How TikTok And Skater Girls Are Sending Skateboard Sales Off The Wall

"My orange skateboard was plastered in peeling stickers and a dark layer of dust when I found it in my childhood bedroom last May. I hadn't touched it in seven years, but it called to me at that moment. I needed to get out of the house, have fun, even feel the thrill of a different kind of danger — one that had nothing to do with a virus. My 25-year-old sister, Frances, needed it, too. We stepped on our boards, pushed off, and in the air between the rushing pavement below us and the sunset sky above, we were absolutely free.

A lot of people were craving that feeling in 2020.

"Skateboarding saw a growth in sales like it hadn't seen in years," says Jeff Kendall, who skated professionally and is now president and Chief Marketing Officer of NHS Inc., a top skateboard manufacturer and distributor.

Companies like his have spent the past year scrambling to meet a monstrous appetite for parts and boards. For a while there, with so many skaters out on the streets, there was actually a skateboard shortage at shops, just like with bikes. According to Action Watch, a data provider for the skate and surf industries, sales of skateboarding equipment in the U.S. had increased 118% by last June alone, compared with a year earlier".