It was a cloudy day in November of 2019. JD and I were skating at Sunnyvale Skatepark when it started to rain. When we got home, I wanted to show him one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid called North Shore.
If you are not familiar with the movie, it is basically a Romeo and Juliet type of storyline, but with surfing. A white boy from the mainland starts dating an island girl with deep ties to the surf scene. Mainland white boys are not supposed to date island girls, so you can imagine the chaos that follows when her brothers and cousins find out. A few of the characters are surfboard shapers, Turtle and Chandler. Chandler is the master craftsman and a soul surfer. He does not care about fame, contests, sponsors, media coverage, or money. He just loves shaping the best boards around while hitting the waves every day. Turtle is the apprentice who works under Chandler. When I was a kid, I always thought Turtle was the coolest. He looked cool, acted cool, talked cool, and was just cool.
So we are watching the movie, and I turn to JD and say, “Dude, how sick would it be to be the Turtle of skateboard shaping?” It was a brief thought, more of a “Wouldn’t it be cool?” than an “I am going to do it.”
Right after I said that, I checked my phone and saw a post in a skater forum. Some guy had made a concrete skateboard mold to press his own boards. I was like, “Whoa, this is a sign.” I took a screenshot and sent it to my dad, who is a mason. “Dad, can you make one of these?” He laughed and said, “That is just a concrete form. That is easy.” And that was the spark.
Dad and I looked at every forum and every video we could find online about making skateboards. We were obsessed. We would share everything we found with each other. A text would come in at 11 at night saying, “Jonny, check this out,” and I would send the same kind of texts right back.
My good friend Noah Baxter was shaping locally pressed uncut decks at the time, and he tipped us off to The Makers Movement on Facebook. It is a page filled with small batch skateboard makers sharing tips, jigs, and techniques. People would ask questions, and other makers would jump in with answers. We found our tribe. Shout out to Lew Ross, Sam Koch, Pete Haggy, and Corey Sholes. Those 4 guys were always willing to share, help troubleshoot, and offer advice.
We learned that you could put an uncut deck in a box, pour concrete on each side, and make a quick and easy mold, and that is exactly what we did. We had zero intention of becoming a skateboard company. I just wanted to see if we could press a deck for my son JD, my daughter Zoey, and myself. That was it.
So we bought some veneer, glued it up, and put it in the mold with a series of 2x4s screwed together on the top and bottom, also known as a spar press, tightened as much as possible. The first deck was skated on my birthday, December 24, 2019, at the Newark, California skatepark. It was the strongest board with more pop than I had ever felt. I asked anyone who would listen to try it. “Check this out. We made this.” We left the park with 4 orders. That was wild.
I called my dad and said, “Dad, Dad, we got 4 orders.” He said, “Orders for what?” I said, “Skateboards.” His reply? “Boy, we are going to need to buy more veneer.”
That was it. That is how it all started.
From that day on, we were craft skateboard makers. We made 4 boards for our friends, then their friends wanted boards, then friends of friends wanted boards, and we were like, “I guess we have a skateboard company.” It was an accidental business born out of the love of skateboarding. It just took off a few months in. We were shipping decks all over the world from Facebook and Instagram posts.
My son JD was helping sand. My daughter Zoey was helping me screen print and glue up decks well into the night. My wife Mandy was always coming up with marketing ideas, keeping the business on track, and shipping out orders. She wore, and still wears, many hats. Dad built presses. We glued up decks together daily, printed shirts together, and stayed completely locked in and focused.
Dad taught me how to use tools, because I did not know how when we started. We taught ourselves how to screen print. We were doing everything ourselves: gluing, pressing, shaping, painting, screen printing, shrink wrapping, making our own shipping boxes, and printing our own merchandise, all in our garage. We built a press out of wood. It kept failing. We kept fixing it. After a while, we moved to steel presses. One press became 2. Then 2 presses became 3.
Since 2019, we have built well over 1,000 skateboard decks and shipped them far and wide.
Dad, Mandy, Zoey, JD, and I run a craft skateboard operation fueled by the love of skateboarding, the passion for making the best decks possible, and the dream of running a skateboard company, even if it is out of our garage. We focus on using the best materials, the highest quality softgoods, and keeping everything in house, made by all of us. We slow the process down to make the decks stronger and longer lasting. These decks do not lose their pop. Seriously.
So that is our story. Head over to the shop page and pick out something nice for yourself or a loved one. You will not be disappointed.
~ Jonny Manak, Head Janitor of Manak Skates