What’s the Deal? With WKND Skateboards

While cruising around at our favorite tradeshow, Agenda Long Beach, we checked in with the boys at WKND Skateboards. We walked up on a re-creation of the garage that WKND works out of complete with family photos, a garage door, and classic childhood entertainment (an N64 and a box of VHS tapes). Between games of Mario Kart, we caught up with WKND CEO Grant Yansura to learn all deepest darkest secrets about the independent brand in a new segment called “What’s The Deal?”.

What’s the deal with how WKND got started? WKND got started with some of my friends driving around skating, stuck in traffic, talking shit on starting our own brand and how we thought it would be cool. We figured why not go for it?

What’s the deal with the name? We used to make web clips called Weekendtage and those were just all fun and joking around. This is a mix of serious skating mixed with our sense of humor so it’s an extension of that.

What’s the deal with the van?That used to be my mom’s van and then she sold it back to the dealership but then I realized that I wanted it so I actually bought it off the dealership, kept it in the family. It’s been going for 10 years on skate trips all over. We just hit 200,000 miles and it’s going strong! It’s our first office.

What’s the deal with your influences?The influences for the brand are sitting underneath that VCR. I would say… . Our influences are what we grew up on, and what we thought was cool in skateboarding when we were coming up.

What’s the deal with the square? We came up with that logo on a camping trip. We were drawing on different logos and realized it has four letters and it fit perfectly in a square. Simple.

What’s the deal with the skater-owned brand movement?I think people got over being told what should be cool and they just wanted to take it into their own hands. Do what they want to do. With the marketing resources everyone has with the internet, it’s too easy to do it on your own.

What’s the deal with Eric Koston?That one confused a lot of people. The deal with that is, that it was basically a guest board. It was his idea to ride for WKND for a weekend. He put him on the team on Friday and kicked him off on Monday and then confused a hell of a lot of people. People still think he rides for us.

What’s the deal with The Weeknd?People ask me that a lot. Sometimes I just go with it and say that it’s a The Weeknd shirt and it’s my favorite band forever.

What’s the deal with your love of shipping? We were just trying to come with a color scheme for the next logo deck series and we’ve been dealing with a lot of shipping companies lately and everyone can relate to it. They’re all cool colors so we ran with it.