ITW CHOMP ON KICKS

Fervent defender of core shoe brands, Chomp on Kicks is one of those few skate nerds who try to preserve a certain amount of nostalgia for the skate culture from the 90s/2000s, a period considered as the golden era by many. Marked by the Menikmati and the Chomp on This, among others, Clay, one of the figures behind the Chomp on Kicks account, witnessed the advent of skate shoes and their slow death. Sitting in his basement in the middle of his collection of éS Koston 3s, of which he owns every colorway, we chatted with Clay to learn a little more about his passion for éS as well as his more general opinion on the current skate shoe market.

Can you introduce yourself?

Yeah, so I’m Clay Griffin, I am a skateboarder. I started skateboarding in 1996 Norfolk, Virginia. It’s on the east coast of the United States. When I was growing up, it was just me and a few other people, and now it’s a larger scene. We have a bigger community, more skate parks and local shops.

How did Chomp on Kicks start?

I’ve skated now close to 30 years. Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of money for skate shoes, I would skate whatever my parents would give me at the time. When I got a job and earned money on my own, I started collecting a lot of the shoes and culture that I always loved as a kid. And at that point in time, I noticed it was extremely hard to find the shoes I loved, like the Koston and all the classic éS shoes. So, I really made it a mission to capture that legacy.

I always envisioned when I bought my house, I would have a room that would look like a 90s skate shop. Everyone loved going to skate shops back in the day and window shopping all of the amazing unique shoes that were designed by skateboarders. In my opinion, the 90’s were the greatest period that had amazing riders and footwear designs which has cultivated a very nostalgic feel years later.

As Instagram started picking up, a community of old school shoe skate nerds came out of the woodwork. The hashtag #sk8shoewars became a very widely used tag, where collectors flexed their collections.
Chomp on Kicks was formed with the idea to give a platform to promote skate shoes produced by core skate companies versus corporations that just decided they needed a market stake in skateboarding. So, with our IG account, we wanted to help promote core companies that actually came from skateboarding.

Over the last decade plus, I have talked thousands of hours of skate shoes and had the pleasure of actually meeting some of the homies from the Chomp community. I met one of my good buddies Lindsay Reid @elkaboose who was on tour with a Canadian rapper (Son Real) in DC and he signed a pair of my skated Koston 3s. I also met up with an Australian OG Mark Goudie @markgoudie86 at Love Park before it was destroyed. He was scattering one of his good friend’s ashes (Tim Phillips) that day and we both skated the legendary spot. Across the street at Muni, I ran into Skater of the Year Ishod Wair. We did back-to-back tricks on the bench there. Also, a shout out to Jeames Ingram ( I know he’s drinking a case of Foster’s as we do this interview) and the Legendary Wuslanga who sent me original ticket stubs to the éS Menikmati premiere. There are too many other people to mention, but we all found such a shared commonality with our love for true skateboarding.

Is it a business, I mean do you resell the shoes?

We haven’t thought about it enough as a business. I really want to capture the voice of the community and of people that love that nostalgic 90s-era skateboarding. As far as the business aspect, we haven’t really done this for money.

I’m always looking for these shoes. So, I would be doing this anyway on Instagram. So, it just naturally took that direction, and there’s a decent audience for it.
The IG account offers the ability for skate brands to speak directly to their niche audience. It has helped the community sell thousands of skate shoes worth millions of dollars.

What’s your technique to find shoes?

I started collecting off eBay. If somebody was selling a shoe, I would message them to see if they had other throwback gear. Then, as Facebook and Instagram became more prevalent, I realized there was  a large community of skate nerds to buy and sell with.
On Instagram, it started with a hashtag #Sk8shoewars where everybody was posting pictures of their old skate collection and talking about the old shoes all the time. Tons of opportunity to collect there.  Finally, running Chomp on Kicks doesn’t hurt.  It’s like shooting ducks in a barrel (quote from my Uncle Darrell). We get thousands of DMs from people trying to sell their old shoes. I get first pick haha.

When you find the shoes you’re looking for, how much do you pay?

There is a sliding scale. The most I have ever spent on one pair is a $1,000. It’s the Koston 3 with the Pac-Man. My love for this shoe came from the classic movie Chomp on This with Eric Koston, Jamie Thomas, Attiba Jefferson and everybody. The movie was focused on fun while featuring some amazing skating. They joked around and stuff, and a lot of famous filmers had parts in it. A Koston 3 shoe was made by éS for this occasion. They only made a handful of these shoes for Sole Tech employees. The name Chomp on Kicks was based on this video.

Was it the highest price you paid for a shoe?

Yeah, for the rest it fluctuates. It’s not uncommon for a lot of these shoes to be sold around $300.

Do you have all the colors of the Koston 3?

