Flip Skateboards
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| Industry | Skateboarding |
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| Founded | England 1991 |
| Headquarters | California |
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Key people
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| Website | www.flipskateboards.com |
| Really Sorry | |
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VHS cover
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| Directed by | Ewan Bowman |
| Produced by |
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| Cinematography | Ewan Bowman |
| Edited by | Ewan Bowman |
| Distributed by | Flip Skateboards |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Flip Skateboards is a United States (US)-based international skateboard company, co-owned by Jeremy Fox and professional skateboarder Geoff Rowley. The company produces skateboard hard goods (decks, wheels, bearings, completes, and hardware), soft goods (T-shirts, tops, sweatshirts, hats, beanies, and socks), DVDs, and accessories (skateboard wax, sunglasses, key covers, banners, "power sliders", and mugs). The brand is distributed globally by US company NHS Inc.
The brand was originally named "Deathbox" and Rowley joined the company while this name still existed.
Flip moved from the United Kingdom (UK) to California, US in July 1994. Jeremy Fox, Ian Deacon and Geoff Rowley arrived in the US first, followed by team riders Tom Penny and Rune Glifberg in the following year. At the time of the relocation, the team consisted of four professional riders: Penny, Rowley, Glifberg and Andy Scott. Rowley revealed in a 2006 interview that the company and its riders received significant support from professional skateboarder Ed Templeton, who owned his own company, Toy Machine. Rowley stated that Templeton and his company "opened their arms to us, gave us local support, and had our back. Any ignorance was small and only served to make us stronger…..and faster!!!" Despite the brand's foundation in the US, Rowley has stated:
All the company owners are still British citizens, one runs a large percentage of our workday directly from England for the last five years, I would say that makes us British until death. People can consider us whatever they want but saying untrue negative things regarding these matters is just downright childish. The things Flip/Deathbox did for England and the English skate scene should not be sneered at ... there is no other way to get to the level we are at, without first accepting where skateboarding was born from, and respecting that all the mags are driven from here also, it is hard to gain friends if you aren’t visible.
In 2012, Rowley reflected upon the company's move to the US:
We were a totally new company moving to a foreign country, and, ah, I don't we kind of expected it to go "boom", and just fly right in. We had no expectations; we didn't really know that many people, and we actually just wanted to skate, really. Because we grew up dreaming of living in California and getting to wake up every day and go out and skate without it raining. Ah, and I think that was something that, like, all of the guys, when we first moved here, you know, Rune [Glifberg] and Tom [Penny], that was something that, you couldn't hold us back in that respect. I'd just turned eighteen, Tom was seventeen, ah, neither of us had lived away from home, you know. We'd moved to a foreign country where we didn't know anybody. Nobody. Ah, we had no money, we didn't have any cars, ah, alls we had was the board that we had; we couldn't go breaking those. we couldn't afford to, at the time, starting a company, we couldn't afford to run through ten boards a month ... Like myself, personally, I skated a lot with Ed [Templeton], like, every day, because he lived, like, right across the road from me.
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Wikipedia