Why We Hope You Support Us - Part 2

Continuing our deeper dive into why we hope you support us or some encouragement to do so!

Part 2 - Giving Back.

Here’s the awkward one. If you talk about this too much then it lacks humility. But if you don’t mention it at all then how will customers know where some of that money and effort goes?

Our first day of launch in 2017 saw us donate prizes to War of the Thistles thanks to Zee Yule for including us. The wonders of Facebook skate groups meant he knew what were up to. Roll on 6 years and we’ve donated tons of stuff including cash to all manner of skate events in Scotland including many fundraisers for skate parks.

We sponsor a few folk too. And are about to add someone else. More on that another day.

We big up other local businesses. Food, drink, craft, design, whatever. If you’re not a dick with us then I’ll assume you’re ok and am happy to share!

And without the support of you folks we wouldn’t be in the position to contribute to local charities like Mental Health Aberdeen and CFine. Worth pointing out again that we don’t expect you guys to front the contributions whilst we stand with an oversize cheque. We’ll also chip in cash and goods.

I’m also a fan of crowdfunding type things and happy to chip in. Might do one myself one day!

When we started we did a few skate nights at TX. This has laid dormant for a long time now but next month we’re going to organise something very informal.

Next up on why we hope you support us - Part 3 of 7 Gatekeeping.

#aberdeencity #organicclothing #tshirts #clothingbrand #aberdeenshire #organiccotton #design #organiccottonclothing #skatelife #skatewear #aberdeen #bonaccord #organic #Doric #scotland #skateboardingisfun #skateboard #scotlandskateboarding #skatefashion #nostalgia #tshirt #aberdeenscotland #tshirtdesign #doric

2021 Review Part 4 November & December

November and December were entirely taken up with our latest collaboration.

Big up the Doric was spawned from our friendship with Ikar Headlum. Ikar fronts a podcast - Creative me podcast, has his own clothing brand - Big up the Deen, founded We Are Here Scotland and has a full time job and family to divide his time between.!

We met a few years ago when he was kind enough to have me on his podcast and we’ve been friends ever since.

This collaboration was born out of our belief that there are many many talented people, organisations and business’s out there. It can be easy to critique our city, our council etc. But there are people trying to make things better. This was our attempt to throw some light on them - and those names on the design are only a fraction of whats out there.!

We were lucky enough to be loaned a cracking space from Look Again Aberdeen to host a pop up. A great experience and one we hope to repeat in the not too distant future.!

You can find the collaboration work on the website.

2021 was another year that had that air of uncertainty about it. I learned a lot about myself and hopefully I’ll take these learning into 2022.

Massive thanks to everyone who supports us, our team, our family and extended family! You all know who you are. : )

2022 - I’ve got a fresh diary all ready to fill up with plans. Lets get going!!

2021 Review Part 3 August - October

Part 3 of our 2021 Review. Here we go.

August kicked off with yet another wee stint at Curated Aberdeen. We’re back there end of Jan or Start of Feb 22 this year - so keep yer eyes peeled. Hoping to have something new to offer !

Another month and another jam supported - this one the Kingston DIY in Glasgow. Looked a great day.

August /September saw us work with local creative Mimi Hammill on a cracking design. We got busy screen printing these and they have been very popular since. Not much left of these - you can find them on the website right now!

Then in early October the Doric team grew by one when we added Gus to the squad. A top guy, rad skater and the right fit. Looking forward to seeing more of Gus in the new year once his foot has healed properly!

We also added another new design in the form of a Halloween themed Unicorn. Edinburgh based artist @meestahstink produced the design. Absolutely love this and it was a pleasure to print! Some still available now online.

Final part of this wee review will be updated soon! We ended the year in style and on a high for sure!

2021 Review Part 2 April - July

So here’s the next part of our review of 2022. April - July.

In April we revealed our latest collaboration. The Unicorn design from Heather Millar was the result of our design competition the year before. I always had my eye on it and approached Heather to work on getting onto decks and clothing. This was a great addition to our line up and landed with us in June. Only 4 or 5 of these remain on the website as of writing this. !

We took the opportunity in April and May to get screen printing a new Street Dreams deck. Loved how they came together and looking forward to doing another Street Dreams in 22! Getting my hands dirty printing our own stuff to compliment the other print methods is integral to what we do.

