Happy Hour Skateboards (2012-) Four Down Dist. stories part 2.
It was around the same time when our first Polar Skate Co. products were hitting the skate shops in August 2011, when we had our annual gathering of skateboarders in Finland, the notorious Finnish Championships / Pro Skate weekend.
Held yearly in Helsinki usually late August to wrap up the summer season, Finnish Championships & Pro Skate were at that time organized at the legendary Nordenskiöld Ice Hall. The skate contest weekend brought every skateboarder from Finland together to skate all day and party all night.
One of the very few photos I have from the weekend, it kind of sums up the vibes - Wes Kremer, few years before being titled as Thrasher’s Skater of The Year in 2014.
I think it was some after party at Mbar at Lasipalatsi, Helsinki, where I probably DJ’d with Jarkko Poropudas from Happy Hour Skateboards. At some point during the night, Jake (owner) and Mikko Kempas (AD) approached me asking what my plans are with Four Down Distribution.
The rumors were already going around that I was seeking to add more brands to Four Down Distribution’s line up after starting the operations with Polar Skate Co., and when Jake and Kemppu sat down with me to discuss about Happy Hour Skateboards, I was shocked to hear how low key their operations were.
Happy Hour Skateboards had been under a distribution company since 2002, but things had gotten weird over there and past couple years Jake and Kemppu had run Happy Hour independently.
The reality was that past couple years Jake’s small apartment’s closet had served as their warehouse, and seasonal sales calls had been done in the parking lot of a logistics center every time they received a new shipment of boards, and those boards had been ordered approximately without pre-booking the collections with the shops.
When Jake asked me if we could seek for a solution where I could help Happy Hour Skateboards to reach a more professional approach, I didn’t hesitate a bit, I told Jake and Kemppu straight away that I want to help Happy Hour as best as I can. To me, Happy Hour had always been my favorite skate company from Finland.
Happy Hour Skateboards was added as a second brand to Four Down Distribution’s line up that night.
First collection that was run through Four Down Distribution, Spring 2012. Photo by Mikko Kempas.
From our first meetings I felt Happy Hour Skateboards had so much potential to become the brand it deserved to be. Already loved by the whole Finnish skate community, the brand was already in good place with it’s reputation (and a respectable 10 year history!) , but the daily operations needed a big step-up to get to the right path going forward.
Four Down’s first logo presented here for the first time in public. Photo by Mikko Kempas
By having a proper warehouse and a daily shipping ability every week day from our office at Fredrikinkatu, sales started going up straight from my start in spring 2012.
We switched our board production factory in late 2012 and got to work the next few years with a lovely gentleman called Julian Dykmans, who these days runs a creative studio Cascade in Berlin, Germany. Julian was a big fan of Happy Hour Skateboards, so we felt he really wanted to help us on production in their end. Even though the board supplier produced boards for dozens of other European brands, Julian always made sure to remind us that he was always riding a Happy Hour Skateboards deck as he thought our graphics and vibe were the best.
One of the first board projects I was involved with directly was our guest model for Elissa Steamer. With the help of my Nike SB contact over in Portland, Kaspar Van Lierop, he introduced us to Elissa and helped this project to happen. I think Elissa had been without a board sponsor for a while at that point, and she was about to start her own surf / lifestyle company Gnarhunters, which by the way is still alive and kicking in 2022. Actually there’s some rumors about a big shoe release with Gnarhunters this year..
We had to get the photo for the ad before the boards got out of production, so problem was solved with a tote bag. Clever!
Elissa’s guest board was really well received, so we were confident to think about other internationally known skateboarders to link with us. As Jake knew Louie Barletta personally from Louie’s Helsinki days, Jake got in contact with him and he was down.
Louie Barletta guest model from summer 2013, design by Mikko Kempas
To gain some attention partly outside skateboarding as well with Happy Hour, we partnered with We Got Beef bar to celebrate their 10 year anniversary with a thirst quenching board. As our warehouse was just under 100m from WGB, needless to say we hanged out a lot at WGB.
