Below is the unedited text for a Pierre Andre interview I did back in March 2007 for Sidewalk #128. Click on the images to read the proper version (I'm actually not sure if there are any differences!).
That intro is true, by the way - its not just there to please the advertisers. He seemed like a rad guy and it was a shame that I had to do it under one of those horrible 'in and out' PR interview days.
Oh - and the GVR we were talking about never happened as the people who run Prissick Plaza decided that no one will ever run events there*. Smart, eh?
*At least, that's what the deal seems to be these days.
I’ve just left this interview with thoughts racing around my head like crazy. I got myself prepared for this interview as I would for anyone. Badly. En route I started to worry. I mean, this wasn’t a First Light – This was Pierre Andre Senizergues; President and CEO of Soletech; the umbrella company for Etnies, éS, Emerica and Altamont among others. He’s business. Serious business. Right?
The strange thing is, when I got to my destination and through the cloud of PR people – I sat down with someone unexpected – someone who clearly still has his heart in skateboarding. It’s definitely not from the same angle of someone trying to sell themselves or an image of ‘still clued up’. He doesn’t need to research his market or learn his industry – He was, is and always will be firmly grounded as part of the skateboarding. I guess years of pro-skateboarding and the knowledge of the beginnings of that doesn’t just dry up - as I naively expected – when you take on a corporate role. I think this became even more apparent after the interview. Someone had cancelled their meeting with him which resulted in the Dictaphone being shut off and us talking for a good half an hour more. We talked about Street Machine skate shop in Paris, Mischief Skate shop over here as well as the good scenes, parks, spots pretty much in the same way I’d talk to my mates, mid-session whilst once again trying to re-learn some ledge trick every kid in town has on lock. The funniest thing of all is that I never actually asked him if he still skates. That doesn’t matter. He is a skateboarder.What brings you over to the UK?I come to the UK every year. I travel around the world and try to promote skateboarding and my company. So, I am in the UK today then on to Amsterdam then New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. All this over the next week and a half. I try to make myself available to communicate to everyone – so that we can use my company to elevate the game with skateboarding.
The UK is very important to me. I came here a lot for competitions so I have good memories. Crystal Palace, Farnborough, Manchester and London of course. My mum was an English teacher. She was telling me about England when I was a kid and then she sent me when I was twelve years old to learn English.
To Farnborough?Ha ha. Farnborough was the first. There was a park. The first thing I learnt was how to order a one way ticket to get to London from the suburb I was in.
I like the vibe here. It is always moving. It’s creative.
So, what are your ideas for elevating the game as you just stated, then?Our main office is in Lake Forest, California. There were few places to skate. We tried to create a platform. A place for kids to skate. A model. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. The idea of the platform was not to just bring skaters in but to create a scene itself. I went to see the city officials with an idea to create a joint venture between the government and my company working hand in hand. The public sector and the private sector working together. This is the first time this has happened like this. The skateboarders involvement isn’t just in being at the park – They run the skatepark. They make it happen – Working together. It goes beyond the act of skateboarding, too. We organise competitions. We have movie premieres, bands, local bands primarily. It gives them a platform, too. Instead of playing in the garage we bring them into the park so that they can play there. The kids can bring this whole personal experience to the park. I needed the committee and government to understand that skateboarding is not just about skating. It is a 24 hour thing. You think about it all the time – the music, the art. Your scene. It is so creative. It defies normal ‘sport’ conventions and should be respected for that.
I think this is where London is just starting to catch up to the North. We have several parks such as Burnley, The Works, etc. who run amazing events, have bands playing and their scene is so strong. London has been park deprived and so things just seem so much more scattered here. It’s changing, though.One thing for this is that there are always more skateboarders inside cities. London, Los Angeles, Tokyo – All the same. Always, though, you find the skateparks outside the cities. I know it is because of land value and people believe it will make all this noise, but there are still football fields, and their activity makes as much noise.
So, Lake Forest skatepark is in the city; it is free to skate. We have over 100,000 skaters visit per year. To me, this is just the way it should be everywhere. Luckily in California, because of the weather our skatepark is outside and good all year – but they all should be. I grew up skating underground garages in the winter; being a rat.
You play your part in society – you pay your taxes or if you are younger, your parents do. In the UK there are around a million skateboarders, so I don’t see why there can’t be good support here. It gets you off the couch and outside. Kids like to play Playstation. It’s cool. They also need somewhere to go outside. That why I think skateboarding is good; for the events. Kids need to defy convention. You never know what each skateboarder will do. It’s different all the time and there is just so much going on around you in a park or competition. They need to be able to run with that. That is the thing which I can see attracting young kids.
I think that is why War of the Roses or the Crossfire Jam work so well. A whole load of best trick competitions and everyone just making noise – I also guess that is why GvR works so well. I mean, one stance versus another? It’s a fun idea – Actually, it’s a stupid idea. For that reason it encompasses what skateboarding is about - for me at least. Just a riot.Oh, I think it is good to be stupid. You have to be spontaneous. Skateboarding is constantly moving.
The idea of the GvR is just about having fun. Just to get everyone together and give them a goal for the weekend. Not like team sports such as football or basketball. Skateboarding is more individual. At the same time, skateboarders are always skating together, sessioning something. This is how the team thing works.
