By Aaron Otis, Marilyn Bloomberg, Kelli Carmack, Erik Mishiyev, and Vanessa Rivera
“We take the skate to the people.”
This is the mantra of Local Longboard Company, a locally-renowned skateboard business in St. Petersburg, Fl.
Frequent visitors to downtown St. Petersburg may be familiar with the company being on Central Avenue. But, Jon Stine, one of the original business owners, sold that store location Aug. 1, 2017. He realized a more cost-effective manner of running the business was to transition into using a van and promoting it near local events.
The van is located right outside the Stine Custom Woodworks LLC. warehouse which is in the Child’s Park area of Midtown. With the help of his new business partner, Aron Retkes, Stine handcrafts their boards for their customers.
Decorated with brightly colored skateboard trucks hung on the doors, the van houses displays with a variety of different types of wheels to choose from in clear plastic cases. Beyond the initial displays are the actual longboards.
Ranging from small to large, the boards line the inside of the truck. Some are painted, and others are polished to a shine.
The smallest boards, called Penny boards, nestle in the bottom of the board racks while the more expensive boards find home directly above them. A single board can take six to eight hours to manufacture.
“You can’t buy a bicycle without trying it first, same with a longboard,” says Stine. That is why the van supplies demo boards for customers to try and figure out which one suits them best before buying it.
The Local Longboard Company prides itself on having its own niche in the St. Petersburg community.
“We try to deal with other local businesses as much as possible when it comes to material and art supplies. Part of the gig is supporting other smaller businesses,” says Stine.
The company has been at the starting line of the “Keep St. Pete Local” movement; they still believe in that mission but have started branching off into a more regional sense. They have taken their business as far out as Clearwater and Sarasota, but they still call Child’s Park home.
When asked if they would ever expand their business, Retkes replied by saying “If this stuff starts selling like hotcakes and we need a fleet of five trucks that cover the whole state, then yes, we are all about that.”
Since going mobile, the pair believes in going to the customer rather than having the customer go to them. Their demographic reaches nearly everyone, but most of their sales come from college students and adults.
Stine and Retkes are constantly on the prowl for new events that they can take part of, whether it’s an exhibition or a midnight market.
“All we have to do is ask ‘will you have us?’ and that’s our store,” says Retkes.