Recently, we had a visit from the guys at Sidewalk Distribution (Enjoi, Madness, Jacuzzi, Slappy, Opera…), so we took the opportunity to interrogate industry veteran and Sidewalk founder Steve Douglas on taking back Enjoi, the early days at 411, and everything else they have going on.
Steve has been around the block, and so you should listen to what he says, so we did. He has stories for days!
Of all the brands that you’ve been involved with over the years, which is the one that means the most to you?
Easy one, 411 (video magazine) – and the reason being is because I think 411 had the biggest impact in skateboarding. For global skateboarding.
What I mean is up until that point, {sponsored riders like me} had to leave this country (UK) to go make it over in California.
As much as I don’t regret any of that, there are a lot of things that I missed, funerals, weddings, births and stuff with my family. That was a lot to give up there. You had to go live in California because you’d have to take photos and everything else to be part of the industry.
After 411, you could live wherever, however you wanted. I always think about Lucas (Puig). You know, Lucas never had to leave France, and he could have a pro career. So that’s what I’m most proud of, because, again, I love the fact that I’ve been in America for so long, but I had to do that. Now today, you don’t have to do that as long as you have great video parts and everything else like that. So yeah, that was, I think, what I’m most proud of.
That’s really interesting, because effectively what you’re talking about is pre-internet freeing up people from having to be in one location. Obviously, you want to be in California because it’s such a great place to live, but now you can have a career anywhere. 411 was effectively the start of that for skateboarding.
Yeah – also in the magazines, how many photos of tricks we looked at, and we were like, did he make that? And with 411, it was like, he made it! Now, it could be misleading because you might have only made it once, but he made it. So that was very, very important to. It’s like it doesn’t lie.
Our motto was, if it’s good, it goes in. We didn’t play any politics. If you advertise with us or anything, other people were doing that. It was all about if it (the footage) was good enough, if it was, it would go in, and we got a lot of shit for it. But, yeah, that’s what I’m most proud of, because, you know, people were giving us shit all the time. “You’re focusing on Johnny no name”. Yeah, but Johnny No-Name was good enough to land that trick.
So, yeah. 411. No doubt. That was an easy one.
411 Video Magazine – Issue #1
You just wrestled Enjoi and Madness out of the hands of private equity guys who look like they’re from a Netflix true crime doc, where rich families murder each other for money. Is private equity as damaging to skateboarding as it seems?
100%.
I don’t believe that anybody outside of skateboarding should be in skateboarding. Simple as that.
And I think those guys burnt their fingers so hard after pissing all over the skateboard industry, they ripped off photographers, graphic artists, magazines, all the factories, everybody. They absolutely disrespected it.
One of the first things that they did – and I wasn’t involved with it during this time (I left in 2016) – they were absolutely like, “Why are we paying riders”?
Yeah, wow.
That’s all you need to say. They (PE guys) didn’t understand the importance of paying riders. You know, they ARE always the first ones that get paid.
So, they disrespected the whole culture, and I honestly hope that if anybody is thinking about getting involved (in skateboarding), they look at them as a case study and fucking stay away from skateboarding.
You have to have the passion. We love skateboarding, we love the culture. It’s a hard industry, definitely a hard industry. But someone coming in that purely wants to make money out of skateboarding? I mean, we’re all lifers. We’re institutionalised. There isn’t enough money most of the time. There are peaks where there is money, but there’s a lot more valleys where there isn’t. Someone like that (private equity firms) doesn’t understand that, and they want growth at any cost, and that’s not skateboarding. They don’t know skateboarding. So they should stay the fuck out.
There you go. Rotters, the lot of them.
How do you approach deals like that (buying back the Dwindle brands)? Is it really technical, or at this point, were the guys just desperate to sell you the IP because they just bungled the brands so hard?
I approached it just, “hey, I’m interested, I’m interested in the brands that you have, because obviously you don’t know what you’re doing here”.
All the guys are leaving, and I’m interested in the brands and it just wasn’t very technical at all. It was just basically like, “hey, I’m interested”, you know, but they wanted me to license it. And I just said, there’s no fucking way that I’m going to license a brand and give you money, after all you’ve done. Just no way. It’s not worth it for me.
I said, I’m interested in buying but they didn’t have any interest in selling, and I just said, “I’m sorry, I’ll wait because you will…and it will be worth way less every day than what I’m willing to offer you today.” So, yeah, it takes time.
I felt pretty confident and, that is exactly what happened. It took two years. It took three offers. The second offer, when that fell through, I was hospitalised, a couple of people close to me told me, Steve, tell them to fuck off. I wanted to tell them “fuck off”, but I persevered. It was like ‘that trick’, you know what I mean? You know, in fact, in skateboarding, I would have given up after that long. I got that trick. I’m gonna land this one. I just felt I could. Yeah, and it was difficult. I’m not very good at patience, but patience won on this one, and it felt really good riding away. It was just like that trick that I was trying for so long. And you ride away, you’re like, did I just land that?
It was very rewarding. It was rewarding because I felt skateboarding won, you know what I mean? It’s like, yeah, Louie (Barletta) won. Bill (Weiss) won, and we all won. But skateboarding won because it was like, fuck you guys. Yeah. For the question that you just asked me before, stay away from skateboarding – We’ll take care of skateboarding.
Now that you’ve got Enjoi and Madness back, there’s a lot of similarities to me with Jacuzzi and Opera. How are you going to differentiate between them now?
