Ken Block interview
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HUCK talks to DC Shoes co-founder Ken Block, the skateboarding entrepreneur turned rally car champ.
HUCK: You founded DC back in 1994, what was your motivation back then?
Ken Block: Man, that happened such a long time ago. (Laughs) We just saw an opportunity with DC to make something different, and hopefully better, than what was available at the time. Skateboard shoes were just a pretty plain simple product that nobody had really put too much thought into. We decided to make something a little different and newer and you know, put more technology and design into it. It took us a while to really get to a level where we really were proud of it cos it's not easy starting a shoe brand. It's a little easier nowadays but back then it was really difficult. But the brand developed much faster than we thought it would, and so some of our first shoes were actually fairly simple but as we developed more and more creative with what we were doing technology wise, design wise and the market just embraced it a lot faster than we ever really imagined. It's been very fun and rewarding to see how well the company's done.
And how do you feel when you look back on this empire you've created?
You know the funny thing for me is I come from a creative, graphic arts background. I enjoy doing everything from creating ads to working on the product so I don't really see how it could be better. When I look back on some of the things that we've done from Danny Way jumping the Great Wall of China to the Mtn. Lab, it has just been really remarkable. Being able to activate these projects has really what the big thing for me is. I judge things more by accomplishments than by dollars in the bank.
I see you've had a lot of diversity from originally just a skate shoe brand the one thing is obviously the snow aspect. What is DC bringing to the snow world?
Many years ago we decided to be more than just a skateboard shoe brand. Damon and I have loved a lot of different sports such as motocross, BMX, surfing and snowboarding since we were kids. For an area like snowboarding, the first place we went into was to make boots. We can make footwear, so our original goal in that area was to make the best snowboard boots we could possibly make, and we've developed stuff over many years, patented technology. It was a little surprising how big of a demand there was from us as a brand to make the snowboards and on top of that how positive the reaction's been from the market because it's pretty easy to make a jacket or make a pair of shoes with waterproof materials but to actually go into a hardware category like snowboards that's very difficult, it's a giant leap away from a skateboard shoe.
What are your plans for developing this?
We've been a freestyle based company since our inception. Contests are really a good way to get exposure for some of our athletes but really for us we focus a lot on video parts and viral videos on the web. We're moving towards making another Mtn. Lab video so this'll hopefully be the third and final version of series. It'll actually be a bigger better one than what we've made in the past so that's the general plan. It's been a very fun project to do over the years it's great for us as a company to have that place to be able to develop and test products. We'll probably change film series to something different. I don't want to be doing something like Mtn. Lab 10 years from now!
You seem to be creating quite a stir in the rally world. Could you tell us a bit more about it?
I've been a rally fan since I was a little kid. I was never really a big fan of cars that went around in circles like Nascar. But that's mostly what motorsports are in America - I never knew rally existed in America. Then in 2004, Travis Pastrana did a couple of rallies for Subaru. It opened my eyes to sort of a championship event in America so around that same time we hired Travis as an athlete for DC. I decided to go up and have some rally driving lessons just to try it out and I ended up being pretty good at it. The next year, I decided to race with Travis for the whole season and I actually ended up beating him, and won Rookie of the Year! In 2006, Subaru bought official sponsorship for our programmes and I became a driver. I was just kind of lucky that I have some natural skill in a car and I was in the right place at the right time.
As someone who's not been in a rally, how does it compare to everyday driving?
It's one of the most aggressive forms of motorsports because being on the gravel the car is built to slide and to jump, it's a 4-wheel drive, 350 horsepower car so it's very strong and can handle a lot of abuse. The goal is to get down the road as quickly as you can as aggressively as you can without hitting any trees or any rocks or anything so which usually happens so for me it's just a lot more fun and ties in with a lot of the stuff I've done with motocross in my past. There's nothing like the feeling of being in a rally car you can't get that feeling anywhere else in motor sports.
What was it like taking the rally car to the snowpark for the Mtn. Lab movie?
When you ride the lift up the mountain and you look around and be like "Wow this could be really fun with the car" I have so much fun in the car but it's always so serious as you are always racing. so when I got the opportunity to do it down in New Zealand Snow Park, it was great. To me it was just a giant playground and our goal was to see how much we could make of the opportunity and we ended up getting a three and a half minute video part out of it so it turned out much better than we expected.
Do you feel you're getting the right life-work balance sort of how you saw it or do you consider what you do work anymore?
Well I'm very fortunate to be one of the luckiest people in the world. On top of helping develop such a successful company, I'm a professional rally driver with Travis Pastrana as a team mate. I couldn't have scripted a better story as a kid. I realise how fortunate of a position I'm in so everyday I try and make the most of that position, so that's basically my life!
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Ken Block interview (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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