About kewday

kewday skateboards first appeared on the market during the mid 90’s having been designed and created by kewday’s founder, Jamie Bartie. The 1990s was a period in skateboarding’s short, but rich history, when California was the heartland of skateboarding.

kewday’s initial focus was to harness Australian skaters and provide kewday as a platform, a stepping-stone, for Australian skaters to make contact with the skateboarding industry in the USA.

This was achieved with the support of kewday’s distribution arm, Equal Central. Equal Central had already secured the exclusive distribution of skate brands such as Alien Workshop, Zero, Habitat and Invisible in Australia. As such these contacts provided Equal Central with the ability to open the doors for the up and coming kewday skaters.

kewday has stayed true to its initial focus and used the resources of its USA counterparts to open the door for Aussie skaters including Matt Mumford, Chad Bartie, Morgan Campbell and Shane Cross. kewday provided the means to assist those riders to the top of their profession. With the belief in itself and a desire to succeed, kewday maintained the belief that Australia had its own contribution to make to the industry.

A conscious decision was made in July of 2004 that kewday would make its final assault in order to become Australia’s premier home grown skate brand. It was also at this time that Equal Central decided to cease dealing with all USA brands in order to refocus 100% of their energy and resources into kewday.

The time had come to expand kewday’s developmental role for Australian skaters who wished to make skating their profession. No longer would Australian skaters be supported to go offshore to California in order to “make it”. kewday set a new benchmark which was to provide its skaters with resources in Australia, to be able to encourage, support, promote and most importantly pay its riders. There was no reason why an Australian company could not provide these opportunities and kewday was the one to do it.

In order to achieve this goal kewday had to re-focus and re-launch itself and was inspired by other brands such as Cliché (France) and Blueprint (England) and what they had achieved for the industry. It made sense to invest in Australia.

With a new team of dedicated staff and team riders, kewday launched straight into its first advertising campaign with skaters Chad Bartie, Scott Standley, Dave (Battle Cat) Harris, and Karl Bayldon. It became apparent, very quickly, that Australians were keen to support the home grown Aussie skater and kewday. It was evident from the response kewday received that for too long, international skate companies had misjudged what the Australian skateboard community needed.

At the end of the day it’s about balance, giving it a go and staying true to where you come from.

In 2006 it’s amazing to think that the new breed of Australian skaters have the same opportunities as Matt Mumford, Chad Bartie, Morgan Campbell and Shane Cross to travel the world, to skate where and when they want and still choose to be based in Australia.

The skateboard community today, is one that is much tighter and in tune with others globally compared to the 90’s. kewday’s success can be directly linked to the fact that it seeks criticism ahead of praise in order to push beyond the thinking, boundaries and expectations that limit its competition.

kewday thanks all its supporters and welcomes all new comers to the kewday skateboarding family.

Roll On - any given kewday