We Got Beef collaboration, 2013. Design by Mikko Kempas
For apparel design, I think it’s quite funny we were producing shirts like “Jaken veli” before FA did their iconic class photo boards and tees.
“Jake’s brother”
Between 2012 and 2016 I’d say we were in good direction of underlining the skate aspect of the company, and at the same time gaining attention from non-skaters as well. Board production quantities were growing, and every apparel collection sold a bit better than the previous one, so we felt that we were on a right direction.
Haijump Mag ad, 2015
After years of pro skateboarder life in UK & Barcelona, Tuukka came back to Finland and back home to Happy Hour family. Lifetime deal. Hang Up Magazine late 2015.
They had “Uzi does it” shirts in USA, we did “Mom does it” versions in Finland.
Business wise we were doing alright in 2016, then something big happened.
Jake had been in Mr. Leather contest in Helsinki where in the bar he had met Durk Dehner, the founder of Tom Of Finland Foundation.
Jake had mentioned to Durk that we should do skateboard graphics in collaboration with TOM, and surprisingly to Jake, Durk was very interested in the idea.
After some phone calls over to US, it looked like a huge collaboration was happening with Happy Hour Skateboards and Tom of Finland for 2017.
Let’s pause for a second, the year was 2016. We didn’t have a single internationally recognized pro skateboarder who was openly gay at that point. None, zero.
It’s easy to think skateboarding would be a really open community for all kinds of people, but we’re still to this date far from that. A male driven industry is full of stereotypes and boundaries still yet to be broken. We are going slowly towards right direction with having more female and non-binary skaters included, but it’s a slow progress.
In summer 2016 even our conversations regarding the future of Happy Hour Skateboards were tricky. We realized we might lose some of our loyal customers by producing boards with Tom of Finland’s homoerotic imagery. At the same time we felt the urge that it’s our responsibility as a company to change attitudes inside our culture.
Simply put, business wise we risked it all, but we were going to do it anyway as we thought the cultural aspect was way more important than losing some of our devoted customers who’d have more conservative views.
As we were dealing with an art institution for the first time, we had to act like professionals, to do proper look books, write press releases and do some actual PR work to get cultural attention not only inside skateboarding, but from outside too.
While the boards and apparel for Tom of Finland collection were in production, the first pro skateboarder in US came out of the closet. Not just any name, but it was the living legend Brian Anderson.
Hearing and reading about skateboarders reactions to this news, we started to feel even more confident doing this collection that was about to release in few months.
Happy Hour Skateboards x Tom of Finland collection #1 was released on 8th of April 2017.
Day & Night and F*ck The World. Lookbook photos by Mikko Kempas
Release day queue at My Favorite Things skate shop. Photo by Janne Nick
New York Post, May 8th 2017
Vice Magazine, May 2017
A lot of cool posts can be found behind #happyhourskateboards tag on Instagram. Photo by Roope Venäläinen
New York Post wrote about us, Vice Magazine wrote about us, Finnish media wrote about us (to our surprise less than international media).
Most importantly, the collection went viral on social media, thanks to our fans worldwide.
People WANTED to be part of this together with us, and they wanted to show their support for our bold move of releasing this collection. It was more than just boards, tees and hoodies. This was a cultural thing.
There’s still hundreds of images on Instagram behind #happyhourskateboards hashtag where you can see the impact this collection had.
The collection was sold out in Finland in days, in some stores only in hours. People queued up to get their products in stores before they got sold out.
I got my first phone call for re-orders from skate shops around Finland in just minutes after the release.
After the release day, we didn’t think a single bit if we lost some of our older devoted fans while doing this. We’d rather go along with the customers who were in to this together with us from now on.
As the collection sold out quickly from Tom of Finland’s store in US as well, ToF Foundation sent us the good news and kindly asked us to continue the partnership and do a second collection. We certainly hadn’t expected things to go this well for us.
Before we went into designing a second collection for Tom of Finland, we did a full catalog of boards and apparel for fall 2017 and decided never to sacrifice from our own collections for the sake of collaborations. That way we could keep Happy Hour going forward as a brand aside collabs.
