We’re now onto a new campaign, this time with Dylan Gordon, titled Proof.  With each campaign we run, we ask the artist if there is a charity they would like to support. Dylan is an ambassador for The Surfrider Foundation, so we’ve teamed with Indiegogo to offer a deck, a signed artist card and a $15 donation to The Surfrider Foundation for everybody who contributes $75 to our fundraising efforts.

Our goal is to empower seamless collaboration in an industry we know and love, by providing a platform for artists to design custom skateboards and the opportunity for the community to influence what we make. It’s time for change in our industry, and we believe it starts by opening the lines of communication between artist, skater, community and brand. No longer should a brand operate with closed doors. We live in exciting times and collaboration is easier than ever.

Keegan Gibbs' Umbrella

Keegan Gibbs’ Umbrella

 
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