Boardlife, Jonkoping, Sweden, Skate

BOARDLIFE.SE, JONKOPING, SWEDEN, SKATE

WWW.BOARDLIFE.SE

Age of Shop (years trading):  7 years

Brands Stocked: 

Loaded longboards, Original skateboards, Dinavien Longboards, Sector 9, Rayne, Bombsquad, Never summer, Vans, Burton, Nitro, Nixon, Libtech, Forum, 686, 32, Arbor, Adidas, Ripcurl, Quiksilver, Billabong, WESC, Bustin, Madrid, Slipstream, Paris, Caliber, Predetor, TSG, Abec 11, Analog, Altamont, Ambition Snowskate, Banshee, Anon, Dragon, Bataleon, Dickies, Humör, Circa, Encore, Fibretec, Flip, Flux binding, Gnu, Globe, Penny, FourStar, Hurley, Indoboard, NEFF, New Soul, OnePiece, Orangatang, Roxy, Santa Cruze, Skullcandy, Sweet skateboards, Union, Volcom.

What percentage of your sales are from online business compared to your in-store sales? 

50/50

What are the benefits of having a physical shop over simply having an online store?

Our customers can visit the store trying a t-shirt or a skateboard/longboard, they can then go back home and think about it and easily place an order from home. We send it and they have the order in 2 days!

What makes your store different and in what ways does your store excel beyond your competition?

We have a huge range of different longboards. The variety is big so the customer can choose from all of the best brands on the market including small independent companies that deliver super good products. We do have Europe’s best “building your own” board tool on our website http://www.boardlife.se/bradbyggaren This guide will help you find the best board that fits you!

What trends do you see upcoming in skate/snow?

Snowskate might be the next  big upcoming trend, if the snow will come! Smaller mini-cruisers will come from every brand next year; everybody is copying the Penny trend!

What kind of advice can you give other independent retailers who are trying to compete against the big box megastores?

Take care of you customer. Make sure you stay focused in doing what you are best at;  it´s so easy doing a lot of other stuff and not focusing. This might be the difference between success or failure! Make sure your store looks good, be active in you store (too many store owners are just sitting behind their desks when customers are in store). Be active where your customers are; use Facebook, Instagram and so on. Boardlife have over 17.000 friends on Facebook and almost 1000 on Instagam. There is a key to finding people and as soon you have it a new world can be opened!

Which up and coming brand do you hope to stock in the future?

We have some interesting longboard brands from the US that we are working on!

What are you doing to pull people into your store?

Event, social media marketing, ads in newspaper, flyers

How confident are you for the coming winter?

It´s scary, we really hope for some snow this winter!

What items are you most stoked on in upcoming lines and why?

Bindings from Switchback, a complete new type of binding that can be a really hit!

If skaters visit your area, what are a few things we have to check out locally?

The local skatepark, and all the hills if you are longboarding!