This time, for our interview feature, we sat down with SuKeats, the co-owner of WHEEL LOVE to have a chat. Being an avid aggressive inline-skater himself and a very honest opinionated individual, be sure to check out the interview on his very honest views on the skating scene and also a little bit of Malaysian culture.
Can you give us a little bit of your background, and what you did before this?
I was in the advertising line from the year 2003 – 2009 and within these years I had been in a series of agency, even to the point of starting my own agency. Pretty much worked and done almost anything possible to be done in the advertising line. Towards the end of my journey in the advertising life, I and my co-owner, Wei Yeng, were already running Wheel Love as an online business on the side selling skating stuff, and also we printed our own t-shirts and sold them too. It was something very garage and very DIY, nothing big or fancy, but we enjoyed doing it. At that point I was 29 years old, did not like what I was doing in life, to the point of hating what I was doing. So me and Wei Yeng told ourselves, if we don’t start something now, after 30 it would be hard to do something.
What were the challenges faced when you were starting up WHEEL LOVE?
Money is always an issue, that’s a given, but we were very lucky to have the help of our parents and also savings. It wasn’t a lot but we manage to find a way to get through. Also during that time when we wanted to start up, it was pretty hard to get a loan.
In the skateboarding market, it is incredibly competitive, incredibly thin margins, and incredibly fickle minded customers that will go the extra mile just to save 10 ringgit. They will walk around the whole of Berjaya Times Square just to look at the exact same deck at different shops, maybe even go all the way to Subang, and after that head to PJ area, only to go back to Berjaya Times Square to buy it. It’s bad for the shop, that the margins are so low, but good for the kids on the street that the products are cheaper and easily accessible which in the end is good for the scene. I and my partner just had to learn how to deal with it in the beginning and tackle this issue in the right way.
As for the roller-blading market, it is a whole different ball game. Prior to WHEEL LOVE opening, there were no other shops carrying a proper aggressive inline-skate, so the people that inline-skate have that mentality that if you can’t get it here in Malaysia, just buy it online. And online we have to compete a lot with other online shops from overseas. Also another issue was that it is not a very cheap sport to start-up with. For example a skateboards cost around RM200 for a full deck, but for a pair of aggressive inline-skates, it would cost around RM600, so the real challenge back then was to educate the customers that come in to the shop why a pair of aggressive inline-skates cost the way it costs. Also at that point in time when we first started out, there were not many inline-skaters around too, which was one of the challenges to us, having to introduce it to customers and just educating them on what is inline-skating.
We are kinda making this question a compulsory random question to ask anyone we interview, TOLONG or SAMAN?
In all honesty, I would say tolong. It would cost me RM300 to pay for a speeding ticket, and if I can get away with it for only RM100, why not right? And I feel that RM300 doesn’t go anywhere, cause I won’t pay the summon anyway (LOL). How often do we Malaysians pay our summons? Yes he will take probably RM50 from me, and another RM50 from another person after, and a few more, and you may say it is a bad thing, but I know that cops are good guys, they just do what they do because they just have a really shitty pay for a really shitty job. And we all know it, that’s why we all put up with it.
If Robert Kwok, the sugar king, walk in with one million ringgit, and handed it to you, what would you do with it?
In Malaysia, we are pretty blessed with relatively cheaply priced skating products, so that means we have the right gear to get into the sport. BUT, we don’t have a proper skatepark, with proper people to train kids who want to get into it. I use to remember back then, there was an indoor skatepark in Midvalley Megamall, and I would say, because of that skatepark, the skating scene back then was much more active compared to now. The location of the skatepark was in a mall, it is indoor, so the weather will never be an issue and the staff there are always around to make sure things are okay, which made parents very comfortable with sending their kids there. So if I had that one million ringgit, I would open up something like that.
What problems do you think the skate scene is facing?
I think it is very much the mentality. We are very much defined by hate. I give you an example of what I mean, if I am a skateboarder, I will support ONLY skateboarding and HATE everything else. This hate has cause us to segregate each other, skate is skate, blade is blade, BMX is BMX, which is bad for the scene. At the end of the day, everyone uses the same obstacles in the skatepark, just the tools we use to overcome the obstacles are different. That’s why our shop’s name is called WHEEL LOVE, which pretty much speaks for itself and what our philosophy is about. But I’m glad that thankfully this hate thingy has slowly died down over the years and I hope it will eventually be ‘ALL SKATE, NO HATE’
What is your approach on streetwear?
As I did mention earlier, before the shop was around, we started out as a really DIY project, and we printed our own t-shirts and sold them on our own. We would go up to people and also to shops to ask them to buy our t-shirts, or whether we could consign it at their shops. So me and my partner, Wei Yeng, really know the feeling of being the little guy who is going around asking for help. So for those shops that did help us out and gave us a chance, we plan to do the same and help the next guy that come and ask for our help. Pestle and Mortar, The Swagger Salon and even Tarik Jeans all had their stuff in our shop back when they first started out, and we’re glad that they are now big and have moved on to start their own shop, and I’m glad that WHEEL LOVE had a hand in it.
What’s your best advice to anyone?
This is the motto of WHEEL LOVE, also for my life, STAY LEAN and STAY HUNGRY. A lot of shop owners, when things get slightly better for them, they start buying things they don’t really need, or spending money unwisely, and that isn’t staying lean. Most of the time, that’s when it start going bad. If you stay lean all the time, you will always stay hungry and focus towards your goal.
