bigwig interview
U K’ S G R AYS T O N E ACT I O N S P O R T S H I T B Y B O O M I N B E G I N N E R S K AT E B OA R D L E S S O N S We’ve reported on the pandemic-inspired skateboarding boom from the supply and demand side, with accounts from many different retailers, brands and distributors confirming the trend. Now we’ve spoken with the UK’s leading action sports academy, Graystone who confirm from the front line that their return from lockdown has been a prolific one. Fuelled by a strong local community and with reports of fully booked beginner coaching lessons (of all ages), Graystone Co-Founder Kevin Gray and company Director, David McCabe give us the inside track on what’s powering this phenomenal surge in action sports. Please tell us how your business was affected by the lockdown. Well, we had to close of course. We had been making great progress at the start of the year and experienced our best two months to date in Jan and Feb 2020. We were finally on track to meet our ambitious targets and have our most successful month ever in March when the message about staying home came out. It quickly became clear that we were going to have to close down and we got started cancelling some of the events we were scheduled to host, like the National Skateboarding 73
Champs. A huge disappointment but… c’est la vie! We then had a few days of nothing happening at all, which was weird, and then the instruction to close. With the doors closed we were able to make a few adjustments and improvements to the park, like our new access ramp for WCMX users. It was mainly about trying to stay in touch with our community through competitions like the incredibly successful design a deck competition we ran with Skatehut. Our community have been phenomenally loyal and supportive throughout. When we got a hint of being able to re-open, the
