As my board came to a stop on the brick sidewalk of Kloof Street in Cape Town, I looked up to see the storefront of Baseline skate shop.
Earlier that week, I got the contact info of Adrian Day – Co-owner of Baseline and long-time South African ripper. You may recognize his name from a distribution he ran years ago featuring brands like Zoo York, Axion, and City Stars.
I had an interview scheduled with Adrian that afternoon. As I walked into the shop, I immediately noticed the high-end feel inside.
Adrian was in the back of the shop helping several employees before he looked up to greet me.
Originally, I was just thinking we would sit in the back of the shop while we do a quick interview. I asked him where we could talk, and to my surprise, he responded with “Wanna go grab a beer?!” This was already turning into one of the coolest interviews I’ve done.
We posted up at a bar down the street, grabbed some beers, and Adrian told me some sick stuff about South African skating, his shop, and more.
Here’s what he had to say.
Yo Adrian, let’s start off with some stuff about Baseline. What’s the story of the shop?
Sure! So Baseline skate shop started in 1998 with a previous owner. Back then, I was actually supplying him products through my distribution and working to launch Nike SB in South Africa. So, I knew him pretty well through those relationships.
He had been running the shop for around 13 years before frankly, he just started getting a little tired and was ready to move on to other things. That was around the same time he asked me if I wanted to take over.
So, I got together with one of my friends and we bought it from him!
Awesome. Has the shop always been at this location in Cape Town?
No, previously the shop was further down the street away from the city centre. I have a crazy story about that actually!
So, the building we used to be in was bought out by these super gnarly underworld gangster types. They basically bought the building, came in, and pushed our rent way up. We were like, what? You can’t just come in and do that…
We had a meeting with them where my partner and I sat down at this table and were suddenly surrounded by like 10 dudes. Long story short, they told us this is the way it’s gonna be.
Once we were in the meeting, I didn’t say a word because I could already figure out what was going on.
When we got back to the shop, we immediately started looking up the head guy and it was like, yeah, these are definitely not some dudes to fuck with. So, we started planning to get out of there.
You know, it actually worked out pretty good in the end because it pushed us to our now better location in town!
How has skateboarding evolved over the last 20-30 years in Cape Town and South Africa?
In my opinion, skateboarding here has been a bit of a mirror of everywhere else in the world but just on a micro scale.
I think we may sometimes have a slight delay in things down here, namely stuff like the rising popularity of female skaters. That seems to have only had a rise here in the last couple years.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty much always been super hard to make money in skating here.
Ironically, I almost feel like it may have been easier in some ways to earn money as a skater here some 20 years ago.
Back then, skaters worked to get photos in magazines and film a great video part. At the time, stuff like that was really quite valuable to brands so the money followed.
Now, there’s so many kids putting out so much content that it’s pretty hard to stand out and hard to get paid.
Through speaking with Peach & Bones Skateshop in Mexico City, Pepé Ávila discussed the rise of local Mexican brands trying but struggling to sell in Mexican skate shops.
How well do South African board companies and brands do sales-wise here?
I would say that the first thing in South Africa is that price sells. So, if you have a South African board company that’s cheaper than the American brands, that’s what will sell.
Another unique thing here is that there’s like an insanely huge second-hand board market. That’s really just the economics of this country.
You do have your own Baseline branded apparel. For shops out there that may not be to that point yet, could you talk about how you do things like sourcing, designing products, etc.?
Yeah! So my partner and I usually just sit down and design all the stuff in-house.
Sourcing-wise, we get the garments made in Mauritius. The textile manufacturers actually supply a lot of the surf brands we have down here in South Africa.
We get the blanks from them, screen print them here, and then get them in the store and on our riders.
One of the shop employees told me you also have your own board company? What’s that?
Yeah, that’s just a little board brand I have called Faux Pas. Actually, it’s more centered around being like a clothing brand but we also have some boards. Check it out.
How significant is the online shop portion of your business? How are you handling shipping, etc.?
It’s hard to say what percentage of our sales the online shop contributes to because it’s a bit up and down. I’d say it’s maybe like 40-50% of our business at the moment.
And yeah, as for shipping, we just have the guys in the shop managing the online orders, packaging them, and shipping them out from the shop every day!
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What are the main ways that you market the shop? Anything you’ve tried that worked well or didn’t work so well?
I feel like there’s kind of two sides to our marketing.
First there’s the “skate side”, which is just… being involved in local skateboarding, our team of riders, you know. Then the “product side”, which is more like advertising our new products and such.
We back a lot of events. Whether it’s girl skate events, etc., we try to stay involved in the community in that way.
We’ve also put a lot of energy into video projects. Last year we went to Berlin and recently we’ve finished several video parts with team riders. Basically, we’re always trying to do something… Generally though, we do receive some support from a brand, notably as of late – Vans, who has helped hugely in backing some of our projects. We’re super grateful for that.
Then there’s the more common digital marketing aspect of it. So that’s like, paid ads on social media platforms, banners and things like that. Some brands also come to us to support these kinds of expenses when their products are involved.
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What are some of the biggest challenges of running the shop nowadays?
The first thing that comes to mind is the weak currency in South Africa. Our exchange rate is bad here. Skate products, whether they come from the US or from wherever, are super expensive in regards to our local currency.
The second thing that comes to mind is shipping. Things got really out of control here after Covid with high fees and other challenges. Lately, we’ve been trying to figure out smarter ways to get around this by doing things like moving smaller amounts, trying to find cheaper couriers and things like that. It’s a constant hustle to sort that out.
Finally, people here just don’t really have the disposable income that other places like the US, Europe, etc have. I recently read a statistic that said something like, the top 12% of South Africans earn like $25,000 ZAR (∼$1,200 USD) a month. So, we’re selling premium skate products in an environment with this level of income.
Baseline presents itself as a “premium skate store” selling the latest products from the top brands.
What are some challenges of selling these typically more expensive products in this market?
Well, we’ve definitely over-invested in certain brands before. So, we now put a lot of thought into ordering the right amount of such premium products.
As I said, price sells first here. However, we also really take pride in representing the best brands in our shop. Simply put, it’s stuff that we like.
Therefore, we think that people here should have access to this cool shit and not just dream about it! So, we’re careful when it comes to the quantity we order of more high-end products.
Do you have any other plans for the coming year ahead?
Yeah, at the moment we’re in the early stages of planning something like a “co-tour” with Arrow & Beast skate shop in Stuttgart, Germany. Like, their team comes here and we go there. We’re trying to sort things out with a brand to back the tour. But yeah, it’ll be sick to see what the new year brings!
Amazing. Thanks Adrian!
Baseline skate shop is located at:
8 Kloof St, Gardens, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa