For close to two decades, 686 has been providing innovative and progressive outerwear and technical apparel inspired directly from the same Los Angeles and mountain-lifestyle history it was founded upon.
The following blog is a mash-up of my experiences in and out of the industry, around the globe.
Whenever at trade shows, you get to catch up with old homies, slap some high fives and of course, check out some cool brands. My friends at Bond came out strong last season with a Carbon Neutral stance. Easier said than done, especially when you also have to make the product look good. I can’t show you the products, but I can show you their pop-up cardboard booth.
It all starts with this. (Now if I could only make my booth pop up like this, I’d be set…)
I don’t know about y’all, but sometimes when I cruise through halls and see some other brands, I say to myself, “what the…?” Maybe it’s me, but I don’t get it.
Again, don’t understand.
Enough. I’m gonna go check out Malakye x SIA’s first annual job fair-Schmoozapalooza
We have a tight crew here, however we’re looking for a few good heads. Interestingly enough, we had one of the biggest lines.
Thanks Chad for the opportunity, we met some talented people!
Typically each show, we throw a big bash of something or another. This time, we opted for something casual and mellow at a billiards joint. Here’s some of our crew from the East and West chill-axing after a long day.
Pool relaxes you…
…Until we had some drama. Of the hundred or some people that were with us, there were a small handful of heads that weren’t with us. It’s all good, until this one guy bumped into me and I accidentally spilled his drink. Like a good neighbor, I offered to get him another beer. He kinda wigged out and then stormed off. My buddy next to me said “Watch out, those are Denver Crazy eyes.” About 10 minutes later I saw the same dude get tackled by security, he was trying to skip his bill and put it on our tab. Trouble ensues and basically it took 6 dudes to try and hold this guy down. They did everything in the book to prevent him from bailing and hurting himself. “Crazy eyes” was on some kinda of stuff that gave him super human strength. It was pretty gnarly.
An 1-1/2 later, the police finally show up, as well as 4 homeland security vans. So much for the mellow night…
That’s how we do it , hope to see y’all at our next gig!
First day of the show and it feels super good that you can actually smell the fresh cool air outside rather than the recycled oxygen and cigarette smoke in Vegas. The convention center also looks nice. Looks like Mr. Bear thinks something is going on.
Inside, there’s a lot going on.
Welcome
Where’s our booth? Oh, here it is.
We opt for a “closed” style booth as we like to keep our shit under wraps. However I’ll give you a sneak peek. Inside, we do a full merchandising section so stockists can quickly and easily see the story we’re promoting. In the back, we have 8 individual selling stations which are packed to the rim.
Harrison, our Dirty South homie, has been hustling it all day. He’s triple booked here and showing three stockists deep. If you want to check out Harrison’s blog and see him hate, click here.
The cool thing about shows is that you run into tons of heads. Frank 151 honcho Stephen and photog master, Craig, stopped by to show me the new Middle East issue (and to give me some passes for their gig with RZA, I’m not gonna get drunk and pass out like last time, aight???)
Meet Goose. He’s our ex 686 mad scientist who now works at Columbia probably causing too much trouble, but we still love him.
We had a good vibe going on in our area of the show. The C3 family (Capita, Coal, Union) as well as Holden were right next to us. Congrats to Capita for their 10 years in biz!
I like the 10 year time line
Union bindings are on point. Martino, George and family got it going on. Designed/developed in Italy and tested worldwide just for you.
What show wouldn’t be complete without getting stupid at night? Since I’m kinda beat, I’m gonna go mellow and just say what’s up to some homies. Frank’s gig was dope, check out the view from the top.
RZA and friends tore it up.
Nike also did an installation with Space Junk, talking about junk….
…please don’t ever let me do this again. I’m going to bed.
It’s game time for us to hit the tradeshow circuit. Agenda just passed, ASR is about to happen and the daddy of them all here in the states, SIA, is about to begin. After 37 years of SIA being held in Vegas, it’s moving to Denver to be closer to the snow. Some people absolutely hate the move. I’m actually down with it, as it gives a totally different perspective on what really happening in our industry (not to mention I won’t get hassled by the hookers in the casino and I get to go to bed a little earlier…) Another plus is that we get to take our reps and go ride in the mountains before the show. Echo mountain is about 45 minutes from downtown Denver and they’ve supported us for a long time. In return we supply the park and lifty crew with custom gear. Hello Echo!
Let’s do this fellas
Growing up in LA, I thought our mountains were small. Damn, I think this is the smallest hill I’ve been to. Actually it’s a snow park and not a hill, but it’s hella fun.
Echo reps us hard. Check out the last pole on the main chairlift (I don’t think the Big B was pleased with their positioning, but oh well…)
Last run of the day and they took us to a custom 686 wall through the trees. The crappy thing is that I just slammed doing something stupid and hit a tree right before this picture, so I’m actually in pain, but that’s how it goes.
When I head to the hills, I see a lot of heads rocking our gear. I get more stoked when I see people sporting the old shit. (cuz it still holds up!) I saw this one dude that was wearing a jacket I designed close to 10 years ago. (It was in pristine condition and I almost asked him to do a trade so I can use it for the 20 year book I’m planning on doing…) I remember the inspiration for this came off this one shoe. I designed the jacket into an quilted eyelit gull wing motif.
In 2002, I did a 10 year retrospective and called it “A Decade of Individual Freedom.” Sounds a little corny today, but oh well, but so were the short shorts I wore in grade school.
If you surf, you know what it’s like to be scared shitless on a big day. When you’re in the water, everything is intensified. I can’t imagine how this would feel in person. Check out some wipeouts (shot by Red) on location at JAWS.
Although I’m always online for some reason or another, I usually don’t have the time to check out whats happening with the who’s who in hot girls. Even though I already have a great one, it’s nice to see whats going on from time to time. I’m all about someone who not only has the looks, but also has some sort of talent. Askmen.com recently did their top 99 women for 2010 and I hand-picked a few out (see a trend…) Let me know what you think.
