Primitive Skateboarding Founder Paul Rodriguez on Building a Brand That Outlasts You

0:00If you play safe, you might as well be invisible. Pro skater Paul Pirad Rodriguez was focused on his legacy beyond sports. In 2008, he launched Primitive, a Nike-exclusive sneaker shop turned full-scale skate and apparel brand. Me and my partners look at each other like, business plan? I thought we just told them the plan. Today, it generates$20 million in annual revenue with collaborations stretching from Dragon Ball Z to OutKast. Paul's here today to talk about the mindset that allows him to succeed on the skateboard and in business. Paul, thanks for being here. My pleasure. Happy to be here.

0:34You spent years as one of the most sponsored, most decorated skaters of all time. Eight X Games medals. The first skater to get a Nike shoe. Ten Nike shoes overall. Do I have that right? Ten. You're also one of the people responsible for taking skateboarding from this niche subculture into the mainstream. dream. Like you're as big as it gets. Thank you. Are you used to hearing that stuff? No, it just, it trips me out. It trips me out. Cause you know, just being a kid in my backyard skating and skating to school down the street from my house with my friends. And just to hear you list those things off now, like it's weird to have like such vivid memories of being the kid dreaming about that.

1:22And now being here on the other side, hearing it listed off at me as something that happened in real life is a trip. It feels surreal still. Yeah, for sure. To go back, you're already at, you know, I don't want to say the height of your career because the height of your career was a long period of time, but like it's 2008 and or 2006, even a couple of years prior, you're already very successful and famous and you decide to open a sneaker shop. Like, It sounds almost quaint to me. What was it that inspired the move? My original partner, he, it was his dream. So he was the manager of the skate shop that I grew up skating for.

2:05And he, he managed retail his whole teenage life into, up until we started Primitive. So as soon as I signed to Nike, he would call me and text me and basically harass me like, we should open up our own sneaker shop. I'm telling you, it's so, it's like, it's the perfect combination. I know the sneaker culture inside and out. You have the Nike connection. Plus you have like, you know, the name. I'm telling you, we can open up a sneaker shop in the Valley and turn Ventura Boulevard into like our own Melrose and Fairfax type of situation. And I was like, I don't know about business. This all sounds like overwhelming.

2:44I don't know, maybe like, Like, just like, not right now. And then he just kept grinding the idea, grinding on it, grinding it, and telling me, like, you know, just wore me down. So eventually I was like, well, I am going to have to think of something post skateboarding. I am going to have to, like, have something going for me when it comes down to having to retire sooner than later. You have that sense of foresight at 19, 20? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, it was probably 20, 21 by that point. But I realized like there's a window to skateboarding. I had no idea. I'd still be here at 41, you know, professionally skating.

3:23But, you know, I figured, you know, you're 19. You think by the time you're 30, it's going to be all over. And that still seems like forever away. But that came and went, you know. So I was just like, yeah, like I don't ever want to have to change my lifestyle. I'm too used to this. Plus, I have no job experience. I never had. This is my first job I ever had in my life. So this is my skill set. Yeah. If this goes away, I'm going to be dropped into the middle of adulthood and with no skills, no anything. So this has to work. And so I was like, well, shoot, I better set up my future as soon as possible.

4:01That feels like some whys beyond your years stuff. Like your prefrontal cortex isn't even fully big until you're 28 years old, you know, right? Yeah, yeah. So like to at 20, when you're like intoxicated by the success and the money and the fame and you're doing the thing you love. Like we see this story over and over again of professional athletes that don't think about their future. Nike does its first signature skate shoe with you. Like another one of these like big top of the mountain kind of accolades. and you decide to open up this sneaker shop and you go to them, this Nike exclusive sneaker shop.

4:41Do they just like sort of like give you the keys to the game? No, they do not. They were like, oh, you want to open up a sneaker store, huh? Like, yeah, yeah, we want to open up. Well, you know, we can't show you favoritism because we have all these other accounts that we service. And if we just give you an account and make them jump through the hoops, we're going to have a bunch of other retailers upset with us. And so like they actually might have made it harder for us than it would have been if I wasn't an athlete for them. Really? Yeah. I remember it was Darren O 'Brien. He was like, all right, you want to do this?