Ride with the awesomes, Fall 2017 lookbook by Mikko Kempas
Happy Hour team riders Tomi and Tommi hugging some boards at Four Down Dist. warehouse
In 17th of February 2018 we released the second collection with Tom of Finland.
Tom of Finland Collection 2 lookbook photos by Mikko Kempas
The collection was meant to be released for christmas 2017, and was heavily late delivered to us by couple months. As we had a big collection of inline products booked for Spring 2018 we had to somehow try to fit this to our release calendar before that.
Lesson learned, don’t release skateboard collections in the middle of February in Finland, when shops are mostly focusing on their winter sales to clear out the old stock from last year.
Also, don’t believe what the factories tell you about their production schedules, try to always push the production process forward a bit too early instead of being on time with their schedule. Changes and postpones might happen.
Tom of Finland Collection 2 lookbook photos by Mikko Kempas
Even though the graphics were liked a lot and the sell through was good, it was just a cluster of bad timing for us so sales were just OK compared to the first collection.
Over in US, Tom of Finland store over had good success with this collection as well, as they didn’t have the winter weather there to mess up the board sales.
Both of the board graphics were amazing, the colors and the vibes were just perfect. Graphics by Mikko Kempas
After the second collection we agreed with Tom of Finland Foundation that we’d focus on other projects for a while, and look into doing a third collection somewhere in future.
I think a beautiful wrap up to these two collections was that Happy Hour Skateboards was invited to annual QX Awards gala in August 2018 in Gloria, Helsinki, where we were given a honorary award for the cultural work we did in skateboarding with these collections.
Jake went on stage to receive the award and gave an amazing +5 minute booze driven freestyle speech for the audience, unforgettable moment for us. “Dirty Durk” Dehner from Tom of Finland Foundation was on stage with him, it was amazing.
2018 was a special year for us, as the big collection for Spring 2018 was our 15 year anniversary collection. All the boards and apparel had a theme around our 15 year journey. There’s no other skateboard company who’d been active that long in Finland, and we took much pride in “sinking the ship” for that long.
15 years of blood, sweat & beers. Graphics by Mikko Kempas
In all silence in late 2017, I had gotten contacts to Moomin Characters LTD. via an old Nike colleague Mari Kajosalo who was working for Finlayson. She had seen what we had done with Tom of Finland and told me Moomin Characters could be interested in working with us as well. Finlayson was producing home textiles in collaboration already with both of these institutions.
We prepped up a presentation based on Happy Hour’s 15 year history and our culturally and commercially succesful Tom of Finland collection #1 and went to present it to Moomin Characters in late 2017.
They really liked the idea of bringing Moomins to the world of skateboarding, and we agreed to do a collection on our first meeting.
As Finnish clothing label Makia was also planning their clothing collection with Moomin Characters at the same time, we met up with them to discuss how we could avoid overlapping with our collections. We didn’t look at Makia being a company that’d basically rival Happy Hour Skateboards as they weren’t tied to skateboarding culture, but we understood their point that some of our customers were their customers as well, so we cancelled the apparel line that we had already planned, and went forward to produce boards only.
I think we surprised every Happy Hour Skateboards fan when we released the first MOOMIN by Happy Hour Skateboards collection on 9th of August 2018, on Tove Jansson’s birthday.
The lookbook was shot in Moomin World, Naantali, Finland. Photo by Mikko Kempas
On the night before our collection’s release, we got invited to skate in an empty shopping mall of Forum, Helsinki. They had a limited Moomin coffee mug launch there to celebrate Tove Jansson’s birthday. As people had queued up for the mugs for +10 hours, the Moomintroll and all the news media were there. Jöle did a first try tre flip live on Ilta-Sanomat TV.
The Groke, Snufkin and Hattifatteners were the main characters of the first collection.
Launch plan was to have one hour of instore only sales from 11:00, and then go live online at 12:00.
By 12:30, in under 90 minutes, all boards had been sold out from everywhere. There wasn’t a single retailer in Finland who didn’t call me to get more boards, but we didn’t have a single board left at our warehouse, they were all sold out already.
