This question has been rattling me for the past few weeks. Are we a boutique streetwear company, an experiential ad agency, a skateboard company? Who is this for? What's the ideal customer? Each one of these foundational business questions has been pretty much unanswered from the beginning. My mentor Cord has pushed me time and time again to sit down and define this. With the intention that once defined, if the brand aligns with me authentically, then it will give people something to buy into. Which, in turn, will begin to offer solutions to our many problems.
Previous offered answers:
-
Duck is a company for people who like ducks
-
Duck is a company for those who make things
-
Duck is a boutique footwear sourcer taking the fight to the big dogs
-
Duck is a community-based skateboard company
-
Duck is a full-service experiential ad agency
-
Duck is a high-end furniture and home goods company
-
Duck is a design project where my explorations live
-
Duck is a influencer based social media brand
OK, WE GET IT. You’re Lost.
I have tried over and over again to define Duck, but it’s against the nature in which we were formed.
May 2020:
It’s peak COVID, summer has started, and every day is spent at B-Gate (John L. Stone Park). All that matters is skateboarding, posting edits to Instagram, and Snapchatting a girl you will never hang out with (sorry). Skate all day, film clips, watch skate videos, play Skater XL, repeat. Suddenly, one of your cool older friends is beginning to gather up all the cool older skaters, and piling them into their golf gt and driving up to Denver to film their own skate video. This is the first time someone within your circle is taking agency to create their own luck and get their creative vision out. However, you’re not invited… you’re not good enough.
May 2022:
Years pass, but the dream is still there; film a skate video, have a part in it. But you still suck at skating, and at this rate, it is going to take a few years before anyone would be willing to film you for their brand. However, conveniently enough, you just bought a screen-printing kit and the Duck you drew on the bottom of that blank board to impress that girl you were snap chatting with, people actually like! Now, after making an Instagram, screenprinting a few shirts, ordering some boards, putting a few friends on the “team”, YOU can make a skate video and have a part in it.
I view duck as a mindset of framing creativity…doing it yourself and not asking for permission. Life is short, create what you dream about, don't let anyone stop you.
Duck is the bridge from ambition to opportunity.
Time and time again, we have been told to “wait our turn,” that if you go to the right schools, do the right tricks, meet the right people, then one day you too can make the things you have dreamt about. Duck is a protest against this school of thought and asks, “Why not us?”
Duck is about embracing new challenges and taking the initiative to do it yourself.
So don’t be like me and sit around waiting for someone else to film you, pick up the camera, make some horrible quality t-shirts, and go film that noseslide crook. You won’t regret it.
So what's next? Is this profitable at all? What is this current chapter of Duck all about? All of these questions and more will be answered on the blog through the next few weeks.
If you read till the end, thank you. This is the most I have said about Duck ever. You all make my world go around.
-Rowan