5:14Okay. Just give us a business plan. Tell us what you're thinking. Show us your location. Make sure it's not within five miles of any other of our SB retailers. And we'll let you know. My partners looked at each other like, business plan? I thought we just told them like the plan. Like I didn't know what a business plan was. The plan was we want to open up a store. Yeah, I just told you the plan. And so we had to work with a CPA and do projections and numbers and things like that. And we ended up creating a business plan. I don't remember exactly how long it was, maybe a month or two later. I go back to Darren and I'm like, hey, Darren, we got the business plan.

5:51I sensed from him that he was like surprised. He didn't expect us to get past that hurdle. And so we presented him with the business plan. He talked internally to more people, said, okay, they okayed it. And then from there, we went to finding the location, figuring out the name, all the things that come along with opening up a store, employees and inventory. And then we had to get other accounts with other brands. But the thing is, once you had the Nike account, then all the other brands would kind of fall in line. That's how the door got open. Yeah, that's how the door got open. So we knew to go after Nike first.

6:30It was the obvious choice, but it was a little bit of a struggle. When Andy first came to you and was harassing you about opening the store, you were like, I'm not a business guy. Yeah. You certainly didn't need it in that moment. Were you at all deterred when they came back and they were like, do all this stuff? No. The good thing about being 19 or 20, 21 is like you're pretty naive. The frontal cortex isn't developed yet. I've heard that somewhere. I just was naive. I was just like, oh, we got this. No problem. My responsibility was just to skate and keep my name out there. So I was doing what I loved.

7:09I was like, don't worry, guys. I got this part of the job. You guys got this and the rest of it. So their job was to do the more tedious, boring stuff. It worked. Got it done. And to be honest, like at that time, had we not gone through with it, I probably would have been whatever about it anyway. I would have been like, oh, well, whatever. I guess we'll find some other thing. I was so new and freshly living my dream, it would have been hard to make me bummed out about much at that point in life. Yeah. And there is also a little bit of that naivete, ignorance is bliss thing, right? Yeah, exactly.

7:44When you open this shop in 2008, the stakes are low for you, but you jump through the hoops and you do it. You also decide not to trade on your name in that moment. You call it primitive. You're not putting P-Rod in the name anywhere. Why? It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. I'm a naturally really shy person, especially the younger I am, the shyer I was. First of all, it's silly to just call a store P-Rod. But also in skateboarding, it's even more silly. The culture in skateboarding is very, very judgmental and it's very very like you have to downplay everything very cool guy very like yeah yeah yeah no big deal like yeah you know like yeah it wouldn't have gone over well was there pushback even when you got your first shoe with nike yeah oh for sure uh when i first signed to nike i got you know a lot of the industry you know calling me a sellout and giving me you know grief about it it just was something I was excited about and I didn't care what they were saying you really didn't it didn't impact you the thing that I I realized now as I got older what was really cool because like skateboarding culture is very counterculture very rebellious don't sell out you know this is our world and you know everybody stay out like that's not what drew me to skateboarding what drew me to skateboarding was the physical act of skateboarding like how can a human being be physically capable of these amazing feats like that's what drew me to skateboarding but also having grown up with a person like my dad is somebody to watch growing up seeing a person living their goals and their dreams at the highest level did something to my outlook on life I associated living your dreams with uh financial success you know what I mean Like I saw somebody living their dream super happy and making a good living doing it.

9:50So to me in my brain from the very beginning, that's the associations I made. When I fell in love with something or I had a dream, I naturally associated as I also want to make a great living doing this. Right. That hang up that a lot of people have. Like if I do the thing that I really love, then I won't have the money or I can do the thing for the money and I won't be doing what I really love. Yeah. To me, it's actually you're more of a sellout doing something that you wouldn't do for free. You know what I mean? Like, totally. I skated for multiple years for free. Obviously, I was a kid still, but like, I did it for free.

10:28I was getting paid in joy, you know, but how many people go to their jobs? Would they ever do that for a day for free? Yeah, yeah. Not many. For the vast majority of the answer is no. So like, you know, I know you got to do what you got to do. So I'm not making a judgment out of it. But like, if you really think about it, if you think about what a definition of a sellout is, you know. So I was like, bro, like, ain't no way I'm a seller. Like, of course I'm going to get paid, but I love this. You know, this is what I do. No, it's real. This is my dream, man. Yeah. We were talking about the early days of Primitive.

