What's Happening?

It’s April already and we wanted to share a little blog post on what’s happening at Doric Skateboards right now and what we’ve got planned for the future.

At the time of writing this (Saturday 16th April) I’m not long home from Peacocks Studio here in Aberdeen preparing screens for printing a couple of new designs on their way this year.

We’ll be screen printing skateboards and clothing for a collaboration with local creative @helloradical - really excited about this one. Peep their style in the image below. Its going to be a belter.! Before this one arrives we’ll hopefully have another one ready to go - a cracker from a local guy we’ve worked with before based on the Robert the Bruce statue. : )

End of this month is War of the Thistles at Transition and the Loading Bay. Always happy to sponsor events like this - the first one we sponsored was literally the day or two after we launched 5 years ago. I’ll be there hopefully with a couple of the Doric team to have a watch. Say hello if ye see me!

You can find us in person at Curated Aberdeen every month here in Abedeens’s Bon Accord Centre. The event itself is on every week but I’m only there once a month. Find the details here. Really big thanks to folk who come along and see me there. Its incredibly gratifying that folk come along knowing I’m going to be there. Makes it all very worthwhile. I’m booked there until August but will no doubt be there beyond then plus we’ll be doing some other pop ups else where too. Keep yer ears and eyes open for more on that later.

Until then we’ll be busy working on these new designs and sharing some of the process along the way!

Cheers

Gary

Illusion of Success

Last month I posted up something on social media about not making a sale in 8 days – turned out to be 10 actually. It got some press coverage but the headline may have been misleading for some.

The point I was making wasn’t around feeling sorry myself or concern that I wouldn’t make another sale – I was more trying to redress the balance. The perception people might have is that of success and making loads of money. The truth is of course very different – not just for me but for many.

For all that social media has given us in terms of opportunity to get ourselves seen, it has also allowed us to see others. And compare and contrast.

I see a lot of small/micro business’s online who definitely only talk success. No challenges, no bad days. To me they are missing out on connecting with people. In an effort to finely polish our “brands” you can see these business’s becoming tiny little corporate looking entities. They rarely if ever share any personal information, they follow no-one, engage with no-one, share nothing of anyone else’s. But it seems to work for some. Maybe they’ve found their people that way.

However, I think the key differentiator for most micro/small business’s is the person behind it. Their values, their personality, integrity, character. If we only talk success, avoid sharing our hopes, fears and failures then I think we are only one step from a hyperbolic Apprentice contestant who thinks you can manifest success out of thin air. Or maybe bending the truth about how popular your creations are – hoping that you will attract people who get caught up in hype and FOMO.

What’s more important to you? The perception of “winning” or the truth? Maybe somewhere in the middle?

Social Media seems to be losing the “social” and becoming more “selling”. I’m guilty of it too but I am trying my best to resist that and be more “social”.

Most of us don’t like the hard sale in a shop environment. Why would we like it on our phones? Its all becoming like a billboard. A paid billboard for that matter.

Perhaps the next phase of Social Media will be rougher around the edges. Look at Tik Tok. Huge numbers and certainly to begin with the content was less than polished. But the paid adverts have started there too and then the anxiety for small business’s start.

Should I get a slick video promo made?

Do I need to do professional photos?

Should I “fake it till I make it”?

I’ve done them all but also try to keep things grounded. Its not the same for everyone but it works for me. I see success as feeling happy with what I am doing and how I am doing it. The outcome from that could result in financial success – if that’s your starting point then maybe the illusion of success will get you there quicker. But the journey won’t be as much fun. Success should be defined by you and not anyone else’s metrics.

And for all the worry I had about not having a sale things turned around pretty quickly.

June has without doubt been the best month for Doric Skateboards for a variety of reasons. None of them sales related - we’ve had better months for sure.

Here are some highlights:

• LinkedIn Live with Yekemi Otaru chatting all things Marketing, Creativity, Social Media -watch it on YouTube here;

• Newspaper articles about my approach to having a bad week in terms of sales;

• Newspaper articles about my involvement with Curated Aberdeen;

• Social Media coverage for all of the above;

• Asked to talk to young folks for a second time for The Prince’s Trust;

• Launched one collaboration – planned two more;

• Attended Curated Aberdeen and had a great time;

• A few shops enquiring about stocking Doric;

• And had a meeting about something that will possibly be the biggest achievement of my life. If it comes off - I can’t wait to share it.

All of this feels like the culmination of the last 4 years – momentum. Like the penny arcades – each coin is your effort and with enough and some strategy you will eventually knock that wee pile off the end. Maybe you’d rather be a high roller throwing all your money on the tables - that might just work. But you probably won’t find me there. : )

Memories.

2012 ish

I’m 35 and have just graduated from RGU and have found myself working for an engineering consultancy - Optimus. 

I’ve never worked in an office. Strictly small business retail. So its a learning curve - and still is (although I’m now working from home!).

I overheard someone talking about getting their kid a skateboard. I gave up when I was about 17. But it stayed with me. I often dreamt about it, I always looked at curbs, obstacles etc and thought “good spot”. And so my mind went wondering and I started to look on the internet.

A week later I bought a set up (Ray Barber Element). Then headed to TX with my pal Tom. 

Strangely I could still just about Ollie, kick turn and pump on the ramps. It was pretty exhilarating.! 

It wasn’t really until I started Doric Skateboards until I met people I could skate with again. Even then I still felt incredibly self conscious. There was definitely a point where I felt good within myself and was enjoying it. However, that came to an abrupt end a couple of years ago and I’ve struggled to really get back on my board with any regularity since.

I’m hoping that post-COVID I’ll find some confidence to go out and just have fun again. That’s what it’s all about is it?

What's New?

Its been a while for a Blog Update (what blog doesn’t start with that?) - so here goes.

What’s new?

Well we’ve got 4 new designs coming soon. One that will be for Deck and Tee and the other 3 for Tees/Clothing only.

Read on to here about them!

Back in April we did a wee design competition and got some amazing stuff. We already did a couple of them as stickers and donated that money to Mental Health Aberdeen.

But the standard was so high and the reaction to some was such that we had to do a couple more - its taken a while but here we are.!

First up - a T-Shirt for the Aberdonians of a certain vintage.

Peep Peeps design by Phil Lyon.

This was a notorious bar down by the harbour in Aberdeen and the subject of that classic Sky TV show Britain’s Toughest Pubs. I was in once - eventually getting chucked out. Here’s Phils take on his design:

'I'd been reading about the Dada art movement when I seen the competition pop up on Facebook, figured I'd kinda draw some inspiration from that and go for a collage approach but simplify it a bit to make it easier to screen on boards/tees. I've seen a few other brands using that sort of thing with collages of random stuff but wanted to put a local twist on it. Always loved proper pubs with lots of character and characters and thought that Peep Peeps really summed up that working class pub that we seem to have less and less of these days so I decided to combine Chris' infamous hardest pub appearance with an art style I doubt he ever heard of and the result was the graphic I submitted. Still so stoked people liked it!'

Big thanks to Katy from Katys Studio for the assistance with this one and to Lee at Milk Print Studios for printing them. Both are creatives in Aberdeen doing their thing - go follow them. These Tees will be online in November with very limited numbers - no preorder!

Cull the Gulls

And here was the ultimate winner of the design comp. Initially we were just going to print one deck for the winner but after a chat with Neil we decided to do a full run. And its looking great.! Pre-Order for Tees are online soon and decks will follow very soon.! We’ll also have a chat with the designer Neil to talk about the inspiration.!

Spider From Mars T-Shirt

Not part of the comp but from the mind of Chris Graham aka DFunkt Robot - another local loon making his name and someone we’ve worked with before. A wee revamp of the Spider from Deep Fried Mars design will be coming to tees soonish!

Street Dreams Tees.

When we started this nearly 4 years ago our original design was of local diva Annie Lennox and a play on the song from her Eurythmics days Sweet Dreams. We went with Street Dreams being that thats where we learned to skate - no one said it was a clever play on words. ; )

We’ve threatened tees before. These are coming in November/December.

We’ve also got new beanies and a restock of Donut ones plus some Buffs coming soon! : )

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…!

Didn't See This Coming...

Well that’s not quite true. We had warning. Examples. Cautionary tails.

But it looks right now (24th March 2020) that the UK’s decision to go into lockdown may be too late to head off the worst? At least that’s what the experts and infographs say. And we all know how much people trust experts at this point in time. What do they know? More than my mate that’s watched some videos on YouTube from David Ike?

Aye probably. ; )

Anyways.

Where does this leave Doric Skateboards? Well i’m lucky that this doesn’t provide me with any income. Every penny goes back in, plus we always give donations to various causes and of course support a couple of skaters with our merch. Although like most folk i’m concerned about my day job - i’m working from home at the moment but who knows whats round the corner?

Sales have obviously been quiet. I’ve scaled back on sharing “sales” posts but i have to stay positive and look forward to whats next for us. So i’ll maybe see where i am in a week or so and start sharing some stuff again - new colabs etc. The only stuff on social media i am sharing is that stupid March Meet the Maker challenge.! Ha! I’ve started it so i’ll finish.

Any shares, likes, comments, recommendations and reviews online are very very welcome.!

Once this is all over we’ll be kicking off a celebration for our 3rd Birthday which is next week. Plans to follow in the coming weeks. Months?

For now i can still post stuff if anyone needs/wants something. All my stock is bagged and boxed up safely.

Until then - stay safe and i hate to say this BUT think twice about going for a skate. If you injure yourself and end up in A&E? Well this ain’t the time..

