When I was 14 years old, I had my first vision of my dream job. I told my mom my I’d want to be a clerk at a skate shop, selling skate products to other skateboarders.

This was in 1998 in my hometown Kalajoki. Little did I know it only took 3 years to fulfill that dream.

But before going to that, I have to mention something about my childhood. I loved sports of all kinds. I played ice hockey, football, Finnish baseball, basketball, pretty much all team sports interested me except volleyball, damn I hated it.

On top of team sports I was a good cross-country skier, and I even entered few orienteering contests. I was an active kid who loved sports. In a small city of under 10k inhabitants, it’s important to find enough hobbies to keep things interesting.

With all of these sports, there’s equipment around them, and I have always had interest to what technical details, let’s say a pair of cross-country ski boots had. Even as a kid, I read the tech sheets of products and I was genuinely interested in product technology and the designs of sport equipment.

I’m not coming from a rich family, so I’m not saying I was a spoiled kid having access to all expensive stuff. The point wasn’t to have all the best gear for every sport, I was just generally interested in sport equipment.

The best example of this interest is when carbon fiber cross-country ski sticks were introduced in mid 1990s, with a variety of grip handles. I was growing out of my old pair of entry-level glass fiber sticks, and after doing a quick comparison in a sport retailer at the age of 10, I told my parents what would I look into for my next pair of taller sticks. The lightness of carbon fiber was of course an obvious step-up from heavy and soggy glass fiber, but I “lectured” my parents how my skiing would get better if I would get to choose the hand grips with extended plastic handles that would avoid my mittens to slip every time I was hitting the snow with the sticks.

Luckily that pair of ski sticks wasn’t an expensive choice so I got them from my parents. I remember skiing becoming much more enjoyable for me after that, as compared to how it felt like with the old sticks. I felt the energy I put to push speed with my tiny arms wasn’t lost in the process, thanks to these Finnish-made Exel ski sticks.

Enough of ski sticks, I was about to talk about my first job.

So the key to fulfilling my dream of becoming a skate shop clerk was an active young entrepreneur Petri Pennala in my hometown Kalajoki.

Petri was running a traditional shoe store Kookenkä in Kalajoki, but he also had an ambition of wanting to expand his business to another door targeted more for a younger customer base.

This was the post-millennium era, Tony Hawk Pro Skater was out on Playstation, Fred Durst was rocking Osiris shoes on MTV and skateboarding in general was just cool. Even Finnish TV showed some X Games contests.

I was already living and breathing skateboard- and snowboard culture, drawing logos to my school note books. As a kid I completely skipped the heavy metal drawing phase (except a few KoRn logos here and there), I was more into drawing Blind and World Industries brand logos instead to my school books.

As we got some EU funding for the city of Kalajoki in 2000 to create a brand new skatepark in town, Petri sensed there’d be a good chance to make some business with selling skateboard products, shoes & apparel along with some more traditional workwear inspired Jack & Jones jeans and shirts for the masses.

He opened Station Clothing Box in 2001, a bold move in a city of just under 10000 inhabitants.

I got to sell some Girl & Chocolate Skateboards decks and DC Shoe Co. USA skate shoes and do the buying in for skateboard products already in the age of 16, needless to say i was STOKED. This was all I had dreamed of, and all of a sudden it happened a 10min walking distance from my home! I think I spent as much time at Station than home, and I would’ve done it even without the 6 euro / hour deal I had with Petri.

Most vivid memory of my Station days was a skate trip to Helsinki, Petri gave me a hand written sheet of A4 where I had a budget of around 30000 Finnish Marks total for various brands to be bought in to Station’s racks, the budget was equivalent to ca. 6500€ in today’s Euros. With that money I got to hand pick our skateboard hardware offering along with some shoes and clothing from couple skate distributors in Helsinki.

This was definitely that “kid in the candy store” moment in my life.

The 30000 mark budget seemed endless for me when I was picking the product to be shipped to Station, and Petri even called my Nokia 2010 brick cellphone to make sure to spend it all to get some cool products to countryside. He even paid me a daily fee as it was a work related trip in his books. For me it was the best holiday ever, covered by Petri. This was a definition of a dream work gig for any 16 year old skateboarder.

To this date I’m not sure if I did the perfect picks of products considering the taste of our small town’s customers, but the product was selling quite well and the local kids were excited. Kalajoki is a summer travel destination known from it’s sand beaches, and it was exciting to see tourist’s reactions walking in to a proper skate shop in a small town of ours.

I think I did at least something right in my teenage years working at Station. Just before I was moving out to Helsinki in 2004, Petri offered me a chance to co-open another Station store with him 60km south in Kokkola, Finland.

At the age of 20, I told him I need to see the world first before I could maybe come back and settle in to close approximity of my home town, located in west coast of Finland, approx. 550 kilometers north from Helsinki.

Now almost 18 years after, I’m still here living in Helsinki. I get to visit my hometown couple times a year and even though the place is full of lovely childhood memories, I think I did the right decision to go and see the world first.

Occasionally I think how much Petri’s new school way of running business against all odds paved the way for my career.

He did things his own way, never settled to do just what he needed to do, he was always challenging himself and creating new ways of business and marketing. He had a cool Chrysler Voyager taped full of skate brand’s logos back then.

It was inspirational to see the cultural effect he had in cities like Kalajoki, Ylivieska and Nivala (where he had Station stores in all cities at some point by the way).

Petri had this cool style of suprising people around him at times. It could’ve been a can of ice cold Coke brought to the shop, or giving a 50€ bill at our christmas party with just saying “go get yourself some drinks boys and make sure you don’t bring the change back”. Small things actually mattered, I’ve tried to keep at least some of that Petri’s style with me later in my life having people working for my businesses.

Much love to Petri and Milla. Please check out Stations’ offering when you visit Kalajoki or Ylivieska.

www.station.fi

Station Clothing Box Instagram