Beamhill - a shape of future to come (2004-2007)

Remembering my first months in Beamhill, it’s a similar feeling to having a crush on someone.

Beamhill in Aikatalo, Mikonkatu 8, Helsinki.

I couldn’t believe that in just few months of living in Helsinki, I had gotten a spot from a shop that was (and pretty much still is) the most respected streetwear shop in the country.

All of my colleagues were strong persons, with their own interests, style and vision. Juha Malkavuori, the owner, had a good eye to hiring people to Beamhill.

To me still finding out who I am and who I want to be, everything I saw around me was super inspiring. What’s even better, I got along great with everyone at Beamhill and we were simply having time of our lives.

Brands we carried were inspiring of course (I was really into LRG Clothing, Stüssy, Wood Wood and WESC at that time), but for the first time in my life I had dozens of people around me daily that shared their inspirations, and Beamhill was a hang out spot for all kinds of cool people to drop by and have a cup of joe.

As we were the “cool shop” in the city, we had names on the guest list to all parties, brands invited us to VIP treatment PR events, we got free products from companies and everything was just cool.

Kaarle, Jufi, me & Anna. Beamhill Aikatalo crew, August 2006

On a personal level, I saw that all of a sudden there was much more to life than just skateboarding. I started to get really into things outside (but closely connected to) skateboarding too, music was a huge thing for me and I went out clubbing 2-3 times a week. I loved it.

Rose Garden dancefloor, pic by Miika Saksi

Rose Garden, a night club run by the Helsinki night life legends Lil’ Tony & Tim Uskali in Iso Roba, Punavuori, was definitely the most inspiring place for me music wise, that’s where I got to experience many different underground movements in Helsinki music scene like Dead Boys Massive dubstep nights & Pablo Steffa’s Solid Gold soul / disco nights.

Solid Gold @ Club Rose Garden

Another club night worth to mention here is Kovalevy. Started in 2004 first located at Club Liberte, Kovalevy moved soon to a bigger venue in southern Helsinki located next to Viiskulma in Punavuori - UMO Jazz House. Kovalevy was a club night focused on hip hop (both international & local) and club music of all sorts, which no one wanted to miss. Those who were there were talking about it afterwards for weeks to come. FOMO was big on this one.

Well, back to Beamhill.

A side note - we listened to Erlend Oye’s DJ Kicks and Arcade Fire’s Funeral albums almost daily at Beamhill for couple years straight, i’m not lying.

At Beamhill, I was once again the young gun of the crew. However after only few weeks of working at Beamhill, I boldly started to bring in ideas of what brands to carry in Beamhill and where we should shift our focus to.

One thing on top of the list was sneaker culture. I had gotten few copies of Sneaker Freaker mag and I was sure this huge trend wave that was already becoming huge in Japan, Australia and US was going to hit Europe really soon.

I got in contact with Kaspar Van Lierop who had just started to work at Nike to bring Nike Skateboarding to European marketplace (I’ll write a separate post on how I got Kaspar’s contacts and about my relationship with Nike SB in general).

Kaspar came to visit Helsinki couple months after the first emails were sent back and forth, and he set us up to be the first official retailer for Nike SB in Finland.

We got our first shipment of Nike SB shoes to Beamhill in February 2005. For those into sneaker culture, especially Nike SB Dunks, this shipment included colorways like Tweed Low, Shanghai 1 Low, Ice Crystal High, Oompa Loompa Low, J-Pack Royal Low and St. Patrick’s Low all for 89€ retail a pair. These days some of those colorways can even fetch 10x the retail price in the aftermarket.

Nike SB Dunk High “Ice Crystal”, originally released in 2004

Footwear sales at Beamhill were skyrocketing, and the brands I had helped adding to the line up were selling great. We were on to something there. After few months of continuously growing sales, I got offered a spot to be the shop manager at Beamhill Aikatalo. I was 22 years old then, youngest shop manager still to this day at Beamhill.

Back to Kovalevy club night. DJ’s Henrikki, J-Laini and Fiskars from Kovalevy were actually one of the first people to ask me for a sponsorship deal at Beamhill for their club nights. This partnership was my first touch of doing some marketing to support our sales.

I think I could’ve stayed in Beamhill full time for many years to come, but in Spring 2006 I got offered a spot to help Kaspar in his Nike Skateboarding operations in Europe to become a freelancer based sales & marketing agent for Finland.

Beamhill’s owner Juha wasn’t too happy about it at first, even though the deal with Nike SB at first was to spend one day a week for the brand, where I could still do 4-5 days a week at Beamhill.

Maybe Juha sensed that this could lead to something even bigger at Nike and that I’d shift my focus from Beamhill more to working with Nike. This is what exactly happened, but I’ll tell more about it on a separate post.

I had my last pay check from Beamhill in June 2007, it almost broke my heart to leave the lovely crew, but even my colleagues at Beamhill forced me to not to hesitate hopping on to new projects that were offered to me by Nike Finland in the summer of 2007. More on that later.

I’ve always loved Beamhill and I will always cherish the memories from my Beamhill days. I’m happy that I’m still in contact with them as they’re my customers at Four Down Distribution (which I will talk about in separate posts as well).

Warmest thanks to Jusa & Pirjo and the whole crew.

Thank you vainhesaskeittarijuttuja for this!

And this!

Thanks for tuning in,

-Oki