We recently connected with Dorsa Vaziri and have shared our conversation below.

Dorsa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I’ve been skating since I was a little kid, going to Semoran Skateway and doing laps and dances around the rink while my mom worked from her laptop in the cafe. Fast forward to 2016/2017 when I found my old skates in the garage and started keeping them in the trunk of my car, just in case I ever wanted to roll through a trail or smooth neighborhood. After finding out countless times that going to the gym was not my favorite way to stay active, I found a few places to roll around and started practicing. I was amazed at how much control and balance I had leftover from my childhood, but as soon as I saw the Chet Faker music video for “Gold” I just wanted to learn even more. Soon after this, I discovered roller skating in skateparks through the Moxi founder Estrojen, or Michelle, and in 2019 I attended Moxi Skate Camp in Woodward Pennsylvania with my three OG skate friends from Orlando. We ventured to this insane facility with a workshop or class on every type of skating and were immersed in a huge skate community we didn’t even know was this big, and it soon grew even bigger throughout the course of the pandemic. As soon as I experienced this, I wanted to share that feeling with everyone I was skating with in Orlando. I had already started my hype page for my friends on wheels, but I started to think of ways to further my involvement with the community, so I created. a skate guide for Orlando, my friends started a Facebook group to get people together, I started doing research on how to fix and maintenance skates, I started dreaming up events or skate parties, and it just started falling into place, slowly but surely. I wanted to offer a unique experience, something genuine and positive and a way to connect. Skating can be a personal journey, a social activity, a means for exercise, a way to get around, it’s just so accessible to a wide range of people and wanting to bring people together after a hard time of being apart really started to drive me towards making this passion and hobby into something more sustainable for the long run.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

WOW Rolling started as a shout out page for me to show off my friends on wheels and to see it come to life the way it has is my proudest accomplishment! The way its grown has shown me what the word community really means. I grew up rolling around the rink most weekends and probably celebrated four birthdays in a row at Semoran Skateway. When I picked up skating again as an adult, I felt like there weren’t many options for me to skate with others unless I already knew them. So thankfully friends of friends starting connecting me to skaters they knew and our crew was formed. As a forever student, always learning and absorbing new information, this is something that skating provides me over and over again, so when I started really feeling confident in my abilities on flat ground, I wanted to share that with others. I offered donate-to-skate lessons, where skaters would show me their receipt of support to an organization and in exchange receive an hour skate lesson. This helped me practice my teaching ability and learn what a newer skater is looking to start. There was a need for a quad specific shop in Orlando, something to be a hub for new and seasoned skaters alike to find new gear, routine maintenance, skate advice, and beyond. I had this dream of operating a skate shop but thought it would be something way down the road, but as the need in the area grew, so did my motivation and I started doing maintenance meet ups in the parking lot at my previous job, Whippoorwill Beerhouse. I started to hear what local skaters were wanting to see in the shops around town and immediately started looking into ways to create this space. I watched every video, read through every online thread and practiced building skates for months to be able to provide a full scope of services in our area. After months of planning, question asking, learning and growing, I was lucky enough to open a pop up shop next to my friends at Bark Orlando. We provide skate services like maintenance, custom skate building, boot to plate mounting and we’ve got retail from skaters for skaters. WOW Rolling’s pop up shop is also home to unique skate accessories, small business creations and gear from different skate brands.
For me, as soon as I let go of the idea of being the best and just making it happen, I started to feel the wheels rolling. Instead of worrying about it being perfect before it’s seen, I just tried starting and seeing what happens from there. The feedback I receive from my community helps to shape my decisions from meet ups to products I’m carrying in the shop because I value the things that make us all different and I love how roller skating is the thing that brings us together.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

For me, at the beginning, I wasn’t really worried about building up a following. My page was meant to be a place to showcase the badass people I know who happen to also roll around on wheels, whether it was roller skates, skateboards, motorcycles, bicycles, etc. I have a background in working in social media with different brands and companies, so I knew how I wanted my page to look and feel but I didn’t have the stress of “having to” making posts for growth, it is just for fun! When I started showing more of my skate progress and our meet ups were becoming more frequent, my page pivoted more towards roller skating, but the theme of movement, creating positive environments and sharing joy with others was still there. Honestly, my social media growth would not have even started without my friends and skate community being psyched on what I was doing or working on. We share each other’s clips, we share each other’s art, we’re always showing off our friends; if it wasn’t for them, no one would know about WOW Rolling.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I’m so lucky and grateful to say that WOW Rolling is my full time job, but that doesn’t mean it’s my only job. I’ve always been someone with multiple jobs or different streams of income. I used to bartend, I handled social media accounts, I’ve been a barista, server, receptionist, and I’ve worked in so many different industries. So when I finally made the plunge to doing WOW Rolling full time, I was already working multiple “jobs” within the skating realm, like teaching lessons and classes, handling events with other skate groups and the local community, running the retail side of things while also building custom skates and skate repairs. I didn’t start doing all of this at once, but over time, I created more and more value for myself within what I was doing that I was able to make myself busy enough to leave my other job. I also had to have a huge mindset shift to believe in myself that this was even possible. I was worried if I left my bartending job that I wouldn’t be able to sustain myself, but thankfully with the support of our Orlando skating scene and the joy that skating brings to others and the hard work me and my friends have put towards our space in this scene, we’re here to stay and play! I’ve had to learn a lot about self discipline and learning through challenges, pivoting ideas and accepting feedback and help from others. One of the biggest milestones for me was acquiring the pop up shop space, this is really when it felt like the skate shop dreams are coming true and building! But we’re just getting started :)

Contact Info:

• Website: wowrolling.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wowrolling/
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076232239032
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYka_jqwbO3VRul6tADKGFw

Image Credits
Helmeted at the Skatepark – Gustavo Vargas Crazy Legs Drills – Harry Aaron (@harryjaaron) Blue Group Shot – No credit Four Friends Group – Ashley Hallenbeck Custom Skates in front of Skate shop – WOW Rolling aka Dorsa Vaziri Skatepark Group Shot – Christian aka Visual Stim (@visual.stim)