11:00It starts out as a sneaker shop. you're selling this store merch which then becomes a clothing line and that on its on its own feels fascinating to me like how something that starts out as store merch like becomes its own line and other stores start carrying it like did you have any vision of like that's what we want to happen or it just happened organically it happened organically from my perspective I can't speak from my other partners they were they were they probably had the vision for that But I was too busy like out being a pro skater. And when I would come into the store and notice that things were evolving, it would to me seem organic or just by happenstance or whatever.

11:43Yeah, accidental. So from my perspective, sometimes it felt like that. But it was probably more intentional from their perspective. How about the gold boards? You got to tell that story. That was a complete accident. Yeah. So if I look back on my career and try to say that I planned it all out this way, that'd be the biggest lie. So anyway, the goal boards, what happened was I was riding for this other skate brand, Plan B Skateboards. and I realized like I was at a point in my career where like I was like you know top of my game well established fan favorite if you will and you know I knew that my name associated with products moved the needle at retail and I was like all right I need to like take advantage of this so I was like alright it's time for me to put my big boy pants on and start my own skateboard company or make my own skateboards you know so I had this idea that in theory really would have worked but I ended up evolving it to primitive because it made more sense at the time I had this plan I was going to just make my own signature boards sell them on my website and every couple months, make a new graphic and drop them on the website.

13:02So we made a plan to do this. And so I ended up leaving plan B skateboards. I bought a bunch of boards from a manufacturer that were just blank, just wood. They just look like this table. I went to Home Depot and I bought a bunch of spray paint. I bought like white, black and gold for some reason. I just bought gold and I was spray painting in my backyard. And I noticed that the white and the black spray paint, whatever it was that I bought I don't know if it was high gloss or whatever I never really used spray paint I kind of just grabbed the first ones I saw they wouldn't dry well the paint was still sticky on the board and it would like make bubbles in the paint and I knew that wasn't going to skate well it was going to be sticky like if I want to do slides and stuff it was going to stick but the the gold paint dried perfectly it was smooth it was like matte finish and it looked really clean So I was like, all right, well, the white and black's out the picture.

14:01So I was just skating gold boards. And on Instagram, people would see the footage. Oh, that board looks cool. I'd notice little comments here and there like, oh, the gold board's cool. You should put those out. And little by little, I was like, oh, people seem to be really into the gold board. After a little while, that same board manufacturer that I was buying boards off to skate, they just sent the boards gold one time. And I was like, oh, my God, it was so beautiful. It was a gold foil board, just pure gold foil. And I was like, what? They're like, yeah, we've seen that on your Instagram. You've just been skating gold boards.

14:34So we have the gold foil here. We just made them for you. And I was like, oh my gosh. And then the light bulb went off. My partner Heath and I were like, let's run a test run and like, let's put some of these out and let's just see how it goes. So we decided to like start with 500 boards just to like get a feel if we can sell that many or not. so we made 500 boards i signed and numbered every one of them and then we made seven videos for a seven-day rollout every day we dropped a new video like promoting that we're gonna do it and then on the seventh day they'll go live and i remember the day we went live i was in argentina i was on a nike tour and so i'm in argentina i forget what the time difference is but it went live midnight and by 1202 it was gone it was done and we just sold 500 boards in two minutes all like oh my god this is great we just stumbled into like a gold mine you know like you weren't you weren't expecting that i didn't know what to expect because especially with how fickle the skateboarding industry is and how like fans could be like bro what are you doing like you're cutting out the skate shops like you know like you get critiqued every little move you make that's different in the skateboarding world, you're evil.

15:49So I didn't know what to expect. And we did it, sold out. I was like, oh my gosh, this is the golden formula. I cracked the code for pro skaters. Like skaters can finally, you know, make a living off their boards and stuff. And cracking the code for you was selling them yourself? Direct to consumer, just direct to consumer, like putting up the money yourself, selling it direct to consumer, and then you get to keep the profits, you know? What component do you think like the you utilizing the drop model had to do with it also? It's like you're drumming up interest. Yeah, that was my my my my partner Heath.

