Just my thoughts here… But I for one was really happy to recently hear about Boosted’s financial woes. I’ve always had a point of contention when it comes to this company. When I first started looking for boards back in 2016 and had no idea what was out there this was the company everyone told you to get. It took me a while to select my first board (a Leiftech) but when I finally had it I was so much happier with my purchase.
So that brings me to why I am kind of happy about this all. I’ve always seen them as kind of the Apple phone of eboards, in that they are not easily DIY’able harnessing the original electronics. The community they’ve built up of riders in different communities across the US is one to be envied, however, there is a touch of exclusivity to the gatherings that always bothered me as someone who hosts local group rides myself. Not only that, the company always does this sort of online advertising that appeals to the layman who knows nothing about the availability of other products in the esk8 community and capitalized on that. To me this is like the heavens gates opening and forcing potential buyers to have to start doing their research before investing, instead of just blindly buying what the Casey Neistat video tells them. With Enertion dropping out and a lot of other big contenders dropping out (I’m looking at you Jed, you’re next!) there’s a big opportunity for the smaller community to grow and develop even better products out of it. I for one am looking forward to the future ahead.
What are your thoughts on all these big players dropping out and how it affects the community?
@Lunasi
Corey - while it’s sad to see any business fail i believe hubris was the driving factor for attempting to expand into the scooter market and ultimately the reason for boosted and inboard’s failure.
I agree this is an opportunity for the community to grow and smaller players to learn from the failures and grab market share. these are the times my friend
Seriously no disrespect, but this approach is pretty inconsiderate.
Boosted was one of the first players in the game, especially in the US. They not only brought ESK8 to a commercial scale, they set a benchmark for reliability and performance that took several years for competitors to match. Boosted has to this day remained the benchmark that forced prices lower and quality higher of the China boards as they fought to beat the boosted.
DIY scene was full of vanguard boosted replicas when I started researching just a year ago.
Their products have fallen behind in the cost to performance category. But they still remained a valuable and reliable product for most of their users. Even better, it seems they might close up shop without screwing over a ton of customers with unfulfilled orders. Which is worth a tip of the hat when we consider how others have gone down.
Companies tanking is generally bad news. We’ve had improvements in the China boards, but they have routinely been reflections of US or EU funded and developed products just several years later.
Boosted riders are boosted riders. Just as much as they are fan-boys, the DIY crowd looks down on them. Lots of boosted riders are happy after lots and lots of miles. Not your can of soup is one thing. But if you would have bought it when you made your first purchase, I bet you’d be happy with it
For company to fail is bad. Is mean all worker no have job and out of work. This post you making is very sad and not good character. Must think of the people who suffer from this which is worker and customer.
Like I said, just my opinion. You can choose to look at a business shutting down as a door closed or a door opening. I prefer to think of it as an opportunity for other business to put their foot in the game where Boosted was lacking. By the end Boosted was selling a brand name and not a high quality product, and that shouldn’t be what our community represents. If boosted played their cards right they could have combined with Loaded and brought back the O-tang wheels and higher quality decks and combined the brand names to save the product before Loaded found another company. They gave their dedicated community the finger and spent their remaining investments on a scooter to try to join the “commuter” market instead of re-investing in their product. Part of that is that “exclusivity” I mentioned, it was their literal downfall. Boosted never wanted to be labeled an electric longboard, that had too many associations to the rebellious “skater community,” boosted preferred to be thought of as a functional commuting vehicle… and “oh yeah it’s also a board!” Ask anyone who has hosted an Esk8 festival if Boosted showed up, they didn’t even want to be associated with us, and now we’re all crying when they’re gone?
I guess I’m on the opposite side of the fence here.
I’m hosting an Esk8 Event. I didn’t even consider to invite Boosted because their crowd isn’t our crowd. Not trying to be elitist, but Boosted boards literally cannot keep up in range or speed with even our most basic DIY builds. I’d sooner support smaller companies than big corps.
Boosted was never on my radar because communities based around a product alone are rarely healthy or long lasting.
@DerelictRobot we invited Atom Electric to our event and they’re far below the quality of a boosted. When you’re hosting a festival you should want to have everyone there who rides or builds electric, even if they can’t keep up with your Kaly.NYC . If boosted riders don’t know of all the cool boards out there how are they ever going to buy or invest in them. That was a major frustration for me in connecting with them both in group rides and larger events over the years.
I guess I am not their maket target, because I do not care and I have never thought of buying that kind of products…Actually their market it is the same as any other company with capabilities to mass produce at a cheaper cost, there fore, I believe they got a confused segment of the market, paying a lot for a not so good when you have money to spend…it will end up bad in the long run (but it does not mean it was a succesfull business for the brand owners until the end)…I find my self confortable here…but not within a TATA`s owners club or forum… Hope I explained my self…People loose jobs, others get jobs…dinamic, evolution, etc…but not static…so no, I am not sad, and not a part of it…
I think that’s probably where you and I differ. I’m not trying to get anyone into DIY, in fact DIY acts as a sort of filter imo. I appreciate that there is difficulty there setting a certain barrier of entry.
Carve PDX is absolutely open to everyone. But if we were to cater to the limitations of a Boosted board, the majority of our community wouldn’t have much fun.
An event like Carve PDX simply isn’t something I’d recommend for a new rider that went out and purchased a prebuilt. You’re more than welcome to show up but I’d imagine you’d quickly not be able to participate in an effective manner. Same goes for the Onewheelers crowd.
I’m personally more interested in engaging with those seeking out DIY, rather than trying to pull consumers over from the Boosted crowd.
I chatted with them in CO. Nice folks. But they won’t be receiving an invite from me because I can’t recommend their subpar products at all, and they’re also a large corporation. I wouldn’t want Boosted for similar reasons.
Competition is great for the consumer. That being said the DIY customer and the Boosted customer generally are not in the same crowd. Different wants and needs and interests although I’ve seen comments of DIYer’s still showing interest in owning a boosted for misc reasons.
It seems most of the China brands who’ve been trying to copy boosted for years have moved on to evolve anyhow lol
Boosted made plenty of mistakes. But you don’t understand the market. Scooters have a much wider customer base than skateboards.
It’s well understood that boosted made mistakes not supporting the base product enough, esk8. But don’t act like boosted being gone is some door open. The door has been open, and very few companies exist as now the price/performance is owned by the exway and meepo brands for the majority of the market as In observing it. Not to mention, $750 board and a $2500+ board have become the new markets for prebuilts now, there’s not much selling hot in the 1500 range.
The margins are super tight, there’s been opportunity for companies to compete with boosted. Boosted failing isn’t a door opening, it’s a warning to the market when a king brand falls
This guy here, if my company is a scam why are they the number one site for contractors? Is Angieslist also a scam, because home advisor owns that too. You must have never had work on your house done, keep on topic dweeb!
. If boosted riders don’t know of all the cool boards out there how are they ever going to buy or invest in them. That was a major frustration for me in connecting with them both in group rides and larger events over the years.