One of our retailers, who had worked in the industry since late 1980’s, called me later that day and said he hasn’t witnessed anything like this in skateboard industry in Finland ever before.
These days our boards from the first collection can fetch up to 300-400€ in aftermarket, they instantly became collectable items for fans.
Same thing happened here that had happened with Tom of Finland before. The next week people from Moomin Characters contacted us and congratulated us from a job well done, and asked if we’d want to do another collection with them. Amazing, thank you, let’s do it.
We spent the late fall 2018 planning the next collection, and got everything into production by the end of the year.
Moomin by Happy Hour Skateboards collection 2 was released on Saturday 4th of May 2019.
Moomin by Happy Hour Skateboards collection 2, look book photos by Mikko Kempas
Moomin by Happy Hour Skateboards collection 2, photo by Mikko Kempas
Overall the graphic process with both the Tom of Finland and Moomin collaborations on our side was the same on all collabs; Jake, me and Mikko would pitch in ideas and send some screen shots back and forth until we got to a point where graphics, themes and concepts would begin to form a collection. Then Mikko did the final board and apparel graphic designs using the original illustrations of the artists. I think for every collab we’ve done, we have achieved to at the same time respect the original artists, but to also bring those graphics to our skateboard world with color pickings and graphic placements thanks to Mikko Kempas.
If the first Moomin collection was based on cherry picking some of our favorite artworks and concepts like Hattifatteners glowing in the dark (yes, the board graphic was a glow in the dark print), this second collection was focused a bit more on our favorite characters, how to make them look good in skateboard graphics and how to relate these Moomin character stories to skate culture.
Think of Stinky for example. He really does look like he hasn’t taken a shower in a week and is running out of a grocery store with those bottles. In Moomin world, Stinky is the “necessary evil”, as without him The Police Inspector wouldn’t have his job.
Hemulen was picked purely as the character was already in skateboard slang. If someone was goofing around too much, he/she was a Hemulen. “Hemyliiii!”
As we had the record breaking sell through to show in analytics from the first collection, this time the Moomin Shops were also interested. Also the Japanese distributor of licensed Moomin products got interested, and we produced them a set of boards for the Japanese marketplace.
It was the biggest release we have ever had with Happy Hour Skateboards.
Little My, Stinky & Hemulen. product shot by Sami Välikangas
From skateboard business perspective, I want to point out a funny detail on quantities of our collaboration products.
If you overproduce, the naysayers easily blame you for “milking it” - trying to cash out on something.
If you intentionally keep something limited and the product sells out super fast, the same naysayers are blaming you for not producing enough boards that all skaters could buy those boards to skate with, as the art collectors will buy them all in minutes for home decoration or for resell purposes.
So whatever you do and how many boards you produce, someone will find a way to hate on it anyway. We’re talking about a very small part of audience here who had something negative to say about our collabs, but I think it’s worth to point out that the balancing of production quantities ain’t always easy, and you can never please the whole audience.
Our solution with Happy Hour Skateboards was to produce enough products for this second collection so anyone would have a chance to buy and ride a Moomin skateboard.
Little My product shot by Sami Välikangas
I have to point out that it was heart breaking for us to tell many moms and dads that we couldn’t get their kids a Moomin skateboard from the first collection as they sold out so quickly.
Based on the overall quantities we thought it could be wise to produce for the second collection, we set a limit of maximum buying quantities to all of our retailers, so we could control the overall quantities and avoid overproducing, the “milking it” part.
At that same time we had decided that we won’t plan a third collection for near future even though the demand would’ve been still there.
Most importantly, already when planning the first Tom of Finland collection in 2017, we had decided to never shift away our focus from our own inline collections. We actually made them look even more personal, even more “Happy Hour” than ever before. Then we’d have a balance in everything we do.
A good example of this is our Spring 2019 collection which was purely based on “Mi Casa Es Su Casa” theme, all products were based on photos taken from Jake’s apartment he had lived in for over 15 years, which was also a crucial part of Happy Hour’s history as that small 40sqm apartment served as a Happy Hour “warehouse” for few years.
