We were lucky to catch up with Matthew Troetti recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Matthew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

At Never Ever Boards we like to meet everyone where they’re at. Upon someone entering into our store for a new board we ask exploratory questions to guide us in the best way to serve them and ensure that we provide the very best service every time to every individual specific of their wants and needs.

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

My name is Matt Troetti. I am the owner and sole operator of Never Ever Boards. I began Never Ever Boards in May of 2018 with a dream to add some enjoyment and fun to our area. I feel like a name plays a huge role in any endeavor marking the theme of the journey and as a company. I purposely named the company Never Ever Boards to commemorate that. Never Ever Boards -to never ever be bored, we’re an adventure brand, and never ever land, because when you embrace outdoor sports you stay young forever.

Our approach is different compared to many other skate shops and sports & outdoor retailers, we instead choose to meet our customers where they are at exploring their goals, and matching them with the tools they need to succeed. Starting out with anything new can be overwhelming so we make sure to make everything as easy going, and simple as possible to make the transition into this lifestyle as easy for someone as possible.

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

A few years into our business we were tasked with a major loss for our community, and what could’ve been a pretty big setback for our retail store. Hurricane Isaias swept through in 2020 destroying our local skate park a mile from our store. This was a big blow since skateboarding in our area accounts for much of our business. We worked diligently, daily, fighting to get our skate park rebuilt. We pressured both the community and the council to make this possible. We showed up to every town hall meeting regarding the skatepark, and every design and implementation meeting thereafter. This wasn’t an easy battle since we were fighting up against, the cost for sand renourishment for our beach that was depleted of sand due to the heavy storm surge, pickle ball enthusiasts pushing for additional funding, and a group of people fighting for funding to renovate our local rec center. Despite all the opposition we pushed forward. We formed a petition and received over 2,000 signatures in a month, we reached out to publications, we pushed the story into the news, and we made sure promises were made by our governing body on air so they had to keep their promises. After two years, we had it approved in the previous years budgetary meeting to put the new skate park on the agenda, we got $300,000 approved to rebuild the skate park, an all concrete park that will no longer be threatened by storms, with construction finishing this year (2023) with an even better skatepark then we ever had in the history of our island.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As a business you must remain malleable and understand you created a system that’s constantly evolving through many factors you are unable to fully control. In the beginning paddle boarding was what started Never Ever Boards. Popularity was strong and this relatively new sport was trending more and more each year. Until setting up the store in 2019 we would have never guessed the need for skateboarding in the area and that it would eventually overtake the store and become our main product line up. This was a natural evolution that couldn’t be stopped aligning us with a need in the area that was presented. We matched this need and did our best to provide the very best way we knew how to this community.

Contact Info:

• Website: Nevereverboards.com
• Instagram: Nevereverboards
• Facebook: Facebook.com/nevereverboards
• Twitter: Twitter.com/nevereverboards
• Youtube: YouTube.com/nevereverboards
• Yelp: Yelp.com/nevereverboards