Finally - another wee nudge to check out our People We Like page. Perhaps someone there that could do with some support in any way you can.

Oh! And keep your eyes peeled on social media this week - i’ll do a live screen printing session and you can fire questions/insults at me.

Cheers

Gary

Fresh out the oven - Donuts for Daze

Online now.!

Well that was a massive effort.! And a lot of lessons learned. Some painful - as are most lessons worth learning.

Over 3 years ago when i was sitting at my desk facing possible redundancy i had made the decision to do something creative. Something that wouldn’t cost a lot and that i could control. At that point the idea of Doric Skateboards was pretty much as it is now - i wanted to screen print as much of my own stuff as possible. Its taken until last year to venture into clothing. A couple of factors contribute to this.

Mainly Time and Confidence.

It takes time to plan venturing into new process’s. And i really had to wait for the down time of post Christmas to achieve that. And thanks to all the lovely people that support us i ended up with the budget to purchase new equipment too.

A four screen rig, new screens (you can’t use the same type of screens on a skateboard as a tee.! ), squeegees, ink (again - some different inks can be used.).

Its been a tough learning curve and i hope i’ve got that message across on social media. I’m not sharing the process to show how busy i am or anything like that. It’s meant to be a way of being totally transparent. I’ll share mistakes and concerns. No faking it (although i did used to think “fake it till you make it” was a way forward). I got very despondent that the tees etc weren’t printed “perfectly”. I’ve kinda got over that and realise i am still learning and i hope that people who support the brand will be ok with that too. If i wanted perfection i’d do them a different way - this way you can see the work that’s went into it all.

I’m not a confident person in many ways. I allow that negative voice to dictate - sometimes its my voice, sometimes its other peoples. But i’ve pushed through and am really proud of the new range. Its the fullest, most complete range we’ve done yet. Big thanks to Designer Chris Graham - amazing work by him again.

We both hope you like the new stuff - generally Doric Skateboards is a playful brand and this design keeps that. Although wait until you see the next design/collaboration. This one ain’t playful… ; )

Until then - thank you for all the positivity sent my way. Never taken for granted, always appreciated.

Cheers

Gary.

Donuts for Daze and other news....

Its been a really busy start to the year for Doric Skateboards. After the Christmas madness we took the time to plan out some things for the year ahead.

If you follow us on social media you’ll maybe have caught a glimpse of the new design.! Really stoked to be working with local loon Chris Graham again. Check him out on Instagram here. Release date is Saturday 29th February.

This new one is a ramp up for us in a few ways:

• Tail graphics. We’ve never done anything on the tail of the screen printed designs. Its definitely a bit harder but we’ve engineered something that works.!

• 3 colour topside logo. Way way back we did two colour topside logos for the Jetpack Dinosaur collaboration. This time we’ve went 3. Now i know that a lot of people simply grip tape over the topside but i prefer to do them anyways. And doing 3 colours requires a lot of time and patience. Working within the concave of the deck can be really tricky - its all muscle memory eventually though.!

• 6 screen graphic. For the main graphics we used 6 separate screens/layers. This is on top of the 4 for the tail and the 3 for the topside. That’s a total of 13 passes needed to complete one deck. I think the finished article will show where that effort has went.

• Multi screen clothing. For the last collaboration deck we did with Fit Like we dipped our toe into screening the clothing too. That was all one colour stuff. This time its multi colour/screen designs so we’ve invested in some new equipment to facilitate. Excited to get going with it and show it all off.!

So keep your eyes peeled for the reveal early/mid February for the release on the 29th Feb.!

In other news:

• Organic clothing. We’ll slowly move on to clothing that is at very least ethically sound but also coming from organic cotton. I’m well aware that i’m producing “stuff” and sometimes the world/us don’t need more.! So the least i can do is make sure its better for the environment. The goal by the end of the year is to have all tees/hoodies done with this sort of clothing.

• Future collaborations/designs. We’ve got a firm date for another deck and clothing design plus other new bits and pieces in the first 6 months.

• 3rd Bday Bash. Possibly schedule another Bday Bash this April.!

• Pop Ups. Some planned already - others TBC.

• We added a load of screen printing tutorials to the YouTube channel. Please head there and subscribe.! : ) We also added it to the website here.

• Last year we added a page to the website that features people, business’s, organisations, brands, artists etc that we admire. Check it out here. You might find something you want/need!

• We also restocked some of our stuff. Plenty of PoP tees in Black, White and Olive Green. !

• And to make room for new stuff you can grab the Scotch Tee design on sale for a bargain £10 posted.!! Black Front Print, Black Back Print, White Front Print, White Back Print and a kids one (aged 3-4 years old) for a fiver.!

Next month we’ll have revealed the new design in its entirety - we hope you like it.! Until then - thanks for the support. : )