Yes. There were 19 different colors, and I got all of them. Koston is my favorite skateboarder. He was an innovator with style.  His influence in skateboarding has spanned over so many decades.  He has continuously upped skateboarding.  In my opinion he is the most innovative skater and style-wise all of his shoes were extremely different. He has a good eye for design and is heavily involved in designing all of his pro models.

The shoe was very inspired by basketball shoes, right?

Definitely. He’s a big Lakers fan. My favorite Kostons are Lakers-inspired.  Franck Boistel @instafronck took all of these ideas and made them reality.  His designs are the most sought-after shoes in skate history.

When buying footwear, do you consider the shoe’s condition?

There’s a sliding scale as well. If it’s a shoe I really want, it doesn’t matter what the size is, condition, or anything. I really look for the early éS shoes around 1995-1998.  They had very low production numbers as the brand was growing during this period. Because I might never see it again,  If I really want a shoe, I go for it.

Do you sell shoes or only collect?

I rarely sell anything. I feel when I sell something, I’m like “ah, I wish I’d kept that”, so, for the most part, I keep everything. Sometimes I’ll help friends buy shoes and if I notice that somebody has something that they want, I’ll just point them in that direction, but I don’t really do a lot of selling or flipping shoes.  I can’t hate on anyone who does this. Get me some 1995 Accels and sell them to me for a high price haha.

What are the rarest shoes you’ve found?

The Chomp on This Koston 3 (previously mentioned – only for employees ) and the Grey Light Grey “The Ghost” K3.  The Ghost colorway was slated for full scale production, but never made it to wide distribution.  I finally tracked a pair down from a Sole Tech rep Ivan Alcala in Barcelona. I bought a pair of 1 off red, white, blue, and grey Koston 2s from a German homie Andreas Schutzenberger. He was a judge at the  Skateboarding World Cup and Koston actually went up to him and saw these shoes and said “how did you get that color?”. Koston himself had never seen this sample. Andreas is a really amazing dude who runs @iouramps. In order to purchase the shoes, he had me donate to @skateistan. He also threw in a rare pair of black and neon green Koston 1s to sweeten the deal.  Thank you, Andreas!! I have another 1 off pair of electric blue Koston 2s. These came from the homie Mark Goudie in Australia.

I also have a pair of Contract Samples that feature The Notorious B.I.G.  one of my favorite rappers (his song Warning is my all-time favorite song). The B.I.G. shoe says, “Who Shot Ya” on the tongue.  On the other shoe, it has Tupac, that says “Hit Em Up”. These were only given to Sole Tech employees as Christmas gifts.

I have also a super rare sample, as well, a Sal Barbier SAL 97 shoe prototype. I got it from a French homie Sylvain Stricanne, who was friends with Pierre Senizergues and this was the actual prototype sample for that shoe. It’s super beat up, but that was like the original before anything came out.

I was more a fan of Emerica and its models like the bi colored Erik Ellington and the Reynolds. Do you have other brands you like and you collect?

You can’t go wrong with Emerica, those are two good choices in pro model shoes. Ellington had such a gnarly style that translated directly to shoes. His first model on Emerica is one of the highest priced shoes that bid up. Reynolds is also a super amazing skater, who has pushed the limits of skateboarding. His original shoes aren’t cheap as well. Both of these were designed by master mind Franck Boistel, who was Sole Tech’s genius footwear designer for many years.
I do have a Circa shoe that’s signed by Jamie Thomas, and that was what I skated years ago. I met Jamie Thomas at 17^th Street Surf Shop in Virgina Beach, Virgina, and he signed it, so that’s the only non éS kick I have. Otherwise, I’m really a fan of éS.  I probably have a bit over 300 pairs of éS.  I mean, the Menikmati video back in 2000 was at that point in time a revolution. I was about 15, and I  idolized those skaters, like Koston, Penny, McCrank, Creager, Arto Saari, Rodrigo TX, and Bob Burnquist. The team was so stacked and diverse, and they were all God-level legend skaters. I think, you could never assemble such a so prolific team again. Also, the shoes they designed were amazing thanks to Franck.

Have any professional skateboarders contacted you to buy their own pro models?

I haven’t had any Pros who contacted me to buy their shoes. Through Chomp on Kicks, I’ve helped a bunch of pro skaters sell their product stashes. I have worked with Mark Johnson, Erik Ellington, Rob Sluggo Boyce, Bobby Worrest, and Morgan Campbell (to name a few) to sell their shoes. Our IG is the best way to do that, because you have people in that community that want to buy these shoes. This has buyers bid up the price and get the seller the best value for their product. Aside from selling, Atiba Jefferson hit me up and sent me over 30 pairs of classic shoes. One of the pairs was a Lakers K1.  He signed the shoe box to Crat JonéS with the C as a PacMan. THANK YOU ATIBA!

