Tell us a little bit about yourself and how your journey led you to developing skateboarding products?
Boa began in 2015 when we launched our first 100mm wheel in the market, the Boa Constrictor. At the time when Boosted Board was making a name for themselves in electric skateboards (and Casey Neistat was riding Boosted Boards all through NYC), we saw a gap in the market for offering a big wheel that was compatible out of the box with the Boosted Board.
This is really how things got started. There was nothing else on the market at the time and our wheels got popular really quickly. We sold out our first batch in about a month, which surprised us all.
In terms of manufacturing, personally I’ve been involved in designing and making products for more than 20 years. For 10 of those years, I’ve been based in Asia, specifically China, so we’re in a fairly unique position to be able to design and develop new products to get to market.
Making skateboard products was kind of an unintentional leap from the products I have been involved with in the past (business products), but making consumer focused products is something I genuinely enjoy to this day. It puts a smile on my face seeing customers riding and enjoying our products on a daily basis.
From your perspective what makes your product offering different from other urethane on the market?
Our Hemotox™ urethane and production processes are taking advantage of new modern technology. We spent a number of years developing and refining our formulas and production processes.
Based on the unique way we make our wheels results in products with fewer defects, higher quality urethane that is both fast and resistant to dreaded “chunking” compared with the competition. Overall the customer gets great value for money and a long lasting quality product and that’s something important in this sport, especially for newcomers.
Lastly and an equally important one is speed at which we can iterate and test designs and get them to market. We have a global distribution network and logistic hubs in a few countries, so we can quickly get product to customers in the most cost effective means possible.
In recent times, the price of good skateboard wheels has risen dramatically but Boa remains a great value option. How do you achieve this?
Costs have generally risen across the board thanks to COVID, inflation and other factors going on in the world. We’ve setup our business in a way that we use lots of efficiency and systems to keep things as lean as possible.
We employ a lot of automation in our business, from the backend business infrastructure, to our manufacturing and logistics. This allows us to keep our overheads to a minimum.
Whilst our raw material prices have gone up significantly, our efficiency has allowed us to keep offering wheels at relatively affordable prices whilst maintaining a sustainable and healthy business.
Boa wheels brought back larger wheel diameters back after Abec 11 stopped production. What compelled you to start going into the 90mm+ zone?
We actually developed our first 100mm wheel back in 2015, primarily aimed at the emerging electric skateboard market at the time. We saw a bit of a gap in the market for folks who wanted larger wheels for their Boosted Board without modifying the board in any way.
This is how the Constrictor was born, it was a drop in replacement that didn’t require any modification to your board or potential for voiding your warranty.
We had already planned and designed a 90mm wheel, and after the success of the Constrictor we launched the 90mm Hatchlings which have proven to be one of our most successful wheels, and has gone on to win a number of races including Broadway Bomb.
It seems like Boa is continuously innovating based on the product line. Tell us about that process? Any new products we should know about (hint hint like the new 90?)
Feedback and direct engagement with our customers is really critical to the success of our products. We listen to every piece of feedback, good or bad from our customers to constantly improve our products and use it as the basis to develop new ones as well.
Having a good read of the market is really important. To date we have thousands of riders on our wheels which we’re super proud of and it has given us a lot of insight into what works, and what doesn’t.
Based on the feedback we received from riders of the 90mm Hatchlings we are proud to introduce the new V3 Hatchlings! They come in two flavours: 74A and 76A.
The new Hatchlings feature sharper lips both front and back that increase grip and roll speed, resulting in an even faster wheel with tonnes more grip. The new lips increase the contact patch whilst maintaining the same overall width and only 1g difference weight per wheel.
We’re excited for people to start riding them!
How do you test products before they go to market? We’ve heard you recently took on your first team rider in Singapore…
We’re pretty lucky to have an amazing team of riders we work with, across Boa and our sister brand 88 Wheel Co. Our team is scattered across the globe and this allows us to test in varying conditions and get feedback we otherwise couldn’t if we just tested in one place.
We involve the team when it comes to new wheel development, and take on feedback and iterate quickly and continue testing until we have something that everyone gives the green light on.
This early feedback is really critical to the product's success. We also send wheels to early testers that are outside of our team once we’ve done our initial testing, and they give us further feedback to ensure we’re not all being biased.
Additionally we use testing equipment in the lab to ensure the longevity of our wheels. We test for UV exposure along with extreme wear, including direct impact on the wheels from all sides over a period of 24-48 hours. With all this testing, we then have adequate data to ensure what we release is going to be a great product.
Yes! We just brought on the amazing Leonard Lee from Singapore for our new 2023 distance team for Boa. This is very exciting for us, and we got to watch Leonard win the recent race that took place in Hong Kong and run by the awesome crew at SBDW Longboards. It was a really great event and I’m looking forward to more events happening this side of the globe.
Leonard is a great guy and and he’s a dedicated and focused rider, and we really can’t wait to watch him grow in this sport. We couldn’t be more stoked to have him on the team, we feel pretty lucky!
Are there any trends you see in skateboarding currently as a manufacturer? Any insights into the Asia scene particularly?
COVID has definitely been challenging for everyone in the industry, and due to the rising costs, the trend is things getting more expensive for the end user.
The market in China has been hot for surfskates, especially during COVID, there was a massive surge in sales across the country.
LDP is starting to become more mainstream, there was a huge race in Beijing this past weekend with over 200 riders. The organisers were very well equipped, including RFID based timing equipment and a great venue.
Downhill has been an interesting one, as there’s just so much talent around now, and many younger riders are performing at peak.
We’ve been lucky enough to receive some of the first new Boa 90mm wheels (yes they will also come in white) in the world for this special give away. Click here to head on over to Instagram and follow the instructions to enter.
Boa is a Brand Partner of Skate IDSA