We use it to bring more awareness for us. For people to understand skateboarding better. We have good media support. We get a lot of TV coverage. It is good to show what we do – it then makes it harder for people to believe that we should be getting tickets for skating in the street as the can now understand skateboarding. Goofy or Regular also gives those who don’t know about skateboarding something to pick up on. They can understand stance – and this could make it a little easier for them to try it out.
I think that has always been street skating’s problem in the eyes of the general public. Vert skating is easy for people who don’t care about skateboarding to understand. Big jump after big jump. You don’t need to know the intricacies of flips or switch, or whatever, to appreciate it. Ideas like this make it more approachable.I also think this helps bring pressure on the city to cater for street skaters. We make it like a fair – a celebration of skateboarding. People can see the companies, the pro’s – They can see what we are actually doing on the streets. We also set up a little skatepark for the kids over the weekend. Otherwise they get frustrated at seeing all of this skateboarding but not being able to skate. We bring music in. Last year the Beastie Boys played. That was cool. They have been interacting with skaters for so long. It turned into a big skateboard fiesta. Three days. We run the event so that we have a bunch of people skating at the same time, too – not just one guy. The pressure for just one person on their own – especially if they miss tricks – it’s not good. With a few people skating it just means there is so much more to watch. Like a major frenzy going on. Waah! There is so much energy. It ends up as more of a session, and people push themselves when that happens. We’ve been surprised watching over the last three years – feeling the excitement growing as the hours go by. You feel it step to the next level as the sessions get more intense.
…and now you’ve decided to ship the idea to the UK?Yeah. The first one in Europe. Our event is being run in September at the Prissick Plaza. We just felt like giving something to the UK. It felt like it made sense and we’d like to help where you are taking skateboarding. Something major for Etnies was our roots in the UK. The first team we sponsored – Pig City – they were from Brighton. Also, where we did 20th anniversary – We did it in Paris and also Lake Forest – but we didn’t do something in the UK. That kind of sucked. I felt I had to do something in the UK.
Are the facilities we now have such as Dundee, Prissick and Stoke making the UK more noticeable?Yeah. When we do something like this it needs to be on a certain level – Although, I do hope that GvR isn’t just limited to big events like this. I’d like to see skate shops or local contests run with this format.
Kind of like the Game of Skate?Yeah, yeah.
So something else I want to ask you about is your environmental issues and how you felt the need to run with it.Okay, well I remember when I was skating in Paris, growing up. I starting thinking about how I couldn’t breathe so good while I was skating as I skated by the freeway. With skating, too, I was interacting with the environment, so it made me really start to think about this all the time especially for the last ten years. So, I started to try to understand it and learn. It was then that I realised that there was things which we could do. I mean, I always felt there was nothing I could do about it before. Car use gas, burning gas pollutes. What kind of good could I do? It would create little impact. Then, I realised that through my company I can do this. I can talk about it. I can try to make people aware. I realised the company could change to do something about it as we had people there who were passionate about it. For most companies it is about money. Public companies are about investment, shareholders, how much they are making. This doesn’t help to make a more environmentally friendly approach even if the consumer is asking for it.
So, I started to think that maybe – like the skatepark in Lake Forest – we could try to create a model for other companies to do this too, to help people feel better, breathe better, skate better. This all has to really be a long term thing.
The one thing I really think is that I don’t want to really, really push it. Skateboarders don’t want to be told do this or do that. We don’t push the advertising for it. It is more an education thing and Etnies is about pushing skateboarding. Skateboarding is number one. We make an environmentally friendly product line – we do a range called the SEED project. This is how we show what we are doing – We know it doesn’t sell that much but that isn’t the point – It is to show awareness. To educate. I think there are a lot of things which people may not be aware of though. I mean, everybody needs to change the processes of everything we do as in thirty years it will be impossible to reverse this. In fifty years it will have catastrophic results. This is what Professor Stephen Hawking is talking about a lot right now. So, we are changing the processes used in making product. Right now 80% of our products use water based glues. Not petroleum based. All of the paper, the boxes – everything is recycled. We also have our headquarters which is powered by solar energy. The building itself is recycled limestone. We have to regenerate. We want to create no carbon dioxide.
So, in effect trying to leave no carbon footprint?This is it. Skateboarding has smaller companies, though – unlike surf companies so this is harder for them to do. At the other end, the larger companies turn into public companies. As I said – They have to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. This is how they work. Whereas for me, I own the company privately. I’m passionate about skateboarding. I’m passionate about living and feeling good. I can make the decisions and the people I work with want this.
Do you see ever taking this further to take the education directly to the skateboarders?For me, this would take a long time to set up and do. I have to run the company. I have hired the first ever environmental manager for my company. I have been doing his job for 8 years and it finally become too much. So, I found a guy – young and was into skateboarding. I got him to study Soletech – To work with the company, educate the company. Right now he is going through all of our offices and factories to figure out how we can reduce the carbon footprint for all of our processes and how long it will take for us to leave no footprint at all. It is a lot of work and it will take a lot of time as it is a big company with a lot going on. I’ve spent a lot of time in China over the last five years to educate the people in our factory as to where we need to head. It is enduring as it is a totally different level.
I don’t want to tell skateboarders what to do. I’d rather just do it and if it inspires then that is good. I’m glad skateboarders want to talk about it and I think if we can just share the information and change the way the company works – create a platform just like the park – then we can do our part.
