Eric Wollam
How did you first get introduced to skateboarding?
My brother moved to California in the early 80s so I would come out to visit him. One Christmas he gave me the choice between getting a new bike or a skateboard. Of course I was like, “I want a skateboard” so my brother hooked me up with an Executioner or something like that.
That might be the very first board I happened to stumble across fro a garage sale. I think it was the one with the big dragon in the middle of it.
I think so, yeah. I also had this weird Heat Zone board too - it might have been a Variflex. I remember I had those two and I was obsessed as soon as I got into it. Coming out to California and seeing that shit go down, I was hooked.
Back to Ohio, how did you get linked up with your crew of homies out there?
Well I grew up in Fremont, Ohio, but we're real close to Toledo; it’s a 35 minute drive or so to get there and that's where the skate shops were. We would go out there and meet that crew of people in Toledo, and that’s where I met this dude, Vince Francis. He was the first guy I saw do editing on the computer. We would go skate and film all day and then we'd get home and stay up all night just watching him edit shit. I'm talking early 90s, I was still in high school. I had never really seen a computer then.
Anyways, we hung out he put together what we called the Scooter Videos. A buddy of mine, Scott Tutak, had a skate shop that he called Scooters, so that was the reason we named them that. We'd skate non-stop and the dude could edit it and put in 3D subtitles with our names and all that. That was it. I saw that and that's all I wanted to do.
I can just imagine the idea of not having to waste all those tapes anymore must have be mind blowing.
Oh my god, it was. It blew my mind. I had some college money set aside so I went and got my first computer right away because all I wanted to do was edit videos and start fucking around with graphics. I was going to college, but that’s basically all I cared at the time.
You ended up going to school in Cincinnati; what was that like?
I went to college for a year in Toledo but then my buddies all decided they were going to bum it and go snowboarding out in Colorado. Everyone from that core group ditched, so then I really connected with that dude Vince [Francis] that moved to Cincinnati.
The lay of the land in Northern Ohio is different than how it is in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is all steep hills and you could skate everything. It was crazy. I went down and hung out a couple times and started meeting all the the dudes that skated there. I met Joe Castrucci pretty early on - before he did anything with Habitat or worked at Alien Workshop.
I also met the guy from Strength Magazine because there was a Gonz demo for his first Adidas shoe release. They did some tours where they would go around to skate shops and we learned we could skate whatever they set up before the demo. This guy Christian Strike was there around the time he was starting the magazine. Joe was telling me that they tried to get him to do it, but he passed it over to me.
He had one issue out and that had ice skating, mountain biking and a bunch of different action sports, at the time. That day, we were like, “you should maybe just keep it to skateboarding and snowboarding.” Those are the only two that mesh together, as well as art and music and stuff.
I actually got credit through a co-op thing with college too so I just said “fuck it, I'll do it.”
Sounds like a perfect scenario, like it just fell right into your lap.
It was pretty cool that we were able to convince him to change it a little bit.
Good thing he was receptive to it. How many how many issues did you end up working on for them?
I'm a little fuzzy on dates, but I’ve got quite a lot. I saved them all so I have a stack of them. It was bi-monthly, so six per year and I probably worked there for about three years.
They add up quick!
It was fun because they sent us out on skate trips around the country. We got to go to Tampa Pro back in the beginning of it and back in the day there were two trade shows for ASR, one in Long Beach and one San Diego. We'd fly out every year, which was pretty cool to be young and in college coming to check everything out.
I owe a lot to that because I basically got to check out everything in the skate culture at the time. We would travel like we were on tour, it was fucking awesome.
You were telling me about going on one trip out to New York with Chris Nieratko and getting abandoned in the city. What happened there?
One time we went to do a trip with Chris in New York. He's from Jersey so we flew out there and stayed at his parents house, but it was like Halloween. There was some big parade or something and we went into the city for that. Remember, this was before cell phones.
It was chaotic and we were bar hopping so I ended up losing Chris pretty quickly. I ended up getting stuck with whoever I was bullshitting with and when they left and I realized, “shit, I don't know how the hell to get back to his place in Jersey or anything.”
The only number I had was his house so I think I talked to his mom or some relative who said he hadn't been back yet. It started getting later and later so I called back to the Strength guys and was like, “hey, I’m kind of stranded out here, do we know anybody out here?”
One of our snowboard staff photographers, Doug Prudien was in actually New York at the time because he's from DC area, so they gave me his number. Picture this: there’s this crazy crowded parade and I’m on a payphone. I call and I'm like, “hey, it's Wollam from Strength and I'm stranded in New York.” He was like “where are you?” so I just looked up and read the street signs to him. He just kept saying, “you gotta be kidding. Are you fucking with me?” Then he said “dude, look to your left I'm gonna run out the side” I could have been anywhere and it literally right there outside of where he was living with his girlfriend at the time.