Spring 2019 “Mi Casa Es Su Casa” collection. Graphics & photography by Mikko Kempas
I think it was our christmas party in 2018 with Happy Hour team, where we ended up to Musta Härkä, the infamous karaoke night club in Vallila.
I knew that “Mä Käännyn Hiljaa Pois” was Jake’s favorite J. Karjalainen song, so without telling him, I entered “Oki ja Jake” to karaoke duet, and when it was our turn, we sang the song with tears in our eyes.
After the song we hugged each other and later that night I had a conversation with Jake that if we ever should do another collaboration with someone, it’d have to be with J. Karjalainen.
For non-Finns, it’s not easy to describe the influence of J. Karjalainen. The whole country knows his music, majority of Finns know at least some of his songs word by word. He’s a mythical being who’s never been much into media limelight and no-one writes any bad word about him in the press. That’s of course as there’s nothing bad to write about him. I’m not saying that he’s an anti-media person. Without going into media politics, I think there’s just a clear difference between good, journalistic media and bad, needless media.
Image wise he’s kind of like Bruce Springsteen. Everyone knows the name and the sound, and no-one wants to talk badly about him as it’d just make the critic look dumb.
Here’s a 70 minute YLE (Finland’s national public broadcasting company) produced document “Beibi ollaan ikuisii” that portrays him quite well:
https://areena.yle.fi/1-4047919
If I compare him to international artists, some of his old production sound like Van Morrison, there’s definitely some Bob Dylan there as well. His musical roots are in old blues and country music so a lot of his sound come from the origins of rock n’ roll. He has a massive discography with a wide range of different sounds an eras, but they all fit perfectly under this mythical character, J. Karjalainen. One of my favorites is Lännen-Jukka, a very stripped down folk concept, that was recorded isolated in a cabin with just a banjo, massive amounts of cut brandy and recording equipment.
We had kind of forgot the conversation we had with Jake about our dreams to do something with J. Karjalainen, until I saw a Facebook post that his new album “Sä Kuljetat Mua” was about to release on 19th of October 2018 and he’d be signing records at a local record shop on release day, just few blocks away from our warehouse.
I asked Jake and Kemppu simply “should I try it?” and they OK’ed me to try my best.
I wrote J. a fan letter basically. In the letter I told how much we love his music, and I told some of our background as well with Happy Hour. I mentioned we’d love to talk about a possibility to bring the world of J. Karjalainen to the skateboard audience.
With shaky hands I went to record store on the release day and got the album signed by him and gave him our letter to read later on. I remember telling him; “I have written two fan letters in my life, one was for Wayne Gretzky when I played ice hockey as a kid, and now this is the second one 25 years after.”
J. asked me what I do in my life and I told him I have a skate shop in Fredrikinkatu and do all kinds of things around skateboarding. He said he knows the shop and said he’d pop by some day to say hi. I was in awe.
J. had read the letter and responded back the next morning and thanked me for the letter. He said he’ll come and visit us some day to talk more. I was shaking even more at that point.
One crucial thing about the whole project needs to be said.
From my shop assistant days in Beamhill around 2005-2007, I remember J. came to the shop one day with his son Väinö to buy a pair of skate shoes for Väinö. So I knew that they knew something about skateboarding, and probably J. would think positive about skateboarding in general. This is the main reason I had the courage to present him our idea.
From our first meetings with him, I could see he was interested in the concept of skateboarding graphics as contemporary art. Not in a wall hanger art object sense, more about it being a very contemporary piece of art, which isn’t a finished product when it’s new. It’s a product with “a life” and it’s a finished product when it’s skated ‘til the end. Skated ‘til death.
Me, Jukka & Miikka (from My Favorite Things), October 2018
A skateboard deck looks brand new and shiny when it’s in the shop wall, but it starts to live it’s own life the second you step on it and start to ride the board. The graphics will be “destroyed” and a used board with it’s scratches tell a new story, and every story is unique.
