Flip Skateboards is a United States-based international skateboard company, co-owned by Jeremy Fox and Ian Deacon. The company produces skateboard hard goods (decks, wheels, bearings, completes, and hardware), soft goods (T-shirts, tops, sweatshirts, hats, beanies, and socks), DVDs, and accessories. The brand was distributed globally by US company NHS Inc. Starting in July 2017, the brand is distributed in Europe by HLC.
History
Deathbox
Deathbox Skateboards was started in 1987 in the UK by Graham McEachran, Jeremy Fox and Duncan Houlton. Tom Penny, Rune Glifberg, Andy Scott and Geoff Rowley joined the company while this name still existed.
Relocation to the US
Flip moved from the United Kingdom (UK) to California, US in July 1994. Jeremy Fox, Ian Deacon and Geoff Rowley arrived in the US first, followed by team riders Tom Penny and Rune Glifberg in the following year. At the time of the relocation, the team consisted of four professional riders: Penny, Rowley, Glifberg and Andy Scott. The company and its riders received significant support from professional skateboarder Ed Templeton, who owned his own company, Toy Machine. Rowley stated that Templeton and his company "opened their arms to us, gave us local support, and had our back. Any ignorance was small and only served to make us stronger…..and faster!!!" Despite the brand's foundation in the US, Rowley stated:
All the company owners are still British citizens, one runs a large percentage of our workday directly from England for the last five years, I would say that makes us British until death. People can consider us whatever they want but saying untrue negative things regarding these matters is just downright childish. The things Flip/Deathbox did for England and the English skate scene should not be sneered at ... there is no other way to get to the level we are at, without first accepting where skateboarding was born from, and respecting that all the mags are driven from here also, it is hard to gain friends if you aren’t visible.
A European based company cannot and will not be accepted across the whole of the USA unless they embrace those areas and live them, Flip is strong worldwide for this reason, plus running a business of this nature isn’t viable based in England, too costly.
Reflecting upon the company's move to the US:
We were a totally new company moving to a foreign country, and I don't think we kind of expected it to go "boom", and just fly right in. We had no expectations; we didn't really know that many people, and we actually just wanted to skate, really. Because we grew up dreaming of living in California and getting to wake up every day and go out and skate without it raining, and I think that was something that, like, all of the guys, when we first moved here, you know, Rune [Glifberg] and Tom [Penny], that was something that, you couldn't hold us back in that respect. I'd just turned eighteen, Tom was seventeen, neither of us had lived away from home, you know. We'd moved to a foreign country where we didn't know anybody. Nobody. We had no money, we didn't have any cars, alls we had was the board that we had; we couldn't go breaking those. we couldn't afford to, at the time, starting a company, we couldn't afford to run through ten boards a month ... Like myself, personally, I skated a lot with Ed [Templeton], like, every day, because he lived, like, right across the road from me.
Team departures
In what was perceived as a shocking decision by the global skateboard community, long-time team rider Arto Saari announced his decision to leave Flip in 2008. In an interview with skateboard journalist Chris Nieratko following his decision (Saari later contacted Nieratko to prevent the interview from being published and the journalist published it on his personal website instead), Saari explained the process of leaving Flip: