The story of Hamboards is a bit of the origin story of Highline Agency. Owner, Gus Hamborg, started Hamboards with his dad in 1997 and it became his own personal marketing laboratory. As Gus likes to put it, “If I can sell a $600 skateboard online, I can do anything.”
When it came to Hamboards, we knew that if we could get Hamboards under feet we could make believers. The problem was that doing just that was nearly impossible. It wasn’t economical to rough up $500 boards for a demonstration. That coupled with the shop owners reluctance to take up the valuable real estate in their shop with a giant skateboard made for a difficult problem.
This is why we embraced digital marketing and social media way early. We were one of the first surf/skate companies that allowed you to enter your credit card information on a website and hit “buy now.” And we started building an audience on Facebook back when you still needed a college email address to get an account.
Long story short, we created a virtual experience and community based around the brand, beach lifestyle and product that gained lighting-like momentum around the globe. This was all before we pitched on Shark Tank resulting in one of the most popular episodes to date.
