Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Eddie Middleton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Eddie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers

I have quite a few crazy stories, positive and negative. But I’d rather bring positive stories into this world rather than negative.

My business phone rang, and I thought that it could be a spam call considering most of them are these days. I remember because it was midday and I was at Walmart or something getting my car fixed. Long story short it ended up being employees from the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, and they were asking if we specifically can make an order for some custom boards for a special guest, who was pulling up for a show within the next month. That special guest was Dave Chappelle.. I told them I couldn’t do it at first because of the time crunch, but when they said his name, there was no way I wasn’t going to make it work. Me and my artist and distributor got together and put the order up and got it shipped out before his show. On top of that me and my artist got to see him for free. Daze Skateboards did a Collab for Dave Chappelle! Couldn’t believe it!

Eddie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I moved around a few times due to being an army brat, but I ended up finding out shortly that Texas was my home. I’ve been skating since the year 2000 and I’ve been sponsored since 2005, I started my own board company in 2016 and I’ve been having fun with it ever since so I guess I’ve been involved for a while. We only sell the skateboard decks and apparel and we try to focus on staying inside the skate shops and ordering our product online. I have a very active team that I sponsor and we put out videos constantly throughout each year. My focus is to put on skateboarders that are “underrated” and have just as much talent as any amateur or professional that isn’t getting the exposure they want or need. I just want our fans to get pumped off of our videos and skate our product!

I’m proud of my team for skating their butts off not only for the love, but for my company! I feel like the state of Texas really rocks with us and I can’t wait for everyone else in this world to see that!

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I didn’t have much before I started so I didn’t have much to start with! I was working minimum wage at Pizza Hut (about $7.50/hr) and had a few side hustles and stacked up around $500. I remember the day that I decided I was gonna quit and start a company. It was spring break during SXSW and I was skating at some random park with the homies in Austin. I called the store to tell them I wasn’t coming back. That whole month I was writing down names and looking up distributors then I finally came to realize that I had the name and the idea in front of my nose the whole time. Me and my friends made a little skate clique back when we were little skate rats and I want to keep that name alive while we’re still skateboarding. Daze was the name and our story was the idea. Eventually, I found a known distributor and got my first graphic out with the help of one of my best friends by using his old drawings. The first 25 boards sold within 30 days. I bought another 25 and kept going!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Sometime between 2022 and 2023 I ordered boards from another distributor just to see how they would go and to increase our inventory. This would’ve gave us the most product we’ve ever had at that point in time. They said it would be a 6 to 8 week turn around time, which was normal. Eventually, that became twice as long and I started getting worried and started blowing them up on the phone and emails daily. They kept beating around the bush until eventually I got an email back from someone else that said they were taking over the company and here’s the spinner, they filed for bankruptcy. I ended up $1300 in the hole. Luckily my income tax return was coming in within the next couple of months and I had just enough to re-order boards from my normal distributor. At this time, Covid was popular and our boards were generating a lot of sales so we needed them pretty badly.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.dazeskateboards.com
• Instagram: @dazeskateboards
• Facebook: @dazeskateboards
• Youtube: @dazeskateboards
• Other: TikTok: @dazestixmo

Image Credits

Wardo Photo
Timbo Stix
Swantre P.