In June we kicked off a regular stint at Curated Aberdeen. A great opportunity to get out there with a pop up and support a local charity in the form of Charlie House.

July started to see the first of the skate jams we supported, starting with one at Glenrothes organised by @dontcomplyfilms along with the Saughton Skate Jam in August amongst others.

We were back at Curated Aberdeen in July too. This time we launched our latest design there - the Jaws deck and clothing from Chris Graham aka DFunkt Robot. Reaction to this one has been great. Cheers to Chris for this belter!

July also saw us have our decks stocked in a few skate shops. Clan Skates, Wight Trash and Big Aye Skateboards. Thanks to those folks for the support.!

Later in the month we donated to Peterheads Blue Skate Group for a giveaway to help raise their profile. Like many places they are looking for funding to renovate their skatepark. Happy to help and hopefully 2022 brings them some much needed funds.!

And that was Q2 2021. A really busy time and thankful for all the opportunities afforded me.

Part 3 August - October is next up very soon.!

2021 Review Part 1 January - March

Much like 2020, 2021 has been an odd year to say the least.

I’m still working from home, at the time of writing another lockdown seems imminent and nothing seems certain. However, with vaccines being rolled out 2021 gave us safer options for getting out and about, which was great for us!

 So here’s a rundown of the highlights of our year. It was a busy one so I’ve split this into 4 parts.

Part 1 Jan – March

I kicked the year off by sharing some of what I’ve learned into 6 Parts. You can read them on our blog by starting HERE. I tend to this sort of thing from time to time – it helps me to retain things I’ve learned and appreciate how far I’ve come, and if it helps anyone else then that’s great.!

Mid January we kicked off a fundraiser for C-Fine. They are a cracking organisation, here’s their mission statement:

“CFINE improves health and wellbeing and the environment, tackles poverty and builds resilience through a range of support and services for and with disadvantaged, vulnerable, low-income individuals, families and communities in North East Scotland.”

Its easy for business’s to give other peoples money away. But we put our money where our mouth is and donated £500 of our own. You guys more than matched that and I think the total was nearly £1300 altogether.

Its sickening to see society return to some kind of Victorian era values – the poor and needy aren’t treated well by our Governments and instead are left to charities to assist. Not good enough. But right now all we can do is try to help. We’ll be doing something similar again this year.

February saw us kick off our Deck Design competition in collaboration with Your Custom Skateboard. It’s the second year we’ve done it and the standard was just as good. You can see the winners here and the accompanying blog post. This took us through to Mid March.

In March I was lucky enough to be asked to speak some young folk via the Foyer / Prince’s Trust. I don’t think for a minute that I do anything special but I do remember being young and am acutely aware of the mistakes I made back then. So if I can help nudge someone onto the right tracks – great. I’ll be doing something similar again in 2022.

The end of March brought us an amazing photo shoot with Katy Shewan. Models Davie and Mya did a great job and it’s worthwhile for anyone looking to sell anything that using professionals makes a difference! This also coincided with our 4th Birthday – we wrote about all of that here. Very keen to do more pics this year.

And so the first quarter of the year was busy – we were also working on new designs that were yet to launch! More of that in Part 2, 3 and 4.

Whats New?

I broke my own promise to myself that I would write regularly on here. As I’ve said before - its as much for myself as it is for anyone else. I like being able to look back and see what’s changed, what’s remained and what I didn’t see coming.! So here goes!

We’ve been really busy trying to pull together a variety of new designs over the last few months. Its been a challenge. I’m not at my best just now - see the last blog post from July here - and with working from home my line between day job and Doric has merged to an extent I’m not comfortable with. Although I’m very fortunate to be working I still have that part of me the resents the intrusion into my “life”. And so I’ve found myself spending less time up in Doric HQ because of this. But I still have to get stuff done so all that happens is I end up with tighter deadlines! Lesson Learned there. And I’ve had a shot of enthusiasm from some screen printed designs that I can do myself - that’s helped me a lot.

So what’s new?

• Restock of the Jaws Tees and some new kids ones in grey with more of a restock to follow (blue hopefully end of October).

• The latest design from local creative Mimi Hammill will be launched at Curated Aberdeen on 9th October with them going online that night. There are Tees in Mango and Blue plus Mango Hoodies. All screen printed by us in house. : )

• After that we will be launching another design with a Halloween vibe - on or around 31st Oct but possibly at the November Curated Aberdeen. Not a scary one - just a fun one! This will come in Burgundy Tees/Hoodies for adults and kids. Again - all screen printed in house by us.

