We were lucky to catch up with Don Tashman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Don, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Our primary mission is to “spread stoke.” This means to spread the passion, enjoyment and love that we each harbor and which skateboarding and action sports helps engender. This concept of spreading stoke starts internally and spreads externally. It manifests in our products, our marketing, our focus on community building and our collaborative approach with our competitors. I like to refer to it as a “virtuous pyramid scheme.” We spread love and those that are attracted to it spread the love further.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I grew up  skateboarding in Los Angeles. I fell in love with snowboarding in the early 90s. I went to college in New York City and spent most of college building long skateboards to emulate the experience of snowboarding on the streets. After some unexpected success during the dot com boom of the late 90s I moved back to LA, and turned to my hobby into a business.

Initially based out of my families clothing business in downtown LA, I spent two years developing longboard skateboards by applying snowboard technology to skateboards. We launched our first board in June 2002 under the Loaded brand. The name Loaded comes from the fact that the intial boards and most of our current boards are raised up (or “cambered”) and therefore preloaded with energy. In 2008, we launched our wheel line, Orangatang Wheels.

Our mission is to expand the nature what skateboard can be. We don’t build it’s already been done, but rather constantly seek to innovate and create important and meaningful new experiences using skateboard as a vehicle we’ve helped pioneer multiple different disciplines of skateboarding and a primary focus for us right now is on skateboarding as transportation. There’s still a ton left to be explored and it’s extremely exciting period for us and for skatebording.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Back in the spring of 2002 we were finalizing our initial skateboard deck, offering, the Vanguard. I went out skateboarding with my buddy Ariel and, because of the outline shape of the board, his wheels hit his deck, causing wheel bite, which threw him off. He was fine, but it bummed me out.
The next morning I discussed with my dad who was an engineer, turned businessman, but had no experience with skateboarding. His reaction was to build wheel cut-aways. My response was that you can’t build wheel cut-aways. Nobody’s ever done it and would be contrary to skate aesthetics and culture.
Over the next few days, I thought about it and decided to test out the idea. Initially, I used the jigsaw to remove the minimal amount of material. I’ve been tested designs with more tangent or curving arcs and found that not only did they prevent wheel bite, but they also allowed for a more consistent and higher performance flex pattern.

We launched our first board, the Vanguard a month or two later. Initial response was that it was weird looking and highly unusual. However, that shape (and wheel cut aways in general) has now become one of the primary standard shapes in longboard skateboarding.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I was very lucky in that prior to starting my business I had worked for a dot com in the late 90s and received stock options. I made about $5o,ooo somewhat unexpectedly and had already saved about $50k from previous work ( in 2000 dollars). That money was the seed money to start my company and help me get me going for the first couple years. Additionally, my father had a clothing company in downtown LA and brought me in to work for him part-time and to start my business out of that space with no overhead costs. I was able to build the business for five years fully self-funded. At that point, the business started to generate profits and I’ve been able to reinvest my profits back into the business to continue to grow it and not need outside capital. In the future, that may change, but I would highly prefer not to owe anyone any money. It creates a much more complicated business structure, and changes the decision-making processes and often will force more desperate decisions.
I recognize not everyone has this luxury, but I highly recommend trying to be as self-funded as possible, and trying to minimize debt. This allows me to sleep in night and, once again, it allows me to make business decisions that are more in line with the long-term health of the company and not short term financial needs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.loadedboards.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loadedboards
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loadedboards
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1148986/admin/dashboard/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@loadedboards
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@loadedboards

Image Credits

Ethan Cochard