“There are two things in
this world that I owe a lot to,
Music and Skateboarding. 

These kindred spirits have shaped who I am, and I have dedicated the last 25 years making physical records for mom and pop indie record stores to sell and earn their modest living. I’m creating this program to celebrate the real influencers who are pillars in their community and have helped raise thousands of kids like myself. Skateboarding was the first thing that taught me about self-confidence and hard work. Like most folks in the skate industry, I would spend my days at my local skate shop when I was 10 years old watching Bones Brigade videos and not going home until I learned and stuck those tricks is just saw. I was never a team sports dude and skateboarding taught me that I can do something if I kept at it, and it was the ‘me vs. me’ attitude that really resonated. That independence is something that prepared me for my career in music. The record business has changed a ton since I started with vinyl lp sales and manufacturing slowing down dramatically. That leads to these pillars in our communities closing because they don’t have the goods they need to stay in business. The indie industry, along with the majors all rallied together to create Record Store Day to celebrate these small businesses and give them exclusive content. I want to apply this to Skate Shops. There has never really been a day that celebrates these unique shops, the folks who grind every day to give kids a cultural hub that is not the fucking internet.

Although I’m not skateboarding much or in the industry, it is still part of the fabric that made me who I am today. My worlds collided one time when I was wearing a t-shirt from a shop in Liverpool that I sold music to that named their shop after a song we put out by the homie Madlib and The Lootpack called Lost Art. I was in Lord Windsor Coffee Shop and Geoff Rowley, who I knew who he was but didn’t know personally walked up to me and said “where did you get that shirt” I told him that I sell music to the shop in Liverpool and he said “that’s my hometown shop, they were my first sponsor” How many kids did that skate shop turn on to the music I was fighting for? This program is all about the real fucking influencers, the guy who asked me if I have heard of Freestyle Fellowship when buying a Pharcyde record in 1992. The dude who showed me the photos of Neil Blender at Sadlands doing a boneless off the rock, not the person with 10,000,000 followers on Instagram with a skateboard or who calls vinyl records 'vinyls'! Let’s celebrate small business and give them something to stay afloat. I’m asking everyone to come together on February 19th every year and provide these shops with something exclusive to help with their bottom line for the year. If the record industry and can do it, stores can make more on RSD in a day then they do in 5 months, so can the skateboarding industry. None of us would be anything without the local shops who have molded us into the people we are.” – Scotty Coats, cofounder of Skate Shop Day & Senior Vinyl Marketing Manager @ Capitol Records.