A Different Scene

This is Matthias from EMillion, a European skate company. Although it looks like we are peddling skate decks from the back of our van, we are actually just showing our new products to him before leaving for the western side of the country to visit shops. I was pretty nervous to head over to Germany to rep/translate for Odeus because I know the skate scene here. Depends on the shop, but often there are vibes all around as soon as you walk in the door. There is often a narrow, ever fluctuating window of cool and if you are not fitting in at that time, you get vibed. I wasn't totally looking forward to visiting a grip of shops and trying to introduce our company and brand. Luckily it is pretty different over there. Just to put it into perspective, we had breakfast with Matthias and the skate photographer Flo Hopfesnsperger that morning. Because we are in the same market, EMillion and Odeus are competitors. You wouldn't have known it as Matthias started giving us tips on what shops to visit and offered to share his customer list. With a slight accent, "If you guys get rich, call me and let me know how you did it." he said with a grin that rarely leaves the kids face. Later that night, instead of being penned up in East Munich by myself and the awful midnight programming of German cable, Matthias showed me the town with a bunch of friends. Just a different skate scene out here.