Thank you and Farewell from The Firm

Skateboarding has and always will have change. Sometimes change is hard sometimes it the best thing ever, sometimes it’s a little of both. Skateboarding has and always will have change. Sometimes change is hard sometimes it the best thing ever, sometimes it’s a little of both.

I started skating in 1975, but by 1977, my friends, the magazines and the feeling had infected me and I wanted to be involved and be around the best skaters from then on. I had a slow start and did not get past skatepark sponsorship until 1981, when I toured the USA with Variflex and their top skaters of that time.

I knew the strength of good team, and as skating changed and the direction of that company changed, it led me to my next sponsor, Powell-Peralta, where I got on to be part of the best thing at the time. My role in the beginning was just to work with the team, not have a board, so I knew my place and how to work, although I’d rather not. With videos and contest wins and popularity from the consumer, two years later I had another pro board and good influence throughout the ’80s.

In 1990 the industry was changing drastically. The pro skaters, contests, magazine coverage, product, and more were and had been the same for almost 10 years and it needed change. The promotion and availability of street skating made it possible for skaters all over to advance and excel quickly, and they needed homes to go to. The industry did not change quickly enough and it did not know what to do with the pros from the generations before. In fact, it did not even know what to do with the new kids.
Skating had never gone through a change like this before. It had always been slow progression, with one big standout skater or trick pushing it forward at one time. Now there were 100s of new kids doing something no pro had done before. This was the future of the business.

The industry splintered away from five major companies into more than 100. The industry had a whole new underground grassroots go-for-it approach. With this, guerrilla marketing and lots of skater against skater, company against company garbage came out in the magazines, graphics and advertising. It really chased all others out shrunk skating down to a cool click, and although the vibe was funny to the small group involved, the whole of skating suffered. In fact, the focus went away from skating’s greats to shock value or clever graphics, and only in the last few years have skating’s standouts began to get their recognition again. This has not been because we as an industry are doing the right things. It is because outside money has provided them with a living.

As each company markets our skaters, we as an industry undermine the real influential guys to get market share and in doing so started devaluing all pros and putting all on the same level playing field to the buyer. We as a whole did not work together to better skateboarding; we worked in small groups against each other for market share. And the outcome is obvious. We have caused the consumer to get what they need somewhere else.

Of course skating is healthy, but the industry is not. The pro market has suffered from it and those are the ones who have always inspired us and pushed the level of possibility to all. I believe the defining pros are the ones who drive what we love, not the industry, and therein is my love for skating.

In 1990, the skateboard industry told me we have no place for you to make a living and provide for your family. At that time, I had to look around and search my heart for what I wanted to do. I had a deep desire to stay involved, have influence and try to be relevant somehow. I would have loved to stay a skateboarder for someone, but eggplants on the street course were going out of style.

The offers I was getting were financially a good thing, but my heart was telling me to trust in Jesus Christ, not man. That is a hard thing, I had the option to start my own company just like everyone else, but becoming a businessman was going to be hard. My plan was to stay Peter Pan my whole life.

As I started, I found out quickly that this was going to be the way the Lord was going to mold me and keep me. I have believed since a young age that God created me, and I was a sinner by birth and deserved death and was living in a fallen world in need of life, life the way God had provided in Jesus. God had paid my debt for that sin with his death that I may have eternal life, but will I trust him and give complete control to him in my life, life here and now?

I loved skating and felt He had always given that to me anyway, He gave me the friends, drive, opportunity, favor with the right people, the skill, if not just the life and breath and heartbeat to do whatever my dreams and desires were, which He also gave.
My draw to skating was the progression, freedom, individuality, search and hunt for new places and ways to do things, but most importantly, the people doing it on a level above. The personalities, styles and attitudes that make up the individual made me want to do it and know those who did it well…

So overnight I found myself packing wheels, not out skating with the ones that had influence, I can’t say it was easy, but I can said that trusting in the one who created me and giving Him control of my life is the best thing I could do. He directed me in every step and made His goals my goals. Am I perfect or even a good example of who Christ wants me to be? I can’t say that, I’m sure most of you who are reading this find this irrelevant and are baffled that I am stating that God has anything to do with it, but I know in my heart where I would be without him. He loved me first and he made that known to me, so I’m trying to respond to His love and in doing so I want you to know His love. My natural tendency would not want me to be exposed in that way to all skaters that I respect and love to have respect from, but my desire is that we all respond to Christ’s love.
Running a company, I wanted to do my best to do it on the up and up. The goal was to pick and raise up skaters who would make a difference, the ones who would be remembered 20 years from now. I’ve done The Firm for 15 years, longer than I ever rode for someone else. I provided for my family, tried to be involved and influence skaters and skateboarding as a whole. I have seen and experienced amazing things and God has done incredible things in our personal lives.

The close ones involved will never be the same. It has not been my doing that has made it great; it has been the ones involved. I never pick Christians to be on the team as some may say; it just so happens that some have become Christians over time.
I picked skaters who I thought were, would be or had potential to be the best in the world or had something to offer skating. Ray Barbee, Joe Gruber, Keith Gruber, Weston Correa, James Qua, Pat Brennen, Salman Agah, Matt Beach, Frank Gerwer, Bob Burnquist, Rodrigo Tx, Javier Sarmiento, John White, Bennie Urbeno, Jared Herman, Alexis Sablone, Mike Chin, Jani Laitiala, Billy Marks, Wieger, Stiggy, Tom Jones, Dave Metty, Kyle Reynolds, Anthony Claraval, Jon Humphries, Kurt Hayashi, Brian Brannon and my wife, who did most of the work for the first nine years. There are so many more and I am sorry if I left you out. I did not always make all the right choices, sometimes I was unable or did not do the right thing by my skaters and for that I’m sorry. Overall it has had great personal successes for all of us involved.

The industry has been changing again and things have to change for the driving force of skating to be the pros, and I believe that it will come again. I want the top pros of today to have what I had in the ’80s.
Everywhere we went, there were 10 or 20 kids riding our boards. There’s nothing wrong with the do-it-yourself, make-it-yourself attitude we all have, that’s why skateboarding rips. I still want to have influence and want the riders I have worked with to have as much influence and get to the highest level possible.
It is very easy to start a company and even run it at a level that works on paper, I could keep this up for another 15 years. But to have the same impact and influence or commercial success to new skaters to equal the level the skating coming from the riders is important to me. As I get older and was even hurt for the last 7 months I realize my interests are fully in wanting to skate as much as I can and see and meet new people and places before I don’t have the chance to, not to sit behind a desk with my belly growing bigger.

This is unfair to my riders and makes it impossible to spend the time to bring up new riders the right way. That’s why I’m sad and also very happy to say that The Firm has played its part, if only a small part in the skateboard industry. It’s what it was and it was the best years so far in skating for me.

You will see big changes coming in the industry. It has to sort itself out and it will. You don’t have to feel sorry, laugh, or gloat. Anyone who knows me knows that for me a name or a company is not were my heart is, it’s in the act of skating and the relationships and experiences. The skaters involved happen to be some of the best of all-time and will find good homes, making the industry stronger and better. Their skating will still have huge influence. And that is where I find I was good, having friends that were great skateboarders.

• Lance Mountain