Hop on a Pyro Skate Board
Skate, Rattle and Roll at the Mall!
by Claudette R. Lumpkins
Pyro Skate Board at the Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry, California is combining retailing with entertainment to spark up sales. The unique skateboard shop, which opened 18 months ago, recently opened an indoor skateboard park adjoining its retail space as a challenge for customers to put their new purchases to the test.
Pyro Skate Board has helped Puente Hills Mall become a hot spot for the lu-crative ‘Gen Y’ market in City of Industry, California.
The fun began when Pyro’s owner, native Californian 23-year-old Daniel Olender, decided to expand his specialty retail skateboard equipment shop by providing his customers with a 13,440-sq.ft. skateboard park arena. The indoor park features an exciting layout with various banks and transitions through mini wooden and metal ramps, hips, ledges, concrete street courses, grind rails, quarterpipes, and pyramids. The retail store has one main mall entrance and features an additional separate entrance into the arena from inside the store.
The skate park features banks, transitions, wooden and metal ramps, hips, ledges, concrete street courses, grind rails, quarterpipes, and pyramids.
The Pyro Skate Board park is open five days a week and charges a fee of $6 to $9 per two-hour session. On Fridays and Saturdays, the park turns into a lively event venue, with a disc jockey to boost up energetic sounds and rock the arena’s high-spirited crowd. Retail sales are enhanced by the park’s ‘helmets and pads’ requirement. And the store itself draws in more customers by hosting in-store events, which highlight guest appearances by professional skateboard athletes, trade publication promotions, and corporate industry sponsors.
Pyro Skate Board caters to a consumer base that consists of teens and college-aged shoppers along with individuals who shop frequently at entertainment destinations. The savvy retailer has recognized that skateboarding has become accepted as a real sport and offers significant retail opportunities; recent statistics indicate that the skateboarding industry has flourished with sales exceeding $20 to $30 million dollars annually. Pyro Skate carries a wide selection of merchandise from “pro” skateboards and sport pads to commercial brand-name footwear such as Emerica, Es, Etnies and more.
The ‘Gen Y’ age group, primarily 12 to 24 years of age, that Pyro Skate targets is a consumer base becoming known for its generous spending habits. And that kind of ‘money in my pocket’ attitude is good for the retailer that serves the demographic as well as for the shopping facility it is in. “Puente Hills Mall is fast becoming the mall of choice among teens and adults from around the Southland,” says Paula Emanuele, marketing director for the mall.
That attitude took some time to develop, though. Olender, a skateboarder himself, was initially denied an opportunity to lease space at Puente Hills. He had launched his business endeavors by designing T-shirts for retailer Hot Topics. After four years, he wheeled his ideas into the Pyro Skate Board concept. When the store’s original location, in downtown Fullerton, California, needed to be relocated in order to attract a younger and more entertainment-seeking consumer base, Olender approached Puente Hills Mall because of its activity-oriented shops that attract young
shoppers. The mall declined his offer.
A few months later, however, the mall went under new management by The Krausz Companies, Inc., who reconsidered and provided Olender with a five-year lease for a 2,000-sq.ft. space, plus options and a tenant improvement allowance. Pyro Skate Board’s success at Puente Hills led to Olender leasing another 13,440-sq.ft. for the connecting skate park arena.
The construction costs for the cutting-edge skate park were approximately $1 million. Its flexible design allows easy retrofitting for multiple uses. Ramps and other ground equipment were designed to be easily removed.
Olender says he wants to locate Pyro Skate stores in malls drawing an upscale department store clientele. Recently, he expanded outside the Los Angeles area with a retail shop in Henderson, Nevada (Las Vegas suburb). The company aspires to further expand in the Southern California and Las Vegas markets. “We would like all of our stores to have indoor skating parks,” says Olender, “We are currently in negotiations with two malls in the Southern California and Las Vegas areas.” Although Olender is out of the T-shirt business, he plans to design his own skateboarding apparel, accessories and equipment line. A Web site is under construction and will further generate Pyro Skate Board orders on the Internet.
“I have been skateboarding since I was 12 years old and I am enjoying this successful and growing sport,” says Olender. “Unlike surfing, you can go skateboarding in Dallas, New York City or anywhere. Here in Southern California, skateboarding is taking over.”
For more information: Daniel Olender, owner, Pyro Skate Board, 1600 Azusa Avenue, Suite 265, City of Industry, CA 91748; 626-913-4180; Paula Emanuele, marketing director, Puente Hills Mall, Krausz Companies, Inc., 1600 Azusa Avenue, City of Industry, CA 91748; 626-912-8777.