An entrepreneur finds his element in Boise

Johnny Schillereff, who founded the Element skateboard gear and clothing company in 1992, recently rolled into Boise to open the skateboard hive he’s created at 304 Americana Blvd., next to the newly expanded Rhodes skateboard park.

In a talk at the Trailhead business incubator August 4, Schillereff said the building will be used as a community center and a skate shop that sells products from the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Element and from local retailers. Ideas for the space are a work in progress. Schillereff has a nonprofit organization that he said he wants to house at the Element space, and he has a medley of other ideas for serving skateboarders, the community, the arts, and parents and kids.

“It’s really a community center for the subcultures of Idaho, with Element on the front of it,” he said. “It’s a bit of an experiment, too. I love to just see where things go.”

Schillereff said he first visited Boise for a friend’s wedding and happened upon the Rhodes park, where a $1 million upgrade was underway, after he was stopped by Boise police officer Blake Slater for riding his bicycle without lights. Slater showed him the park, and Schillereff said he immediately saw the possibilities for Rhodes as a place for his company to interact with skaters. In the course of designing clothing for skateboarders, Element doesn’t do focus groups with consumers; instead, its designers go skateboarding, and talk to skateboarders.

“As a business, we needed to get into a city that is fresh, and branch out,” he said.  “We like to go into cities and we do demos and get deep in with skate communities. Rhodes was a great opportunity to really just skate.”

Rhodes was designed by the nonprofit Boise Skateboard Association, an 11-year-old group of shop owners, skateboarders, and community advocates. The J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation donated $1 million toward rebuilding the two-block park.

I ride my bike to work past the park, and have watched with interest as it has been transformed over the last year or so from a fairly basic large space with a handful of skaters at any given time, to its new iteration – a complex, busy set of ramps and surfaces with enough space for hundreds of skaters to come and go at high speed, somehow without colliding.

Schillereff, at his Trailhead talk, brimmed with enthusiasm for Boise and the possibilities in the city, and for Idaho and its people and natural spaces. He hit on something about Idaho and Boise that has aligned this quiet place, with its agricultural roots and its low-key culture, closely with the collective unconscious: its authenticity. Weary of packaging and polish, thought leaders from every generation have shown high demand for authenticity, from coast to coast.

“In this day and age, that’s what all these big companies are trying to buy, and it’s intangible,” Schillereff said at Trailhead. “No money can buy it; it’s impossible.”

Schillereff himself adds an element that can help Boise and Idaho move forward: his deep roots in the counterculture, a place where risk-taking is largely accepted and where disruption of the status quo, be it in business or in life, is welcome.

As a micro real estate developer, Schillereff experienced the construction process in Boise as a breeze. He rated Rhodes among the top five parks in the world, and credited the city’s public officials for allowing it to happen.

“In a lot of states, when you want to make a change, they say, ‘Hold on, we need one more push, and you get permission to add four more feet of concrete.’ It takes a year to add four feet,” Schillereff said. “Here, what seemed to happen is that between Albertsons and the city, they were just like, ‘Do whatever makes skateboarding best.’”

The result: a perfect storm of skateboarding perfection.

“It would be like a bunch of surfers being able to create the perfect weather situation and create the perfect wave,” he said. “They were like, ‘Just do what’s right.’”

Anne Wallace Allen is editor of the Idaho Business Review.