What are the odds? Only in New York!
Unbelievable. I couldn't believe that that coincidence happened. We ended up going out and getting loose and I'll never forget the next morning. They had this small apartment and the bathroom was right by the kitchen. That was pretty rough experience. After a night of drinking, I pretty much blew up their whole spot so we got to know each other pretty quick. (Laughs)
That’s what you get for living in a shoebox! You were telling me that was around the time that he convinced you to move out to California, right?
This was a little bit beforehand, but we were close ever since that night. He called one time and was like “it’s a gold rush, I'm going out to California.” He had this little Acura packed with everything he had and he was driving from DC all the way to LA.
The backstory was, Dub and Droors ended up being to World Industries so he caught wind of it and was going to come out and be the marketing director or something like that.
He was looking for places to sleep along the way through so he came and we were all just hanging out at our apartment one night. He was preaching to us and saying “dude, what are you gonna do stuck herein Ohio? It's all out west.”
Sure enough, when he got there they needed an art director so they called and said they needed a catalog done right away. They asked, “could you come out and do it?” It was sort of like a job interview, they wanted to test me first. I didn't want to tell my boss at the time but I took a vacation for two weeks and went out there.
Everybody was brand new at the job and when I was ready to start, they were like "oh, we haven't even shot any of the photos or anything.” It was like, right when cameras went to digital, but they were prehistoric versions. We ended up pulling off the miracle to get these catalogs done. Back then, catalogs were elaborate with tons of product. It was like a Bible.
Some of those old catalogs feel like a full-fledged book.
It was crazy. I pulled it off, went back to Ohio and just kept working at Strength. I guess at some point Damon Way said “yeah, we should try to get this guy to see if he wants to take the gig.” I was tripping because, to be in Ohio and already be an art director for a national magazine, it was pretty awesome. I was stressed about risking it all and leaving a good gig to come out and try it. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I said “fuck it” and did it.
I just basically gave everything I had to my buddy that I had always lived, Aaron Hoover. (He later ended up coming out and working for DVS shoes.) Anyways, I just got on a plane and flew out immediately. It's pretty fucking crazy.
How long were you there before you transitioned to working with Dwindle?
For some reason it's etched in my brain: February 15th, 1999 was the day that I started the job. World Industries had just bought Dub and Droors so there was a little bit of time where everybody trying to figure out how to run it. We did softgoods but they did hard goods and stuff. There were some growing pains dealing with some pretty large clothing productions and sourcing all the fabric. I think I did that for about three years.
Unfortunately Dub had a specific look with really loud, Helly Hansen-inspired stuff. At that time, fashion changed and everything got real simple with one color pieces. Times change so everybody just switched. There was also a season of Dub jeans that were on a boat coming from overseas and the entire container was moldy so we lost a whole season. We had a couple weird snafus back to back like that. At that time, World Industries was huge but they were in the process of selling it. All of these companies were assets to it so I think they just decided to sell Dub and keep Droors around. Then everybody was slowly getting let go.
But working at World, I befriended Marc McKee as that was ending. He was like, “would you be interested in coming over to World to help our art department out?” I was like, “fuck yeah” so I did that immediately. One thing was going down and I went right to the other but I was still working at the same company under the same ownership. I just went to a different building.
It's amazing when things like that fall into place. Sometimes the best laid plans do actually work out.
Yeah, that was fun. This was probably 2003 or maybe a little sooner because at that time that I took that job, they had started Almost and McKee was doing some of the art for that. McKee was doing Blind and World Industries back then too and those were elaborate graphics so he was like, “do you want to do Almost?” I think he did one season and then after that I was Creative Director. That was the heyday too.
Those were the days of Sheckler and Lutzka being on the team.
I mean, the video premieres back in those days were insane. They would travel the world to debut it, back when video was ruled.
It’s crazy how long you were there. With all the decks and catalogs you ended up creating, what did you learn from producing so many seasons of graphics back to back like that?
You gotta move quick. I was working with Rodney for graphics and Daewon would come in often. Chris Haslam and Cooper Wilt were always sitting in my office so I just immersed myself with those dudes. We had the ramp at the office so we were always skating. Every lunch time, we’d go out to the local skate parks and I just got to hang with them and get a sense of what they liked.
At the time, things were graphically changing a little bit but Almost was always meant to represent the old world where there wasn't necessarily a theme. They didn't want to have a devil or a reaper that they had to stick to all the time. Chris actually had a personality so we wanted his boards to reflect his personality. I had to learn to multitask with everybody's ideas and try to work with them for their individual tastes.