As in, Enjoi versus Jacuzzi and Opera versus Madness. How are you going to separate those out and hold them as a stable of brands?
That is also a great question. So, I didn’t actually know this until just recently, but there was always talk at Enjoi, when the private equity guys said, hey, we’re going to bring some money in, we’re going to raise a bunch of capital and we’re going to bring it in – so there was always talk that Enjoi would have a sister company called Jacuzzi. I didn’t know that until just a couple of months ago. But when we did start Sidewalk, I said to Louie, just make sure that Jacuzzi doesn’t look anything like Enjoi, because the goal is to bring it back.
In his famous post in 2023, on Valentine’s Day, he said, “Hey, who knows, maybe one day we’ll be able to get it (Enjoi) back”. And that’s what I was focusing on pretty much from that day until just recently. That’s the reason why we brought it back on Valentine’s Day. We actually finished the deal on September 9th last year. But we took our time, and that will answer the next part of the question about Opera / Madness. It was always the idea to keep it. It’s very much like a Girl and Chocolate. So, imagine a Jacuzzi video – there’ll be some Enjoi riders too. So, it’s very much going to be the Girl / Chocolate, sort of brand (cooperation)and live off of each other.
Like Alien and Habitat as well.
Yeah, exactly – so different, but similar. It’s going to be a brand new team. Louie is moving over to Enjoi. There’s a new rider that signed. I won’t say his name yet…Okay. There’s a couple of other riders.
Is it a new, new rider? Is it an old Enjoi guy?
No, a new rider, not an old Enjoi rider that’s gonna come over. So, super excited about that. I mean, what we didn’t want to do is just rush off a team and it just be unnatural and be like, oh, they weren’t as good as the previous guys.
You want to get the right people, girl or guy, right? To come over to Enjoi and be like, oh, that’s a perfect fit. We want to take our time.
Same thing with Element, you know, I mean, we (the skate team) went down to just Billy Pepper. Johnny Schillereff at the time was like, we got to put this (rider) on …I was going to say his name, but I won’t say his name. I’m like, Johnny, why would you put on a rider like this? He’s already had a Thrasher interview. He’s had a Transworld interview. He’s on the way down. Seriously, think about the future. We only had one rider, right? It was Billy. Love, Billy Pepper, by the way. But then we went for, you know, Kenny Hughes and Reese Forbes and then we got Markovich and Donny (Barley). I mean, it was incredible, right? So, yeah, we’re going to take the time, but we’ll do it right. But there’s a lot of conversations going on right now, and I’m really excited to see where it’s going. Jacuzzi has got a whole bunch of new riders on the team, too. I’m really excited about where those two are going to go.
So, the second part of the question was, with Opera and Madness. Because we’ve had Madness since September, we’ve had time to think about this. So, Opera in the last couple of prebooks (where the shops place orders ahead of time), we’ve gone more towards street. The deck sizes and shapes have been more street-oriented.
With people like Nassim coming in?
Yes, exactly. And Sora, right? And so now we are separating out some of the riders like Clay (Kreiner) who are coming back to Madness. Sam Beckett will be part of Madness.
So, Clay has got a board, and there’s two other new pro boards that we’ve got in the catalogue that we’re pushing right now – we know who the riders are, but you’ll have to wait to find out.
Yeah, really looking forward to it.
I’m really, really excited. I’m just so stoked if you look at how excited Bill was and how Louie was, Louie was excited.
But you know, for me, it put a lot of extra pressure on me because it was just like I was the only one that could deal with these guys (private equity suits) because those guys (Bill and Louie) were so close to it. I had an in with these guys, and I could have those conversations, but it took a long time.
It was stressful. And, you know, it’s funny that the guy that I ended up working with (on the deal), I actually came to like him. I was always told, “Hey, be careful of those Transom guys,” but they weren’t the guys that I was working with. This guy was an independent guy who was brought in, and I worked with him, and I became kind of friendly with him. I would like to say he was kind of a friend at the end of it; you know what I mean? Because you got a what do they call it? The Stockholm syndrome.
At the end of the day, you know what kept me going? It’s a funny story. Again, a couple of people said to me, “Tell this guy to fuck off”. The story is of a guy, one of my first partners, who owned a part of Giant skateboard distribution. He was working at a shop, and this asshole came in. Very quickly realised he couldn’t deal with this guy. So, he went to the owner and said, “hey, can you help me out with this guy? Ten minutes later, he came out, and the guy was walking out the store, and the owner said, “Hey, Michael, you’re right – he was a real asshole, but that guy left with his money in my pocket”.
This is my version. Not the guy that was dealing with, but the group (Transom), I’m like, I’m going to have their trademarks in my…our back pocket. So yeah, that felt like a personal win, you know what I mean? For so many reasons.
I’m really glad for Louie. It’s (Enjoi) such a big part of his life, you know what I mean? And, Bill, you know, it (Madness) was his baby. He built that from basically scratch with a guy called Eric Wollam. So, I’m super excited for those guys. And now they are owners of Madness, they are owners of Enjoi.
So, we started a new company, and they are all owners of it all. So now Louie is an owner of the company, whereas before he was just a rider and a brand manager and so was Bill. So, it feels good, and again, I believe skateboarding won.
Yeah, and what a stable of brands you guys have gotten. That’s amazing.
Yeah, and I’m super, super stoked!
Thanks Steve!
Skating pics of Steve, back in the day!
