FOTTA
‘Getting to know the people behind the tricks and what they do for a living is what I prefer.’
Alberto Della Beffa
Founder
Fotta
June 2023
How do you come up with the idea to start a brand new printed skatemag?
Both me and Federico Casella (skateboard photographer from Milan) were already working in the Italian skateboard scene for a few years and at some point we decided to try to make our own thing because this is what we love the most.
More importantly, how do you convince people to be part of it?
We started with a team of really close friends who were bringing together all the pieces we needed to start this new thing. Luca, one of the people I’ve been skating with for the past 10 years is now a really good graphic designer; Geppo is one to the older guys who’s started the brand Bastard the year I was born and has so much knowledge to share; the print guys also have 25 years’ experience in their business and they used to publish a skate and snowboard magazine in the past; and the people who are looking after the website are a communication agency that 15 years used to do a publication called SkateMap with most of the skate spots and skate parks around Italy. Everybody has something to look after and that’s how we managed to keep on going this first year. Now the team is getting bigger with new people taking part in many differs ways.
That’s not its meaning (laughing). Fotta it’s a slang world in the Italian skateboard scene that means an uncontrollable inner drive, a stimulus, an incentive, an incitement.
6 issues a year sounds ambitious. As you just started in June 2022, what are the main challenges in getting issues published every second month?
We’re not that big of a team and we really have to keep up with everything all together. Every issue we do a tour somewhere and we come up with an article in the mag and a video on the website. That’s something that takes some time from the organisation to the actual tour and the editing of everything. But another important part of the mag is organising every feature that comes from outside. Looking after the photographers to send you the photos, after the people who has to write or draw something takes most of the remaining time. And then there’s the selling and producing moment of the whole process, which is where Geppo is saving our asses from going bankrupt every day, working harder that anybody in the office to make it all work.
What is the feedback from the skateboard brands so far? Are they supporting you well enough?
Yeah fortunately we’ve had a bit of support from the beginning, but this is the part of the business who really needs to grow more. Doing a magazine properly costs a lot of money and if you wanna keep the level of the production high for a long time you need the support of the people subscribing to the mag and the support from the brands with both the ads and the support of different projects. But that’s something you have to work a lot to get the machine going.
‘Every issue we do a tour somewhere and we come up with an article in the mag and a video on the website.’
Is there anything you would not print in a skatemag from a content or ad perspective?
I don’t know. On a content perspective I find it so much more interesting talking about the lifestyle or the working life of the people we interview instead of the classic skate tales. Getting to know the people behind the tricks and what they do for a living is what I prefer.
Proudest moment so far?
The most rewarding part for me is having some of the people I’ve been looking up to when I was a kid to come at us now to show some love to our work.
What is the skate scene like in Italy?
Most of the light is pointed to the Milano Centrale scene and the European hype seems to care only about that, but there are many other really strong skate scenes around the nation. Some small cities like Bolzano and Pesaro happens to have a lot of really strong skaters and some bigger cities like Torino, Rome, Bologna, Catania have a long solid skate history and scene.
Any rivalry between the North and the South like in soccer or is the skate community one happy family in Italy?
The scene is not that big so we kind of all know each other but on the event and the commercial side the north has always been favoured and the south was a bit left to the side. That’s indeed something we would love to change with the stuff we do and organise with the mag. In Italy there are still so many unknown good places and skaters that deserve to be shown to the big public.
How did you get involved in the skateboard scene?
I live, and I grew up in Turin, a city with one of the strongest and oldest skate scene in Italy. I started skating in 2005 and I’ve always had great examples of good skaters and people who was working in the industry, filming, having brands or building skateparks, to look up to. And with time I started to know them and learnt some things. In 2012 the skate association worked with the city, and they built the Valdo Fusi skate spot in the city center and we all started to skate there. Our crew, the Pigeons Family, comes from there and from the beginning I was the guy with camera filming and shooting photos to everyone (like many other filters I started because I was getting injured too often). After a few years with my homies I started working for little brands and Italian magazine at the time, then I started working in the skatepark building and those things slowly became a full time job.
Last question. If you could interview one person, who would it be and why?
I’d like to meet the people who did the gnarliest stuff in the filming, photography and building game. For example, Colin Read or Russel Houghten that are the minds behind some of the most incredible skateboard videos, Blabac or Brittain that are some of my favorite photographers, Mark Scott from Dreamland who changed the skatepark building forever (with Hubbard RIP).
‘In Italy there are still so many unknown good places and skaters that deserve to be shown to the big public.’
