Baker Skateboards

Baker Skateboards is an American skateboarding company founded in 1999 by professional skateboarder Andrew Reynolds (skateboarder). The company's main products are skateboard decks, soft goods, accessories, and wheels.

In 1999 Reynolds left Birdhouse Skateboards and started Baker Skateboards along with other professional skateboarders from Stereo, Zero, and other companies.In 2007, Reynolds provided a detailed account of the company's beginnings:

Well, I was living in Huntington, riding for Birdhouse. We just thought to ourselves, all these companies are really lame. Like, Birdhouse doesn't promote piles, you know what I mean? Like, Zero's [skateboard deck brand] not promoting, like, what we're all about. You know, we met up with Jay Strickland, we started telling him about our ideas, like, "We wanna do something. We wanna do a company." And we're, like, "All of us, together.", you know? It was just, like, a big mess, you know? I went and talked to Tony [Hawk] and Per [Welinder]—"It's either, I quit, and take a bunch of guys and do something, or, you guys help me start a company, you know?"

The skateboard deck brand signed a distribution deal with Blitz Distribution, the company that, at the time, was distributing Birdhouse and other brands, such as Fury and Hook-Ups (Blitz had originally been formed by Per Welinder and Hawk to distribute their own products). As of 2008, the brand was the top-selling brand under the Blitz Distribution umbrella. In regard to the original Baker logo, Reynolds has credited the design to Strickland and stated that it represented a motley company that consisted of talented skateboarders.

Leo Romero left the Baker team in April 2009, and his departure led to a great amount of discussion among skateboarders and fans. In an interview that was held during the same week that he joined the Toy Machine team, Romero explained that he was generally unhappy with his life at the time and his decision was not due to problems experienced while at Baker. Romero described his experience with announcing the decision: "Calling Andrew Reynolds and quitting his company is kinda scary, you know what I mean? When I told him he was like, 'Oh, that's cool man, who are you gonna ride for?'" In April 2011, Romero was again asked the question and, after stating that he was "sick" of the question, he explained that he didn't fit in at Baker and the company had changed from when he was a young skateboarder. Romero was awarded Thrasher magazine's "Skateboarder of the Year" trophy in 2010.

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