Tony Hawk in Entrepreneur Magazine

**skategeezer** · 09-23-2009 07:04 AM

pretty cool interview...and he made the cover

When did you realize that skateboarding could be more than just a sport?
I got a taste of it in high school. Skating was popular, but it wasn’t mainstream. It had this underground following and you could go on tours, win decent prize money and make royalties from signature products--that’s how I came to buy a house when I was a senior in high school. Then skateboarding fell out of fashion in the early ’90s. A lot of skate parks were closing and there were liability issues. People didn’t see it as an acceptable sport for kids to get into.

And yet you started Birdhouse in 1992.
It seemed insane, but I wanted to be in control of my destiny. I took out a second mortgage on my house. My partner was also an ex-pro skater, Per Welinder, and he took out a second mortgage on his house. I got $40,000 and Per put up $40,000, and off we went. It seemed like a big risk, but my heart was in skating, and I felt it was going to come back in a big way. And the skating industry was so small it wasn’t hard to establish ourselves as a major brand.

more at...

Tony Hawk Carves a New Niche - Entrepreneur.com