Time flies, huh? Lots of good and bad has happened but from opening the Shop At Kreuzplatz on the 27th of June in 1995 a few weeks after Small World folded to this present day we’re still following our original goal:

to provide sponsorship and a enviroment to focus on skating for ourselves and upcoming local talent, and to build this into platforms suited to grow and coexist with the local lifestyle and (future) career choices.

As with every hangout, social networks built and connected – coupled with skating the city together for hours every day this turned into a tight knit group of people that stayed mostly intact until this present day. And a lot of skating went down evident by the list of films released fueled by unlimited sponsorship and motivated by the international level and range of converage the city produced. We didn’t give a fk.

Based on a loose calculation we have given away around 600-700 boards during these 15 years. Each one of them was well invested or repaid in sponsorship packages.

We learned social awareness at that very young age, being young aswell and providing some sort of local hangout apart form the actual selling business also attracted many people in less fortunate circumstances and mental states.

This sense of community and responsibilty has been passed on from our to the next generation and so forth, just like the level of skating.

But shooting from a hangoput of some 17 year old with a bunch of product that took away a large percentage of skatebaord sales to moving into the distribution business a year after and relocating ta central store location down the block from a competitors store the following year made people nervous. So a swiss industry meeting was called and we got banned from recieving product by the swiss distributors.

The rest is history. The long downfall which we have never fully recovered from started and i started the ICM Group to provide the missing incomes and pay off the growing debt. Without product business almost stalled and the business conflict started tearing people apart.

While the following endless loop cost a lot of my time, energy, health and sanity, and the people a lot of potential and opportunities we managed to stay alive and keep providing for our people and (re-)building. by any means..

we have reinvented ourselves with every obstacle people put in our way and learned creativity and out-of-the box thinking in a 10-year long continuous struggle and fight against many odds and overproportional opponents. it also equipped us with a wide range of skills and experiences that might be hard to acquire or pick up in a different setting.

No regrets – when going this far so young some bad things are bound to happen. especially in this town. but it was all worth it so far, if not for my life and story then for all the creative minds and unbelieveable skating it helped shape. I was doing worse before i started this all.

So no big party or something.. just catching my breath.

here are some random closing thanks:

• All the smart kids we’ve seen come up: Sven Kilchenmann, Sebastian Hepp, Manu Stoffer, Jan Hofer, Fibi Küng, Bardo Eicher, Nico Vetsch Nico Teezy, Meuheu Bocklet, Moreno Monte and Tobias Guyer.
• The new kids on the block: Jordan, Gilles, Pippo, Kili, Valentin, Naum, Jack, Ari, Rick and them. WIB III! Michel. Thanks for continuing the legacy and keeping us relevant.
• Everyone that lent me money. I’m making up for it every breath.
• Stefan Herb for being on the team for a full 15 Years. Thanks for being wide-minded through all the ups and downs.
• The Kämpfen Bros. for teaching the city professionalism.
• Seth, Christoph, Alex and Dimitri for helping out.
• Fabian & Pati for all the artwork and shirts.
• Carl Jones and Raphael Mettler for keeping it real.
• Heinz Studiger, looking back we made history. Can’t wait.
• All the locals that built this scene in the 90′s, too bad the park took so long. But hey, i’m still skating.
• Dave Kang in SF, i wish i could have come to help out.
• Roland Brümmer. Too bad the business makes us do things against our will. We can still fix things.
• The people have put time in at the store so far: Guex, Alan, Vladi, Daryl, Ianto,
  Rolf, Zeus, Sven, Mo, Ales. I owe you all, forever.

thanks for making a difference. the network is.. what you make of it.