Has any pro or a skate team signed up yet?
No, but they should, and I will explain why. I spoke to a lady who’s doing the same in pro soccer and it’s working really well. Now it’s come to “make sense” whereas before it was a new idea. If we put ourselves in the shoes of a pro skater, they obviously want to sell boards and make a good living. The skate companies want to do the same. But in terms of sales, the skate industry doesn’t quite “know” what makes a kid buy a board. It might be different things: the graphics, the price, the idea linked to a certain brand…There is one rule we do know for sure it’s that “people buy people”. The question is always “who are you and what are you about?” This is true for the music we listen to, the products we buy…And if you’re an up-and-coming pro skater and don’t speak English that well, many kids are going to buy someone else’s board. Maybe not always, but there’s that risk. The other reason I would like companies to get involved, is that I’d like to see skating be more than “just” about skating. We can use the energy of skating to help kids do better in school. We can make skateboarding a force for growth on a worldwide level. So, this is an open invitation to all companies that see value in encouraging education. Come on guys, I know you care!


So, there is a positive correlation between improving the English language and increase in board sales. April rider Yuto Horigome would sell more board now that he is able to communicate in English when he first was signed with very little knowledge.
(Laughing) Who knows? Sometimes, “not speaking” can actually build the myth – we see this in WWE wrestling for example. Andre the Giant, Brock Lesnar…they built myths without speaking and it works. In our own scene look no further than Tom Penny. In the case of Yuto Horigome, I listened to an interview of his from the 1st of May 2024 (X Games channel on Youtube) and his level of English seems to be somewhere between A1 and not quite A2. He seems to understand questions much better than he can express answers. There is a probability that kids worship his skating but might still not relate to him as a person because of his limitation to communicate his “story”. In all fairness, does he have all the tools to get across all he can about himself? Probably not. If he had started English classes 2 years ago, he might be even more popular now. Perhaps more sponsorship opportunities would have come his way, who knows? As I see it, the question is: why take the risk? Another very real risk for foreign speakers is that native speakers accommodate you and accept your way of speaking with your mistakes. It becomes your unique speech pattern and your identity. You stop progressing. Years down the line, you think you’re doing great when in fact no one actually told you that your English was full of mistakes. That’s just a universal phenomenon, not just in skating. If I were to guess, I don’t believe that good tricks are enough for a pro skater to make sales. No one realistically ran out to buy a Tony Hawk board because he landed a 900. Much less talented skaters than him have just as much of a chance of selling boards. Precisely because of their engaging personalities. And this comes down to what? Language!