Nerd Talk: Board Sales Data With Skatepark Of Tampa

adamsullivan

• March 13 2009
• 469 views
• 4 comments

About a month ago, SPOT’s Rob Meronek was telling me he had compiled the past few years’ worth of sales data, and could look at trends and compare how brands did each year. It sounded really interesting, but it was hard to follow the specifics. Rob’s an accountant and an Excel whiz, so it’s dizzying to watch him at work. He’s the guy who tabulates all the judges’ scores at Tampa AM and PRO, and he logs hundreds of scores in the time it takes for you to drink a beer. So we moved the conversation to the Alien Workshop video that was playing on a loop.

Then earlier this week, he published some of the info—board sales data over the past six years, and his notes on each. Check it out HERE.

(Rob Meronek with “Filmer” Sara Castillo. This is the only photo i have of Rob)

TB: How did you calculate this info?

RM: Our point of sale system that I wrote back in 2001 records several things about each item sold, including its category, manufacturer, sale date, and more.  I took all that data, grouped it by manufacturer and subtotaled it by year for all products with a category of “deck”  [code for the nerd-curious is below].  It’s called Transact Structured Query Language.

How does it help your store, does it allow you to buy smarter?

I think in an industry as fickle as ours, having a good handle on numbers doesn’t provide as much benefit as it might in another normal industry.  Some of the numbers on this report were surprising, but for the most part, if you’re a skate nerd, you aren’t caught too off guard.  I think it’s a combination of numbers and having a smart buyer like our guy Barak Wiser.  Take the Muska Skytop for an example—what kind of nerd numbers are going to tell you that will be a hot shoe?  None.  You have to know your crazy customer inside and out to figure out something like that when you’re buying.  You won’t be super good at running a candy store if you don’t have a special love for gummy bears and jawbreakers.  Same goes for running a skateboard business.  That reminds me, I need to start a candy website.

What has been the feedback from posting it on your site?

All the bid’niss people that pay attention are hyped—Element wants to know who in our shop they can flow to help drive demand, Tum Yeto wants to do more online giveaways, Girl/Chocolate continues to do nothing and kills it, etc.  We have a wide audience on our site, from 13-year-old skate rats to 45-year-old company owners, so sometimes instead of the usual foot fetish photos and photoshopping toilets on people, I’ll do some nerd-out business stuff like that.  Thanks to anyone who checks out skateparkoftampa.com.

Here’s the INTRO

Here’s the DATA