Nice Kicks: I assume you are more of a long board rider than a short boarder. Is that correct?
Alon Karpman: Oh, definitely. I grew up snowboarding. Then, I moved to the east coast and snow is crap. You get ice, then it melts and you get slush. So it?s crap all around, and there are no big mountains, only little hills. So you end up not going as much. When you?re used to going all the time you crave it. So I found the long board. Long board technology has gone way up since I was in college. It was just a flat, hard piece of wood. These things now have composites, and they kind of have suspensions. You can go 50, 60, 70, 80 miles per hour on these things. It?s insane. The market is going to open up. Right now, sales of short boards and long boards are about equal. Short boards market is just driving the soft goods more, because you can do those amazing acrobatics that you can look at and your eyes pop open. But most people can?t do it at that level.? You don?t have the time, or you don?t grow up doing it. With long boarding, anybody can jump on and enjoy themselves. Go out riding and you get that adrenaline rush or whatever you get out of riding. You just love it. It?s just a different sensation.
Nice Kicks: We first thought the ELBY shoe was made for the SkateCycle, but that doesn?t seem to be the case. What was the initial motivation for making a shoe designed for a long board?
Alon Karpman: The SkateCycle is more like an innovation. It?s an invention. Good for flat ground, but it?s not something you ride to go to work, long distance, or with speed. It?s kind of a fun carving machine. Nothing hits every spot. Nothing will replace the skateboard or do what a long board does. So the way I hit it up is, if you go to my?website, I show the pipeline of what we?re doing, which is “4, 3, 2, none.” – something with four wheels, three wheels, two wheels, no wheels. So, four wheels is the long board that should have come out already, but I have to keep it at the level of what people are expecting. I can?t just put it out a regular long board. It?s has to be with materials from outer space, and it has to be amazing. So I?m working on it. I have some crazy outer space materials. It just really makes it hard to prototype and work with. It?s not just slapping wood together. It?s like slapping synthetic carbon fiber and all this crazy stuff that no one has done before. So, it takes longer. I wanted the board to come out before the shoe, but it didn?t happen. It?s a board shoe though. I had a lot of people at the booth at?Agenda?look at the shoe. Short boarders/regular skaters look at the shoe and automatically go, ?Hey look it?s like an Ollie patch” because I?ve got that rubber overlay over the sides. So, the short-boarders are calling it the ?Ollie patch,? and a long-boarder would call it a ?grind patch.? So, it?s kind of working for me both ways.
Nice Kicks: Was that intentional, or were you gearing specifically towards long boards in the original process?
Alon Karpman: In the initial process, I made it to skate. It was geared more toward long boarding, but, in general, when you skate, you skate. People in long boarding are still going to ?Ollie.” You want to encompass everything that you do, but in reality you can?t push something like it?s the next greatest skate shoe. A lot of skaters like the padding, but long boarders don?t. They want a comfortable shoe that has the board feel where they can go long distances. This one is super comfortable. When you wear the leather one, it?s like a sock. You feel the board. It is right under you, but you still are not going to wear it out in one session like you do others.
Nice Kicks: As with most things, change or innovation is not always easily received. Was that the case for the ELBY shoe?
Alon Kapman: I didn?t know what to expect, but it?s nice that no one hates on it. I think what the show (Agenda) really showed me, is that if it?s sitting on the shelf at any shop, this one stands out. It?s not more of the same. It has its own distinctive look. I didn?t realize that when Michael Ditullo?(former?Nike, Jordan, and Converse?designer) was designing it, he really had something you could start a brand on, something that?s recognizable. When I put out a shoe, it?s going to hit those design signals where people will automatically say, ?Hey that?s a Brooklyn Workshop shoe.? They are not going to confuse it. If you slap a?Vans tag on some of the others, no one is going to say that it doesn?t belong in the Vans lineup. It fits in. They all kind of look the same. They have a similar look because it is a vulcanized shoe. This is a vulcanized shoe that has its own look, and that?s where I feel we did it. We got it.
Brooklyn Workshop ELBY – White/Green