I think the idea of this “patina” and the life cycle of a skateboard deck was one of the main reasons he got interested in designing a collection with him together. He said though that he was impressed that we had worked with Tom of Finland and Moomins earlier, so our “track record” probably helped a bit.
About the design process, we certainly didn’t just take album graphics from his discography and copy paste them to board graphics. It was very, very far from it. Jukka was there to design the products with us, and he put a lot of his vision behind the products. Many details were coming from him, and all the small details were checked together with him.
Designing “Doris” with Jukka and Kemppu at Four Down Dist. warehouse. Part of the original artwork by Kai Kujasalo seen in bottom right corner
It was very interesting for us to work with a living artist for the first time. With Tom of Finland and Moomins we were working with art and graphics that had been already done, and our main goal was to respect the original art and bring it to a new surrounding and to please the institutions protecting the legacy of these artists.
With J. it was very different, more challenging but more “real” in a way too. It was a living and moving project.
Found on Instagram, photo by @villeunicorn
We ended up choosing three main themes for the collection from three albums.
J. Karjalainen ja Mustat Lasit (1981)
J. Karjalainen ja Mustat Lasit - Doris (1985)
Lännen-Jukka (2006)
Kai Kujasalo, the artist behind Mustat Lasit and Doris artwork, was kind enough to approve the use of the original artworks for the collection.
Instead of naming the collection by the traditional release style, like “Happy Hour x J. Karjalainen”, we did it how his band was originally named.
The collection was simply named: “Happy Hour Skateboards ja J. Karjalainen”
J. Karjalainen ja Mustat Lasit, original artwork by Kai Kujasalo
J. Karjalainen ja Mustat Lasit - Doris, original artwork by Kai Kujasalo
Lännen-Jukka
The collection was released on Saturday 16th of May, 2020.
Of course we had plans to have a big release party, and to get the man himself to play some songs at the party, but all plans were cancelled because of the pandemic.
We had to adapt for the quickly changed overall situation and figure out a different approach for the release.
We decided to do a 2 hour only online pop-up shop run by Happy Hour Skateboards the day before the official release, and then the official release at our retailers was strictly online to avoid any queues in front of the stores.
We got over 100 orders in first 2,5 minutes for our 2 hour online pop-up, and it took the whole weekend for three guys to pack and ship the orders from those 2 hours of sales.
We had people ordering products all over Europe, from San Diego, California to Australia. It came as a positive surprise to us that so many people from all over the world were interested in J. Karjalainen.
Mostly I guess these orders were coming from Finns living outside Finland, and their most positive memories from their home country were probably J. Karjalainen, ruisleipä and salmiakki.
Domestic sales in Finland were amazing as well. Many styles and sizes sold out in minutes.
I remember sending a message to J. in the evening of the release day, telling him how positive feedback we got from retailers from Helsinki to Oulu, and how amazing it was to see that people were loving this collection internationally.
I took a photo of a whisky glass to him and said I’m raising a toast for him and to this amazing project, and he responded thanking us and said we have deserved our toast together. It’s these small moments in life that make it all worth it, I laughed and cried at the same time from exhaustion and joy.
Happy Hour Skateboards ja J. Karjalainen lookbook photos by Mikko Kempas
Kauppalehti, photo & article by Jani Niipola
As the pandemic has been around for nearly two years now, the balance with supply and demand for skateboarding products in general has been in total whirlwind.
With Happy Hour Skateboards we’ve done our best to support the skateboard shops and to keep the brand active.
We are about to turn 20 years this upcoming spring of 2022, and I just leave it at this, we’re gonna celebrate the 20 year journey the whole year from April to August.
Let’s hope we are able to do all the plans we have lined up for the year. If the pandemic will still be on, then we’ll adapt and create something else, but I’m sure there’ll be quite many highlights coming this year to celebrate our history.
I want to thank Jake and Kemppu for these past 10 years, the whole Happy Hour skate team, all the shops who have supported us over the years, all the artists and institutions we’ve worked with over the years. Thank you all. Most importantly, thanks to all Happy Hour Skateboards fans around the world.
Happy Hour Skateboards, Family Thing since 2002
Thanks for tuning in,
-Oki