My amazing friend Laura Neila drove to his place in Cali with several huge Home Depot boxes. She shipped me all those shoes. Neila was such as bad ass part of the Chomp community. Everyone misses her presence on IG ( not RIP haha, she just deleted the app). God level pros such as Tom Penny, PJ Ladd, Tiago Lemos, Evan Smith, Scott Johnston, and Braydon Szafranski have followed the account (to name a few). Having random conversations with these legends has been surreal. 

Do you have a crazy story about how you got a pair of shoes?

Sadly, I have a crazy story about how I lost a pair of shoes. So, there was a sample of the Koston 2 that came up on eBay and I knew a lot of people were looking at them. This was a sample pair Franck had initially designed in the 90s.

He had posted a picture of it years ago and said this was the actual prototype for the Koston 2. And so, they came up on eBay and I knew it was gonna be a serious eBay battle bid war and it was gonna get expensive. So, I started posting shoes for sale here and there as a distraction and get people to bid on those and not pay attention to the Koston 2 samples.  The shoes I listed began bidding way up. By the end of the auction I was truly interested in, I bid like  $750 on the Koston 2 samples and lost.  Apparently, the distraction didn’t work.

Somebody outbids me on that and then I canceled the shoes I put on eBay. eBay tried to charge me all these fees for like a hundred something dollars. I told eBay that the shoes had been destroyed and that I had to take the bids away in order to not have to get fined for my failed ruse.

Have you ever been  scammed?

Yeah, and it’s a sad story. This was a loooong time ago, maybe like 2014. I was looking for the Chomp Koston 3 with the Pacman. A guy got them and posted them on IG. I immediately reached out to him because I really wanted them badly and wanted to avoid any bid wars. This was one of the last shoes I wanted to complete the Koston 3 set. I told him I’d give him $500 and he responded “nah, man, that’s too much.”

He said if you just give me 200$ or something, that’s good so I gave him that money. Then he starts saying he doesn’t have enough money to ship the shoes, and a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense.  How can you not have $20 on shipping if I just gave you $200? Answer, drugs.

After that, he asked for $20 through a money order so he could get gas money to go to the post. So, I did that. And then he starts telling me all this insane stuff about a dog ripped the shoes up and all this crazy stuff. It turns out he was a serious drug addict guy and I’d never know what actually happened with the shoes. I never got them from the crackhead.

You didn’t have any insurance to secure the transaction?

It was through Instagram and PayPal so it wasn’t backed. PayPal does Goods and Services transactions that are fully protected. The seller has to prove they shipped the item or PayPal will take the money back from them. You can file a claim on them if they don’t have any proof of shipping. Sadly, I executed this transaction via Friends and Family, so I had no buyer protection.
That’s the one issue that happened out of like 300 transactions with shoes. So that’s not a bad record.

And within the whole community, if there are people like that that are sketchy or like trying to scam people, we put the people on blast. There are sadly some notorious crackheads out there. I encourage everyone to use PayPal Goods and Services only just to avoid drama.

So yeah,  that was a lesson learned. I wasted a lot of time and it was emotional because I thought maybe that’d be my last chance to complete the set of Koston 3s.

You didn’t have another chance to get the shoes?

I finally did when a dude who worked for Sole Tech back in the day had them in his closet for all these years. I didn’t want a bid war or any shenanigans, so I sent him a cool G bar and ended the waiting game.

What do you think about the selling of Sole Tech group?

Very upsetting because I’ve always admired what Don and Pierre have done with the company. But the Nideckers are a solvent family-owned business, similar to the business Pierre Senizergues and Don Brown have cultivated. I think it was super important to Pierre to sell to a group that wasn’t a culture vulture. Pierre has been in skateboarding forever. He has moved skateboarding in a way that is hard to quantify. If you look at every pro Sole Tech has brought up, the overall effect on skateboarding is staggering. He deserves to chill a bit now after all these years. Much love Pierre and Don. Thank you for everything.  So hopefully, we kind of continue with the same path of what they’ve been doing. Because the shoes have been selling well.

What do you think about the downturn of core skate shoe brands?

I think it was inevitable. Core skateboarding companies made it big enough that corporations were interested. The huge corporations did not care until there was money in it. Like, they were not sweating out there, hustling skate shops in the 90s. Later on, when core brands had built up the market and Tony Hawk had boosted stuff up enough that there was enough cash in it for corporations to wanna invest, they finally paid enough pro skaters to appear respectable and that was the beginning of the end.

I can’t see myself growing up skateboarding and having these classic skate brands made by people who skateboarded and then jumping to a sportwear brand. But I can’t hate on somebody like Koston who wanted to make millions of dollars. I can’t.

