Girl Skate Cos. on The Gen Y Lawyer Podcast

If you are just here for the skateboards, you may wonder why I’m linking to a lawyering podcast. Well, when Nicole Abboud invited me to be on The Gen Y Lawyer Podcast, she asked about GirlSkateCos. We spent a few minutes talking about why I started this website, skateboarding at the 2020 Summer Olympics, and more. It’s just about 6 minutes, and this link will take you straight to the skateboarding stuff, which starts at 43:36:

I also transcribed a bit of it below.

Why I Started GirlSkateCos

Nicole: So it’s a skating website that lists skating brands owned by women.

Sam: Yeah, I was trying—this is important to me for a variety of reasons, but I love skateboarding and skateboarding is sort of in a moment where it is becoming more socially aware, but it is still dominated by 14-year-old boys and their interests. And so I wanted to shop women-owned companies and couldn’t find any directory and so I reached out to [Skate Like a Girl] just saying do you know about this and they said no I don’t know anything. And so I said maybe I’ll make one and they said go ahead, that’s a great way to be an ally, so I did.

So now there’s a directory of women-owned skateboard companies. And I try to keep it up to date but the sad reality is there aren’t that many. And I have resolved to try … I want to see more diversity in skateboarding, especially as its profile rises with the next Olympics.

On the Future of GirlSkateCos

Nicole: Do you see any entrepreneurial dreams for this skateboarding website, or it’s purely because you wanted that information out there?

Sam: I only did it because I want the information out there. And, honestly, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me, as a cis white man, to capitalize on the hard work that women who own skateboarding companies are doing. It feels like it would be unfair of me to try and, you know, vulture off of that.

…

I’m just purely trying to create a tool for my own use and for others’ use here, because I think it would feel weird and I think I would feel like I was siphoning money off that would be better spent on those products. So I shop the companies I feature and I encourage other people to do it. The minimal promotion I’m doing for it is just to try and get it out there and promote women-owned skateboard companies, not to promote myself.

Published on August 22nd, 2019. Last updated June 28th, 2020.