Emericas, Leather Jackets, & Skateboarding
This past Sunday, my first favorite pro skater, Andrew Reynolds, left his shoe sponsor, Emerica, after 20 years where he put out several legendary parts.
To introduce Reynolds for those of you who are not familiar, he’s the owner of Baker Skateboards, Thrasher’s SOTY in 1998, the reason why many kids learn and do frontside flips, and an overall good human.
However, as Baker 2G and Vice’s Epicly Later’d piece on him and his OCD reveal, it took him some time to be the person that he is today. While I have never met Reynolds and have only had sparse interactions with him on Instagram such as asking him how to get back 360s better and him responding “pop and then scoop.” Still was super stoked to get advice from the guy who influenced my skating a lot when I was first learning.
Besides skating, Reynolds also influenced a lot of my fashion choices in the late 2000s and early 2010s (Is that even the appropriate way to refer to this decade?) In the late 90s and early 2000s, it seemed that his outfit of choice while skating, even when frontside flipping in the the Love Fountain, was a leather jacket, a white dress shirt, black jeans, and a pair of Black Emericas.
I can definitely say that at a certain point in my early teens, I wore the same style — the white dress shirt, and black jeans. But the main thing that made me feel like Reynolds, was definitely the shoes. (Well also wearing the clothing brand, Altamont Apparel, where he was head designer.)
For the most part, I only bought Emericas to skate in and even when I thrifted, I found a pair of Emerica Hsu’s for 20 bucks and swooped them up, no questions asked.
The appeal in Emerica came in part because my first skate video I ever watched was Baker 3. In that video, most of the team rode for Emerica and they were jumping off the biggest things, doing some of the biggest rails, but also the video showed personalities and hijinx which added to the high level of skating. It was only natural as a kid growing up in America who started idolizing the whole Baker team to want to wear Emericas, specifically anything from Reynolds.
In the last 13 years, I’ve bought 6 pairs of Emericas (4 of them Reynold’s models). It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s a lot to me because even though I would buy other shoes such as Vans, Huf, and Fallen to chill in, I would always buy Emericas to actually skate. It took me a long time to even want to start skating Nikes and Adidas. Partially because of the corporate buy in of these companies into skateboarding, but also because they’re very expensive.
Side note, Emericas are quality skate shoes that last a long time, but you don’t break the bank spending money on them. These were the shoes that most people were wearing in the early and late 2000s, but now, I barely see them at the skate park. It’s a sad thing, but it makes sense in my thinking if you read my second article.
While I have talked a little bit about Dylan Rieder’s influence on skateboarding as the main reason skaters can even wear designer labels, it was Reynolds and the Baker crew in the late 90s and early 2000s who were already wearing fashion forward items such as diamond rings, fitted caps, slim fitting jeans, and many leather jackets. But the one thing that was different was that for the majority of the time, they were wearing Emericas.
But over the years, the team that I knew as Emerica (mainly read as Baker) was starting to get smaller and smaller as big names on the team started to leave such as Heath Kitchart (AWS), Ed Templeton (Toy Machine), Aaron Suski (Zoo York), Jim Greco, Erik Ellington, Bryan Herman, and now finally the Boss.
Even for a second, the monster child of a skater, Kader was riding for Emerica, but as soon as his part in Young Emericans dropped, he switched over to Vans.
I looked at Emerica’s home page today at their team page and noticed that they have a grid laid out to display their members. Sadly, the 4 x 3 grid isn’t filled all the way with 12 people anymore after Reynold’s Departure. It’s a weird time in skateboarding because I always thought Reynolds would have stayed with Emerica forever.
I mean, I look at Heath Kitchart who retired from pro skating after Stay Gold, but he served as Emerica’s ™ for a bit. However, Reynolds isn’t retiring. It’s not like this popular ad that popped up in I think 2007 or 2008.
But what will become of Emerica?
Let’s take it to the comments section of Reynold’s IG post on Sunday.
Reynolds = Emerica but Emerica — Reynolds = ?. A lot of comments say that Emerica is doomed and is over. They even responded back.
In the last 10 years, there were a lot of shifts and a lot of changes in sponsorships. For a moment, a good chunk of skaters were shifting to DC. Chris Cole left his long time sponsor, Zero for Plan B and he also just left Plan B a few days ago too. AVE and Dill started Fucking Awesome. Prod left Plan B to start Primitive. Geoff Rowley left Flip to start his own brand.
It’s an interesting time in skateboarding because everyone is starting their own companies and really good skaters can get sponsored and live pretty well without even having a board company. Examples of this are Chris Chann, Luis Moraga, and Garrett Giner.
Reynolds is 41 right now. He’s still going strong. Still jumping off shit. And just dropped a part with Lotties Skateshop wearing Vans Kwalks. No confirmation on whether or not he’s skating Vans only. Whenever someone leaves a company, there’s always a lot of speculation, especially since Nike and Adidas have money. Especially when it comes to Reynolds who is a street skating pioneer. Nike has some of the big names such as Koston, Brian Anderson, and Lance Mountain. Adidas has Daewon Song, Marc Johnson, Mark Gonzales and recently, Dill. It would be a bit uncanny if Reynolds went to skate for one of these companies because I remember watching a video of him saying Prod was the only skater who could skate for companies such as Mountain Dew and Nike, but still make it look cool. In part, there’s some truth to that. But also, the only time I’ve ever seen Reynolds in a pair of nikes was when he was doing an interview with Altamont Apparel at his home with the ramp in the backyard. They weren’t skateboard shoes, they were black running shoes.
It doesn’t seem likely to me that Reynolds would ride for Nike or Adidas because it seems like he moves based on how true a company is to skating. His most recent move was to RVCA because of how they treat their riders such as Zach Allen and Kader (who I think only wears Supreme now). Based on the Lotties video, I think he’s probably just going to skate Vans either sponsored or not sponsored. It’s a similar situation to Chris Cole and Austyn Gilette who recently left Huf. They both are wearing Vans, but there’s no talk on whether or not they are officially on the team.
Frankly, I believe Emerica is still going to do well. It is true that a number of core brands have taken hits or don’t exist anymore like Adio because of larger companies like Nike and Adidas. However, some of these companies can come back after going out of business like Fallen. Now I don’t want Emerica to go out of business because they’re a core brand and because they sent me stickers after I wrote them a nice letter in the 7th grade. There is a chance they might become like brands like Globe and DVS, still on the skate scene, but they still have riders like Colin Provost, Kevin Spanky Long, Jon Dickson, and Justin Figueroa.
From a design/branding perspective, the influencers associated with a brand really can determine the longevity of the brand. Looking at Puma, Rihanna is the Creative Director, Selena Gomez, Nipsey Hussle, and Usain Bolt have partnerships with them. The brand is doing really well in stocks as well right now. But remember, Puma is trying to reach everyone, especially Gen-Z. Emerica is targeting skateboarders. At the end of the day, as much as I would want Emerica to market themselves to not just skaters, these are skateboarders. Skaters on Emerica are not doing it for the fame. They’re doing it for the love of skateboarding. While it’s true that skaters do need a paycheck because they need to eat and live, choosing to ride for a core brand company knowing that they won’t make a lot is dedication and love to skateboarding. Am I saying skaters who ride for bigger companies are selling out, a little bit. But at the end of the day, a brotha gotta eat.
