Circa 2003 the internet wasn’t what it is today, but I remember scouring it for leads, most likely in skateboarding forums such as Skull and Bones Skateboarding and possibly Sleestak.net. Of course I had magazines too, and possibly some issues of Transworld Skateboarding Business, the industry publication that Transworld used to put out. I can’t recall if I started getting that magazine before or after we started Cold War. I’ll have to go down to my basement and check some of my issues. (Just got back from the basement.) I have TWS Biz magazines dating back as early as April 2001 in my collection, listed as Volunme 12, #5, although the October issue of the same years says volume 13, #2 so go figure. I must have been getting TWS Biz in service of being a smartass at Skate and Annoy. They gave away subscriptions for free if you were smart enough to pretend that you had some sort of skateboard related business.
I can’t exactly remember why the chose our supplier. It might have been a recommendation. If not for that server crash I might still have some old emails to look up those early transactions. What I can recall is, we ended up picking the efficiently named Service Board Supply as our vendor of choice. Sadly it looks like they might have gone out of business. I think I had gleaned somewhere that they used to make boards for Tony Magnusson’s company or something, and that was at least one connection to the past that we could maybe rely on. They certainly weren’t as big as Paul Schmitt’s operations so maybe there was a chance they would actually call us back. That’s not to imply that PS Stix blew us off. To be clear we never approached them as we figured they were out of our league. SBS on the other hand, seemed like a modest operation. I recall (incorrectly or not) a small black line art ad like something you might see in the yellow pages. Sifting through The TWS Biz mags from around this time, so far I have not been able to find that ad, if it even existed.
Below: Transworld Business, April 2001 edition. “Powell turns 25″ on the cover. The Magazine is a gigantic format, 10.5″ x 15”. On the right: A typical spread.
In any case, I managed to get Mario from SBS on the phone. SBS was at the time located in Pomona, Ca. I didn’t pull that off the top of my head, that’s why their listing says in the OEM manufacturers section. There were some slight communication issues, but Mario’s English was definitely better than my nonexistent Spanish., and he came across a very likable and friendly guy, although we would never meet in person. The minimum order at time was 50 decks, and he was willing to do custom shapes. There was some sort of setup fee to get our shape digitized for the CNC machine they were using to cut out the decks, but it was either modest or we were possibly desperate to have our own custom deck, so we went for it.
Our first deck was going to be a model for the Band Naked Raygun. We figured their brand name recognition would allow us to confidently sell out a small run, even if we had to peddle them to our friends.
Next Step: Work out a shape and a graphic.
