The “casual skater” is someone who hops on a board and skates between one and 25 times a year. A “core skater” on the other hand, is someone who skates wherever and whenever they can. Skateboarding has always been popular in small circles of the United States, especially among students, but it’s been difficult for young kids to skate as much as they’d like thanks to educational restrictions. Until now.
Thanks to a California entrepreneur, kids around the U.S. are able to skate to school, skate to their lockers, and safely keep their boards inside those lockers until it’s time to go home and hit the skate park.
Carson Kropfl created Locker Board, a company that manufactures skateboards that have been modified to fit within compact cubbies, storage areas, and school lockers.
One important note: Carson Kropfl was 11 years old when he created this company.
“My mom said I had to pay for all my surf contests and surf lessons,” Carson said.
So, of course, this young skater came up with the locker board idea, made a few dozen boards, and began selling them.
“At first, we had the boards kind of like a normal skateboard with the round edges and the tail. The tail would make it wiggly and it wouldn’t really work, so I cut off the tail but kept the round shape. It still didn’t really work. It was too small to fit your feet on. So I thought to just cut the board into a block and round the edges.”
According to San Clemente Times, Carson, now 12 years old, has been invited to make an appearance on the popular television show Shark Tank.
“We were at Mammoth Mountain in an elevator, and my dad noticed someone who had the Shark Tank on his jacket, and he was actually one of the producers,” Carson added. “My mom and my dad started asking him questions and showed them the pictures of the products. He said we had not grown enough (in understanding business), but he said he could give the producer updates on our progress.”
As The Orange County Register, reports, when Carson launched his company last year, the 11-year-old boy built every Locker Board by hand in his backyard workshop. He struggled to keep up with orders, so he had to outsource operations a little bit.
If Carson’s appearance on the network show is a success, he’ll likely see a tremendous amount of increased business. He might have to get in touch with large manufactures who work with industrial sheet metal, which is the number one most common type of metal used in the industry, in order to mass produce his Locker Boards.
Carson does, however, still collect used skate decks and handcrafts them. He calls these handcrafted boards the “Recycled Series.”
“I was so excited,” he said. “I was blown away that I was going on Shark Tank.”
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