95) Tech Deck

On Sunday, I stopped by the Tony Hawk & Friends European tour event in Barceloneta. Towards the outer edge of the huge crowd there was a tent set up by Tech Deck. Kids were crowded around “riding” their fingerboards around the mini skate park. Even with a simple, almost rudimentary design, Tech Deck was able to engage their consumers in a meaningful way. There were no salespeople hawking the toy - they simply provided a service that they knew Tech Deck fans (who are already toting around their favorite fingerboards) would enjoy. A great example of behavior as branding. What the company does or provides says as much (if not more) about them than their product.

The history of fingerboards also links back to the ideas of mass customization and to collaboration that we’ve been discussing in class. Not only was Tech Deck the first to mass produce “rideable” miniature skateboards, but they also were the first to license pre-existing urban brands, as opposed to creating their own designs. From Wikipedia:

The licensed boards drove the Tech Deck brand into licensing strong urban brands, rather than simply creating their own designs. In the late 1990s, as fingerboards became more prominent outside the skateboarding community, X-Concepts’ Tech Decks licensed ‘actual pro graphics from major skateboard brands’ riding ‘the 1999 fingerboard wave right into Wal-Mart and other major outlets.’ In 1999 there was a Tech Deck fashion of collecting one of each design similar to the Beanie Baby fad months prior.

Here I thought that Tech Decks were passé. But then again, I'm not a pre-teen male so what do I know.