• Then we’ll be looking ahead to the collaboration with Big Up the Deen! This will be in the form of Decks, Tees and some other merch. We hope to share some news on that one very soon including how/when we will launch it.

• We will also be back at Curated Aberdeen in Oct as above and November too - 5th to the 7th.

• December will see us somewhere too - more news on that soon though.

• We are also going to be adding someone to the team this week. We’ll announce that at the weekend/start of next week. And after that we’ll be on the hunt for a local star to be number 5 on the team - I’m not keen on even numbers! : )

So until then - shout if you have any questions about our stuff and thank you very much for supporting. I’m hoping that after the last 18 months or so we can make 2022 a massive year for us as we celebrate our 5th Bday in March.

Going back to Basics

Its sometimes easy to get carried away with adding new designs and associated merch. Its probably a product of excitement and trying to please everyone.

But i’m beginning to get a hold of things now and hopefully this will mean a few goals can be achieved:

• Less waste.

• Slightly more exclusivity.

• Migration to more eco friendly material and process’s

All printing of clothing has now migrated to an Aberdeen based DTG printer and screen printing from myself - whichever suits the design best. So that means less delivery time between printers, suppliers and myself = smaller carbon footprint. It also means i’ll always have my hands on all merchandise we sell as always. I’m not keen on third parties sending out stock on my behalf - albeit that would be less work.

All of this comes at a cost of course. The basic price of a blank t-shirt has doubled, the price of printing DTG is higher too but i think that for £20-28 for these tees (depending on style etc) is still good value for money when you consider it also includes 1st Class Postage and that these t-shirts are premium (regardless of whats printed on them).

And so now we’ve launched the new old tees.! These were the first ones we ever got printed and truthfully i never even thought about printing tees - thats changed.!

Really happy with the colours we’ve went for - i’ll be unveiling some of the real articles very soon for folks to see. Pre-order is online now and aim to deliver these by 1st/2nd week of August.

Going back to basics - less is more sometimes.

www.doricskateboards.com/?category=OG+Logo+Design

Stallan X Doric Skateboards

Thought it was worth the time to document the latest collaboration that has culminated in this cracking design.

When i started Doric Skateboards a few years ago i very quickly learned the depth of talent Aberdeen has to offer in terms of creativity and design. This was helped when we launched coincidentally at roughly the same time as the first NuArt festival. It was amazing to see the talent in the city via Look Again, Painted Doors and Throw Up Gallery. I’ll be the first to admit i didn’t know much at all and certainly didn’t really know anyone involved.

Even the concept of collaboration didn’t occur to me when I started - i just didn’t really have that word in my vocabulary! And to be honest I don’t think that its easy to collaborate with established artists when you start up. Why would anyone want to work with you? What do you bring to the table? But slowly I made contacts and dare i say friends with people in that community. And so a few years in i had met Stu Alan a few times at various events and was aware of his deck he designed for the skate shop Granite Reef in the past. And obviously a fan of his art - the pop culture influences and love of the film franchise (i hate that word) Aliens was totally appealing to me.

When I approach Stu i had no idea what he had in mind but he did hint at a metal theme and William Wallace was mentioned. I think what he’s produced is absolutely top notch - i kinda just stared at it every now and again when he sent the artwork. I also love that its a totally different direction for Doric Skateboard designs - its still very much Aberdeen and Scotland - but its way darker that anything from before. Its definitely attracted some new people and satisfied some established customers with some much wanted darkness!

This was the first time we ever did a proper pre-sale and i think its worked out ok - please let us know what we could do different? Obviously we missed our target of mid -May but all things considered i hope you can forgive that delay. Hopefully well worth the wait. I think for the tee shirts its worked as i haven’d made many extra and so there’s no waste.

So big thanks to Stu for his work and to everyone who’s supported it. I’ve added some spare tees to the website and a few decks from this first drop so if you missed out on the pre-order you can hopefully grab something now.

Here are some links to Stuarts work including his email address. Go check it out and see some of his work including some cracking commissions.

www.etsy.com/uk/market/stallan

www.instagram.com/stallan_/

stallan.artist@gmail.com

And look out for another tee using this design in some way in the coming months…!