`Grinding' Into Action -- Skating Without The Skates: Urban Teens Are Sliding By With Soaps

Dec 1, 1998

Joseph Pereira

The Wall Street Journal

One of the fastest-selling new products for urban teens comes with a warning sticker: Users run "the risk of serious bodily harm, including head injury, spinal injury or death."

Pretty scary stuff for a pair of sneakers.

These are called Soaps, and they're no ordinary shoes. Embedded in each sole is a smooth plastic plate that lets wearers slide along handrails, curbs, ledges and other structures - like skating without the skates. Practitioners call this "grinding."

The sport hasn't yet proved fatal, though it has produced sprains, broken ankles and other injuries. The dangers haven't kept Soaps from becoming a hit among thrill-seeking teens and pre-teens who are no longer content - or allowed - to perform their stunts on skateboards and in-line skates, which are banned in many public places.

"When I'm in my Soaps, I feel like Spiderman," says 13-year-old Lucas Brophy, of Miami. Jeremy Hatcher, 14, of Boston, says the shoes have helped earn him the nickname "Slip."

Introduced last year, the fad is picking up speed. Artemis Innovations Inc., Soaps' closely held maker, says it has sold about 200,000 pairs in the past year, ringing up $10 million in sales. Chris Morris, Artemis's founder and president, says the company is in about 1,000 stores now and has agreed to be in 2,000 next year.

Meanwhile, bigger competitors are stepping in. Rollerblades Inc., a unit of Italy's Benetton SpA, says it will ship its RB Grind - its first shoe of any kind - in time for the holiday season. National chains, including Sports Authority Inc. and Champs Sporting Goods plan to carry it. The Salomon unit of Germany's Adidas AG is also planning to introduce a grinding shoe next year.

With a retail price of $70 to $80, Soaps are a financially attractive alternative to skateboards and in-line skates, which usually cost $120 or more. They also open a whole new recreational frontier. Skateboards are generally forbidden indoors, but Soaps can be worn anywhere, transforming a flight of school stairs or a study-hall window sill into a playground. Artemis says 90 percent of wearers are male.

"This is our Trojan Horse," says Jesse Berlonghi, an 11-year-old from Somerville, Mass., who grinds on the sandstone steps of historic Trinity Church in Boston. For the past three years, Trinity has banned skateboards and in-line skates, but hasn't yet moved against Soaps. "We sneak a few grinds in and say, `Hey, we're out of here,' " he explains.

Some retailers say Soaps sell out soon after they arrive. "The only sizes we have are fours and fives, for real little kids," says Mike Leivi, owner and manager of Play It Again Sports, a sports equipment retail store in Quincy, Mass. New shipments aren't due to arrive until the end of the month. "That's the earliest we've been told we can get them," he says.

"Kids call all the time asking for them, but it's hard keeping them in stock," concurs Scott Kelliher, marketing director for Blades Sports and Skates, a New York-based sporting goods retail chain." I'd say, it's definitely the current fashion."

Morris says a number of national retail chains have asked to carry Soaps. But Artemis, based in Torrance, Calif., wants to distribute the shoes through small specialty stores like Pacific Sunwear, Blades and Gadzooks, which tend to attract hardcore extreme-sports enthusiasts. "We want to build our brand slowly," explains Morris, who is 35 years old.

From the top, Soaps look like ordinary sneakers. The concave plate fits into the middle of the sole, replicating the shape of the foot's arch, and can be removed with the help of a small screwdriver that comes with each pair. The plate allows wearers to slide along surfaces that few adults would venture upon. It's called grinding because after enough sliding, the curbs and railings begin to erode and become smooth.

The concave shape of the plate helps provide a talon-like grip on a rail. Soapers generally mount a rail with their feet near each other and slow down their descent by widening their stance. After the plates are worn down, they can be unscrewed and replaced with new ones, at $15 a pair. The plates sit high enough in the sneaker that they don't clatter on the ground. But Terry Hintz, manager of Eau Claire Cycle, a sporting-goods store in Eau Claire, Wis., says that "if you look carefully, you'll notice the kids wearing Soaps walk a little more cautiously."

Billed by Artemis as the "bastard stepchild" of skateboards and in-line skates, Soaps were born four years ago during a casual lunch chat between Morris and Dave Inman, an industry consultant. Morris had worked at Rollerblades, and Inman wondered whether a shoe could be built in the spirit of his former employer's product.

Both men recalled how sliding - on a patch of ice or in stockings on a hardwood floor - was a favorite childhood pastime. Morris went home, fetched a pair of Nikes out of the closet, hollowed out the center portion of the sole, stuck in a home-made plate, and tried a little grinding himself.

He has since applied for patents for 23 components of his contraption. With little seed money and almost none for advertising, he launched the shoe last fall. To help spread the word, he formed a small band of a dozen teenage daredevils who agreed to wear the shoe and grind from time to time in public.

Aficionados say grinding in sneakers is easier than on skates or skateboards, but injuries are not uncommon. Morris says the company has received reports of several broken ankles, but no lawsuits. When Morris's mother asked for a pair, he gave her one - without the grinding plate.

Danny Lynch, an 18-year-old who performs a number of stunts in a promotional video made by the company, has twice taken a nasty tumble, spraining his ankles on both occasions. "Man, I thought they were like permanently sprained, they took so long to heal," Lynch says. But he's back on his Soaps again and now boasts that he "fades a lot of other posers out there." (Translation: He's better than most.)

Retailers say the shoes are also appealing to kids more intent on looking the part than performing stunts. "My guess is that three quarters of my customers have never slid down a rail or jumped on a curb," says Hintz. Of the hundreds of customers who have purchased Soaps from his store so far, he says, "only two have returned to buy new grindplates."