16:29That was his idea, like the marketing rollout, getting really cool shots of the boards, like filming slow mo skate tricks to like get the light glimmering off of it with the music and the way it was edited. It was really just like a moment in time that like just worked perfectly. So I think that that marketing component was huge for it. And, you know, we spent relatively little amount of money doing that and the return was great. And so like a eureka moment. Yeah, it was definitely a eureka moment. But quickly after that happened, my partner Andy called me up and was like, hey, man, like, let's talk.

17:08And I'm like, okay. He's like, I know you're about to start a skate brand. I was like, well, not really. I'm just going to make my own pro model skateboards. people couldn't understand they're like so what are you gonna make Parraigas skateboards I was like well that's not what the brand is called there's no brand it's a brand list brand it's just I'm making pro model boards and I'm gonna work with artists make some graphics every couple months put out a new batch of graphics but you can't make a brand called Parraigas skateboards I was like I'm not it's no name I'm just making a pro model board no different than when I was on plan B and they would make pro model Parraigas boards There's just no name.

17:47And people were like, what do you mean? I was like, trust me, I could see the vision in my mind. And so anyways, long story short, he was like, but you have Primitive. We have this whole brand, this whole thing that I couldn't really be too associated with it because I'm signed to Nike from head to toe, so I can't even promote Primitive clothing. This is such a crazy wrinkle in the story, by the way. You have a brand. Yeah. And you can't really rep it. Can't really rep it. so then you know he's talking about like why don't we make primitive skateboards it makes perfect sense and you know he starts talking to me it starts making more sense to me because i'm like well in theory if we make primitive skateboards in the long run primitive as a brand can last longer than paul rodriguez as an athlete if you do it right and so i was like all right you know eventually I made the decision okay instead of the quick money grab that I was doing that way I was like yeah maybe we can pivot it towards the brand I'll finally be able to really represent primitive promote it we can build the team out and like become skate brand and that's why it took that route again that foresight I just was thinking like yeah a brand in theory can outlast a person You know, look at Louis Vuitton.

19:08Louis Vuitton ain't been alive for a long time and it's still going strong. So I figure in a perfect world, a brand will outlast the person. there's something about skaters and I think also surfers, very LA things generally, where there is this kind of like culture. It almost feels like there's a personality trait through both of them, which is this very like laid back. I'm not going to get too stressed out about anything kind of mentality. And I've always been curious, like, does the skating and the surfing create that personality or do people with that personality naturally, do they gravitate toward those things?

19:42Maybe a little bit of both because as a kid, I'm definitely a worrier. I'm a fearful kid like afraid of the dark until I was like 12 maybe older to be honest with you afraid of like roller coasters I'm not a daredevil you know but I think that skating I fell so much in love with it that I got used to being in scared circumstances and it built a tolerance little by little over time so like at least for me it wasn't natural it was the skating instilled it in me but some people I have seen they have more balls, pardon me, if you will, than they have skills early on. They'll try things that are dangerous before they actually have the ability to do it.

20:27And I was the opposite. I wouldn't try until I was pretty confident my abilities were matching the level I was at. So it could be either way. But I think that attitude, regardless, if you've been doing, If you've been skating or doing something pretty dangerous a long enough time, you're so used to constantly facing like your fears and adrenaline and potentially getting hurt every day that like you kind of live in that space. So like when you're in a situation, like when it comes to business or anything else, you're just kind of comfortable in that space. Comfortable with being uncomfortable. Exactly.

21:01Yeah. And so you just kind of don't stress it until it happens. And then you also learn where to put your focus. You focus on what you need to do to give yourself the best chance of success rather than focusing on the disaster. Because you focus on the disaster, you're going to help create the disaster. Oh, my God. You know what I mean? Yeah, don't speak it into existence. Exactly. The disaster doesn't need any help happening. It'll take care of itself. Right. You need to help this chance of success happen. So you need to focus exactly on that. Instead of skating, I'm not thinking like, okay, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall.

