(Continued) It’s how our team is too. You will see Dezort going to get buck on some gnarly rail on his lunch break. Its fucking inspiring man. We are the working class skate company. Stimes I’m amazed at what we can do with limited budget and time. Was picking the team in the beginning tough? Did you ever have to step on other companies toes? Did it all go smooth? The team grew nice and organic. We didn’t want pros in the beginning. We purposely wanted to be a farm team to hopefully be a stepping stone to help dudes become recognized and maybe get picked up by a company who can pay them. But we have grown a little since then and yeah correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think we have stepped on any toes. We have a pretty solid crew at this point and because of our outlook from the beginning we did not need to try to take riders away from other sponsors. But, one day Chris Senn called me, and remember we wanted to be a a farm team, he says he had quit Element the day before, a paying company, and that he now wanted to ride for the Wizard. He said we had to make him a pro model. I begged him to call Element back because he had a paycheck and kids to feed and we didn’t do pro models and didn’t have money, but he was relentless. He said he didn’t care he just wanted to be part of something he was really stoked on. This went on for a day or two. I finally gave in, but technically he quit his other sponsor before calling me and I begged him to call them back and get back on. So no toes were being stepped on. Randomly, a week or two later, I got a call from Ben Krahn inquiring about the Wizard. He said the company he was on folded and he liked what we were doing. So Krahn and Senns boards came out at the same time. Now they are both about to get new graphics, that were drawn by Chris with graphic design work by Krahn, who just recently got a degree in graphic arts. How did Gregson get on the team, he’s the newest addition right? Chris was really persistent. First it was Jeff Henderson who sent over some footage and said that Chris wanted to ride for the Wizard. It was real sicK footy man. It wasnt for another couple months till I met him at a trade-show and gave him some boards. He kept sending in better and better footage and being more and more persistent. It seemed like everyone got along with him, so we put him on. He is a real get-er-done type of dude man. Hard worker and makes it look easy.
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I was in a bit of shock when hesaidaskehed woif ulhed pay could ride a Wizard board. He thanks, but no for them but I was like, “man way! shred with the Wizard.”
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regarding Keagen Sauder
Blood Wizard is a very grass roots skateboard company, it’s almost like a community of wizards. With that said, what was the key ingredient to spread the word about the wizard without having a huge advertising budget? Im not sure there is one way to spread the word, but it did help to have our community of wizards spread across northern Cali. It started in SF and went east to Grass Valley (goodtimes), and then to (Eternal) Reno. Then I think the facebook, manned by my partner Visser, really helps a lot. Now we got instagram too, which are both real good and free tools to help promote. Product placement is key too. I remember Visser one time at Chris Coles skater of the year party got on stage with him as he is accepting the award and put his BW coozie facing out at the crowd.