Is Crailtap the sick man of the industry?

[Not_Bruce]

I know this is considered a rather taboo subject but what is the true story behind Crailtap’s protracted decline ? Is it a lack of leadership , Crail lacking its version of Jim Thiebaud ? Considering how influential and iconic the crail camp was in shaping skating from 1994-2014 its almost odd how quietly crailtap has sunk into irrelevance with no media coverage or Instagram rants giving insights into why or how .

[Yu Dum]

It's definitely a lack of clear leadership and an image. Their boards are good quality again so it's not the product. The new guys in the mix are great and will definitely carry the company further, but they need to "trim the fat", so to speak.
Their video output is increasing in both quality and quantity as well. It just seems that Mike, Rickk, Spike, Sam, and Meg have grown complacent in the actual business aspect.

[HugeBodBoyle]

They hitched their wagon to that Biebel star and it's going supernova any second now.

[squintharder]

Dude crailtap dying has been discussed so many times on here. Beating a dead horse at this point

[Mike Oxwelling]

It started waaay back when they put Jereme and Prod on.  The suck slowly crept in ever since.   Just my humble opinion.

[Ms. Tamzarian]

They hitched their wagon to that Biebel star and it's going supernova any second now.

Shout out to sick men

Hahaha remember when they did that run of memes for sale announcements? That was booty

Meme-orial day... Booooooooo

[Not A Damn Chance]

[Sick Duck]

It just became the cool guy starbucks crew. Pretty sweet was also terrible

[Not_Bruce]

Dude crailtap dying has been discussed so many times on here. Beating a dead horse at this point

@squintharder, In my humble opinion I suspect posts about crail dying will persist primarily because of a lack of transparency in how such a great company has faded into  mediocrity . Nobody is asking question about Deca or the A-team for eg because neither of those companies had such an impact .

[HaveFunSkateboarding]

It just became the cool guy starbucks crew. Pretty sweet was also terrible

I know I'm in the minority, but I like Pretty Sweet. A lot.

[Allen.]

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It just became the cool guy starbucks crew. Pretty sweet was also terrible

[close]

I know I'm in the minority, but I like Pretty Sweet. A lot.

Whoa dude are you feeling ok?

[Arto!Arto!WakeUp!]

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It just became the cool guy starbucks crew. Pretty sweet was also terrible

[close]

I know I'm in the minority, but I like Pretty Sweet. A lot.

it was good. it just came at the end of a certain era - so in retrospect, it looks out of touch.

likewise, cherry was also good. it just happened to come at the start of a certain era - so in retrospect it looks super important.

its better to better to be on the ascendent side of the ark, basically.

people rag on pretty sweet for the filming and skits - which i can see, but i think actually the biggest thing that left it feeling soulless was the amount of footage from china...

nothing against the place, but perfect grey marble plazas against a grey smog background don't make for a very interesting watch - especially if you're doing hd drone shots or whatever.

[Reed Richards]

These threads have popped up for awhile, but the company's still standing, so it's almost a moot point.
There are some dudes on each side milking it, but when you have Simon, Manchild, Breana, Hakeem, Capps, and Carl in the pipeline, the future is pretty bright.  Plus, as noted before, the product improved.  They'll be fine in the long run.

[Hevonen]

I think they've been a bit unfortunate with how their riders with the most promise have turned out after the og generation.

P-rod - left
J-rog - left (and went crazy)
Eldy - never put out anything
AO - left
Mike Mo - injuries followed by a career ending injury
Ck - Texas plants and jail
Malto - mtndew and injuries

You need established pros to introduce the new ones, so when you lose pretty much a whole generation of your team, it's gonna take time to come back. The new kids are cool, but there's no continuation or connection to the brand

Overall lack of creativity caused by having such a great brand, that nobody would dare to take over the creative control, while the older guys slowly lost vision. Did the worst possible thing, and gave the keys to ty evans

Their quality being widely known as crap doesn't help

[h00man]

I  blame Ty. Crail spent so much money on Pretty Sweet, which I liked in the beginning, but realized it was just a fuck full of shit video.

Okay I'll ALWAYS watch CK's part but thats it.

PS ruined crails image for me. Good job Ty

[Bitter]

I  blame Ty. Good job Ty

Ty was an employee. They could have fired him if they wanted to.

[D10S]

the chocolate blunders also impacted negatively: elijah, jerry hsu, MJ, not to mention the decline of raven, crob, eldrige, chico and kenny. daniel castillo was on forever with 2 minutes of footy in a decade.

these dudes had their shine and it was dope. but the cool wore off waaaay before anyone at the crailcamp noticed.   

[mds]

frailtap better practice some social distancing during these hard times...

[pizzafliptofakie]

I know this is considered a rather taboo subject but what is the true story behind Crailtap’s protracted decline ? Is it a lack of leadership , Crail lacking its version of Jim Thiebaud ? Considering how influential and iconic the crail camp was in shaping skating from 1994-2014 its almost odd how quietly crailtap has sunk into irrelevance with no media coverage or Instagram rants giving insights into why or how .

It's not that taboo because people bring it up weekly, haha.


I think one way Crail shot themselves in the foot by being such an "exclusive" brand for so long in terms of riders. Their brands have always been notoriously really hard to get on since they had such an elite team. In the long run that's translated to them sleeping on many skaters who went on to become big relevant names elsewhere. It seems like Crail has banked on being a "legacy" brand before they were a legacy brand, and when most of the people who made the companies special go somewhere that isn't stagnant, that image doesn't really work anymore. Especially when so many of them got completely shafted in the dogshit of a video that Pretty Sweet was. I'm sure zero people were excited at a bunch of BA clips being cut in favor of Will Arnett screaming in a van.

Now as a brand they're in an awkward place where they do have a few hard working, ripping skaters, but those guys have to share the spotlight with a frankly oversized team that mostly don't skate. Even among other "legacy" brands I can't think of a single team with as much dead weight as Crailtap's main companies, and that makes it really hard to be excited about them.

[TheFandangler]

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It just became the cool guy starbucks crew. Pretty sweet was also terrible

[close]

I know I'm in the minority, but I like Pretty Sweet. A lot.

Me too honestly. Sure it's overproduced, but its got a lot of great skateboarding in it and I don't even mind the song choices. The skits are funny too, for the most part. Vincent's footage is fucking unreal and I'm glad that someone finally used Straight Outta Compton.

[Pavs323]

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It just became the cool guy starbucks crew. Pretty sweet was also terrible

[close]

I know I'm in the minority, but I like Pretty Sweet. A lot.

Cory Kennedy’s part in Pretty Sweet is easily in my top 5 parts of all time. Love Guy’s and Berle’s parts as well. Mike Mo’s too.
All in all, I like that video a lot too.

[h00man]

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It just became the cool guy starbucks crew. Pretty sweet was also terrible

[close]

I know I'm in the minority, but I like Pretty Sweet. A lot.

[close]

Cory Kennedy’s part in Pretty Sweet is easily in my top 5 parts of all time. Love Guy’s and Berle’s parts as well. Mike Mo’s too.
All in all, I like that video a lot too.

Mike Mo's part was definitely the most disappointing thing in the video...aside from Ty doing Ty stuff.

[heckler]

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I  blame Ty. Good job Ty

[close]

Ty was an employee. They could have fired him if they wanted to.

I never get why people pretend otherwise. Mike Carroll and Rick Howard knew what was going on with that video. They're hardly absolved of any blame.

[HORSES]

Sam Smyth and Mike Carroll are to blame for a long period time of that last decade,

They've hit it out of the park in the last few years with most of their picks, but the fact they continue to give pro board to guys who straight up don't skate anymore hurts their image in a way they don't seem to understand.

In what world does it make sense to turn down a 20 year old Antonio Durao and put on a 30 year old Jamie Capps?

[Christmas Complete]

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I  blame Ty. Good job Ty

[close]

Ty was an employee. They could have fired him if they wanted to.

[close]

I never get why people pretend otherwise. Mike Carroll and Rick Howard knew what was going on with that video. They're hardly absolved of any blame.

Fair enough. Then I blame their decision to hand over creative control to Ty, and blame Ty for using that freedom to make a demo reel for his Hollywood aspirations.

[yourbreakfsat]

Crailtap's still doing really well, business wise. Girl/Chocolate graphics always sell, the boards jumped massively in quality, and Lakai is extremely popular.

They're also still putting out great videos, as well as putting new people on the teams (Breana Geering, Hakeem Ducksworth, Carl Aikens, etc). Griffin Gass also absolutely RIPS.

[Pavs323]

They put too much stock into their older riders and neglected developing younger talent for too long of a period to maintain top dog status. Now they have Simon, Griffin, Niels, Breana, Manchild, Hakeem, Aikens but it was too little too late in terms of being at the top of the mountain in skateboarding. For years the stigma was that getting on Girl specifically was almost impossible. In their heyday I guess that created this “cool”, “elite” stigma, but in the end it destroyed their future. You can’t just lack to develop riders for years while letting existing riders to do virtually nothing, and expect it to turn out well. There’s quite a few guys now who are huge or at least decently successful they had the chance to have that they turned down (I.e Jamie Foy).
~2012-ish they put all their stock into guys like Koston, Guy, Mike Mo, Malto, CK, Eldridge, MJ, Hsu etc, and it just worked out poorly. A lot of their guys left, a lot of them got hurt, and we know what happened to CK.
I think it’s largely their own fault, but they had some shitty luck too.

[Stanley Spadowski]

World, blind, 101, the new deal, real, etc.
Vs.
Powell Peralta
In the late 80s/early 90s

Polar, FA, Hockey, Palace, 917, etc.
Vs.
Crailtap
2012-present.

Crailtap is this generations Powell Parelta

Kids want what’s cool and new.

[CAPTAIN NOBODY]

They had a 20 year run of being great. Still have a solid team. Apparently nobody has watched Doll or the new Tony video. They still got a good thing going.

[CAPTAIN NOBODY]

Crailtap's still doing really well, business wise. Girl/Chocolate graphics always sell, the boards jumped massively in quality, and Lakai is extremely popular.

They're also still putting out great videos, as well as putting new people on the teams (Breana Geering, Hakeem Ducksworth, Carl Aikens, etc). Griffin Gass also absolutely RIPS.

Didn’t see this before I posted! Great minds think alike.