@Brenternet We indeed tried a kickstarter with the same shape as the one from Alibaba.
We were still very new in the whole Esk8 community (noobs without knowledge) and wanted to take an existing product and improve it with industrial grade parts (like, cooling, motors, bearings, etc…) but we realized quite fast that this wasnt the way to go about it since industrial parts were very expensive and this is not what is wanted by Esk8ers in general (especially not based on a generic piece of crap).
@moon Also messaged me about the decks we are selling of now for cheap.
So after the big mishap on kickstarter I wanted to make my own branded boards and starter to look for a factory to produce them, after some search we found a factory that sent ud a catalog with all available shapes and moulds.
We chose this shape out of the catalog and chose to use 100% Canadian Maple to make these boards.
After a while we receive the boards from them and I get told by someone that they saw the same shape of board on Alibaba, so i check it and indeed it was true.
After this I contacted the production manager of the factory we used to make these boards to ask him about this, he tells me that they indeed sell the same design on Alibaba for cheaper using Russian Maple and Chinese Maple (much cheaper).
As a company using this design this put us again in a tight spot since people would think its the same quality and all that.
So these boards are not Chinese Maple or Russian Maple but crosslayered Canadian Maple, Pavel Garmas and Ducktaperulez could not break our boards so they are really strong.
We then got invited to the Paris Esk8 event and talked to ALOT of people and learned so much more about the product we wanted to create (but honestly did not have enough knowledge about)
So since then we turned the whole company into a different direction and choose only to work with know and good quality brands.
If you go look at our store you see we chose to only offer brands of high quality now so we know our clients get only the best products, and we keep contacting brands to increase our portfolio further in the good direction.
I am honestly happy to have explained our whole messed up startup since it was very rough and we made alot of mistakes along the way.
Now we consult experienced riders and DIY’ers before making a decission to make sure we are going the right way.
I hope this clears up what concerns you had.
PS: the picture of me measuring is really my inhome spot to do small things haha
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