21:39I'm thinking of a, okay, put your foot right here. Make sure you go on the right speed. Okay, pop exactly at this point. Your focus is captivated by each little step that you have to do. And because the truth is, even when you're focused on success only, it could still become a disaster. so you have to really really help the success happen it never happens I don't want to say never say never but it doesn't happen on accident typically primitive is is now almost two decades old yeah yeah what do you feel like the brand perception is today like has has that vision come true do you feel like primitive is still deeply associated with paul rodriguez or do you feel like it's a brand that truly stands on its own now I think it's both.

22:25I think Primitive and myself have a lot of parallels to them. Like Primitive is known for having like top tier talent skateboarding, but also known for being a little bit more mainstream. like we'll do collabs with Dragon Ball Z. We'll have these exterior collabs. So we have a fan base that has no clue who I am or any of the skate team, but they know our brand through different collaborations that we've done and different avenues that we've taken. Right, like all the hip hop collabs, right? Right. The people coming in the door for that aren't necessarily skaters. Yeah, no, they're not necessarily fans of mine or skaters at all.

23:04And they just are fans of the product, which is great. but then we have like the whole skate side of things where like yeah we have a pretty strong following in skateboarding and we have in my opinion some of the highest talent skateboarders around so that was always very important to me so like I feel like there's parallels between that and my personal career like whereas you know I prided myself on being a high high level skateboarder But I wasn't afraid to go sign with the Nikes or the AT &T's or Mountain Dews or Targets or whatever and go a little more mainstream to help broaden the horizon of the career.

23:42So the brand kind of does that as well. Were there ever times where you felt like you veered a little bit too far into the mainstream direction? For sure. Even still. Really? Yeah, I definitely feel like I'm pushing it a little bit, you know. Right now. Right now, yeah. And even all throughout my career, like, but I guess that's just the mindset you have. It's hard to turn off. Like, whether it's in my skateboarding abilities and talents, I'm trying to always push it far there too. And sometimes you're pushing it to the point where like, you know, you get hurt. You know, you're pushing it and you're pushing your luck in the injury department.

24:23And then you're pushing your luck over here on like, am I going too far? Am I losing credibility? Am I losing respect? I guess it's just a personality trait. Like, you can't find neutral. If you play safe, then you might as well be invisible. Are there times where you feel like you have overdone it, you've had to pull back? For sure. I'm trying to think of particular instances, but, like, for sure, it's definitely, I'm like, okay, let's just slow down. Let me just go balance out the scale and get back over here, focus in the world that I came up in, and make sure that I'm, you know, keeping my foundation there.

24:57And then when I feel like that's secured, I'm like, okay. Let me not lose ground over here in the mainstream world and keep my relevancy or my name going over here. And like it's a constant back and forth. It's like constant recalibration. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Is it tiring? Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, you got to find something that will help you sleep at night. So I guess. I like heard in an interview that you said truly like the moment you stepped on a board, you knew. I guess now looking back, like it's like alignment. Like it just felt like a piece of me like found me, if that makes sense. Totally.

25:37I found a piece of myself that I didn't know was out there and I stepped on the board and just like it clicked perfect, you know. And you were how old at the time? I was just shy of 12 years old. The longevity piece of this is also insane. Oh, thank God. Yeah. I can't believe it. To what do you credit that? To God. To God. All glory to God. I'm not in control of so many pitfalls that could have derailed me, you know, injuries, distractions. By the grace of God, somehow my track just kept straight. For you, it's God in this like divine peace. And I've heard somebody talk about the nature of genius too, right?

26:18Like that there was like this idea that genius was like this like spirit that would live in the walls and that it wasn't yours. So like if you did something that was really amazing, you couldn't really take credit for it. It was like the genius was in the walls. And also if you had a flop, it wasn't really on you either. Right. Like it's kind of the same. Do you feel the same way? It gives you a piece for sure. Like you said, I never thought about it from the flop side. From the flop side, I'll definitely, I definitely tend to like take credit for my flops. Give that to God too. I know. I know.

26:50You're right. You're absolutely right. You can't control what happens to you. You can only control how you react to that, what happens to you, whether good or bad. So that helps me to, especially as I get older, to remember like, yeah, buddy, you didn't do this. Paul, you're a delight. Yeah, this was fun. Pleasure. Yeah, thank you so much. And thanks to all of you for tuning in. If you like what you saw, be sure to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. We'll see you next time.

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