It's got to be difficult to come up with som many one-off graphics, rather than making a series that you could scale and recolor for multiple drops.
The drops were we're quite a bit back in those days, even though there’s still a lot of product we’re taking today. It's just, you know, it's like, uh. I'm, I, I mean, I did actually save all my, you know, the boards that I like really like that I did. And it's when, you know, when doing the one out of business, I went to go get the pallets of them and I'm saying pallets. I mean, it's it's really crazy to look back at it and see the amount of stuff that I had to make. But, you know, it's I mean, it's the best, best ever. I mean, just get to do art all day, you know? I mean, it's.
I suppose that begs the next question: aside from working with the riders themselves, how do you keep the creative juices flowing? You must be racking your brain for new graphic ideas after all these years.
That's a good question. Being around a big art department like that was always inspiring. There were so many brands in that building at the time and getting to work with everybody and sit next to them was helpful. Back then there were a bunch of skate art shows where you could see what everybody was doing and get inspired by everything out there.
It is tough to constantly come up with new stuff all the time. Sometimes you hit it and sometimes you miss, it's just part of the the deal.
The skateboarding industry is all about starting and chasing trends. I suppose you always have to keep moving on to the next big thing.
Yeah and I’ve gotten got to do some cool stuff through all the big videos. Cheese and Crackers was supposed to be a quick mini ramp video but it snowballed into something bigger than we all thought it would be. For the packaging, I carved that half pipe out of cheese and stacked that all up to have Seu [Trinh] take photos of it. It was originally going to be called Peanut Butter and Jelly but we caught wind that Volcom had some snowboard competition called Peanut Butter and Jelly so at the last minute we changed it. I think Daewon called it Cheese and Crackers, meaning that it was supposed to be a little snack-sized video.
Instead it became legendary.
All those projects, like 5 Incher, were so fun to work on.
When I was working in the office it seemed like there was a new campaign in the works or something new about to get released.
Transitioning to more current times, we both were part of the Dwindle collapse so we saw a lot of the drama up close and personal. What was your mindset coming from working with those established brands names to starting something completely new?
At this point, everybody knows the story. We got bought by some weird investors that didn't have any real passion. Globe had owned us for so long and they were great. They were really a part of the skate culture so they understood the ebbs and flows of the whole thing. Sometimes you get good times and then bad times but they sold us because things were starting to change.
Unfortunately, the people that bought us weren't interested in keeping core skating around and eventually just quit paying everybody. It was crazy to see it happen to brands that had been around for 20 years and that had so much soul. They were big brands and to have them all collapse at once was shocking. I was one of the last ones to get let go because I knew where all the files were, but there wasn't much to do for the last six months.
It must have felt disheartening for you to see a brand like Madness collapse right as it was gaining traction and starting to grow out there.
It was unbelievable. Madness was fun because instead of just doing graphics, we were actually going over to the factory and getting to work with them to design the boards. I went over and I was amazed by all the stuff they were able to do. I was involved from the ground up to create the concept and graphics. I was trying to do something different and then to have it all taken away was crazy.
After the dust settled, the plan was to get the band back together and start fresh. With Opera, we wanted to keep the unique fit and finish of the decks that we started doing with Madness, but obviously we couldn't keep the name or anything. That was our starting point, but we had to make it unique and different, which is fun. It's just a challenge that you’ve got to figure out. I think I've learned a lot by doing Madness so I think Opera is even better. We cut off all the shit that was gimmicky and lame.
It's fun developing stuff that nobody's really done before, like the new Pop Slick boards. We were trying to figure out how to avoid having to ollie off the slick material, which gets soggy. It's not like the familiar pop of wood. We figured out how to embed that into the last layer of the board for the areas where you only need the slide. You don't need it on the whole tail because you don't slide on the tip of your tail. Stuff like that is fun to come up with and when you see it actually work, it's awesome.
It makes total sense, although I would’ve never previously thought of it that way.
What's the vision for Opera moving forward and for your creative output in general now that we are moving full steam ahead with Sidewalk Distribution?
I'm excited for it. Times are tough for now and it’s not the glory days anymore, but those times are usually when skateboarding becomes the coolest. When it starts to slow down, it can be really a creative time so I'm kind of looking forward to that. Of course we want to still sell enough to keep everybody lights on though.
With Opera, it was meant to be an all terrain brand but I think we're starting to move a bit more into street. It’s awesome, but I was never a vert guy. Now we're getting riders that are more street and the Pop Slick boards are obviously really helpful for that type of skating. I’m just trying to do stuff that nobody thought to do before. That's what I get excited about.
Originally published in Issue 3 - May 2024