However, what I can be mad at is the consumer who says “well, I don’t want éS anymore. Let’s just go to big corpo“. Like how could you just turn your back on the brands that had actually been there and switch up on the culture?

I guess money and marketing

I’m a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), I understand the money aspect of that, but to me it is sad because I felt it was better when you look at the 90’s skater involved companies versus where we are now. There was more soul in dem soles.

What do you think of actual design shoes?

They had such wild and unique designs back in the day versus now where the shoe is very homogenized, very vulcanized and smaller.

But chunky shoes are coming back

Right, that’s happening. It shows that there are people that still want this look and more comfort.
Hopefully we can push this beyond the niche market.

And do you have an opinion about the return of skate brands like I-Path?

Right now, this is a super niche marketplace for 90s skate fans. Axion did a similar relaunch with some epic models but it encountered various issues. Not sure what they are doing now.  Sole Tech owns all of their designs over the years. I hope this new ownership team can gain steam from selling some super classic models. Everyone wants to see an actual Koston 1 come back. The nostalgic collectors will speak with their wallets. Hopefully the core companies can scale it right and find a proper price point. It’s not like mass production like Walmart style where you want to have millions of shoes. You want to have a smaller amount for the right audience that would pay a premium price for a better nostalgic shoe.

What should do the core skate brand to come back in the game and maybe compete the sportswear brand. What advice would you give them?

It’s hard. Don Brown tries to find people that are blowing up on Instagram to give them shoes so that they can represent the company.I would really look at like having up and coming viral skaters skating the shoes. Social media can be a place for the young people to discover those designs, see how good they look like and also dive into the huge culture around it.  Sole Tech has an unmatched heritage.  I hope the new ownership can capitalize on that.

Can you talk about your collaboration with éS?

That was unbelievable. When they messaged us, I couldn’t believe it. Because to me, skateboarding is the most important thing there is. I didn’t love other things like skateboarding when I was growing up. I did other things, but I really only  loved skateboarding. And then I started falling in love with these companies that have these amazing, legendary riders like Muska, Rodrigo TX, Penny, McCrank, Koston, Arto etc. Doing a collaboration with the company I admired so much was astonishing. It almost brought me to tears thinking about it.

Also, it’s funny, because when we did the Zoom call, two years ago, I was at a snowboard resort. I’ve just been learning snowboarding in the last six years or so. The only place that had cell phone service was at a bar. I was yelling at people “everybody shut up, I’m on a fucking business meeting”. It was fun and very chaotic. I later had to go downstairs to find a quieter setting. My buddy Randi brought me beers to keep the conversation going strong and creative. 

The conversation was with the Chomp guys, Don Brown, and a production dude Charlie Manos. We talked about different ideas. I proposed a stash pocket in the Accel because I wanted to make a nod to the original Muska. And that’s what we ended up doing. Never seen an Accel with a stash pocket.  And then we talked about the Pac-Man but we couldn’t do the Pac-Man legally, so we did this little pixelated dot. You can actually take a Sharpie and draw the Pac-Man in. We suggested doing a clear sole on the Swift 1.5 like one of the most famous Koston 1s.  We also combined 2 famous shoes:  The Tribo and the Vireo into one.  This shoe sold out extremely quickly. It is one of my buddy Seawind’s favorite shoes.

Everything came full circle when I got a pair of the Tribo X Vireos out of my local shop @skatesupply.  Getting a shoe, you helped design with a company you have loved forever from a shop that has been your local go to skate supplier for years is a hard feeling to convey.  Shout out Trey Hill @TreyLHill for pushing core skate brands in the Hampton Roads community. We also did a shirt for Chomp on Kicks that has all the classic Kostons on it. The Kostons 1-3 and an Accel.  That shirt is fire.  All of the shoe insoles share this same design.  Once the meeting was done, it took a while for them to do the sample. I think it was a year ago when it came out. The shoes sold very well.  I was super stoked that we sold well right when Sole Tech reissued the Muska and Creager. This was an amazing accomplishment and experience.  Thank you, Don, Pierre, and Charlie, for making this happen.  This is a feat that I will be stoked on every day for the rest of my life. 

Do you have any plans for the future?

For the future, the main thing is that the core beliefs are going to stay the same. Hopefully we can branch out in marketing. Chomp basically tells companies what is going to sell through a unified customer voice. Hopefully we can monetize in that area. I also want to run some merch. We have already proven Chomp can move units. I will keep on promoting core companies. That’s always going to underline every decision made. That is the purpose of Chomp.

I want to thank all of the homies, Sole Tech, pros, real skateboarding companies and anyone who has supported Chomp over the years. This community is everything.