In the Summer of 2022 I was watching Rob Dyrdek's Ridiculousness (as one does), and his cousin was on the show. He had started a clothing brand while on Fantasy Factory, and I can distinctly remember he said that people buy it 'because of the name'.

His clothing brand's name is 'Young & Reckless', and I was rather surprised that just by selling clothes that say something he could make well more than a living (looking back on it now it, you know, may of been cause he was on Fantasy Factory, but I guess I wasn't focused on that at the time).

That same night, I remembered something I would always say to myself when skating. 95% of skating is trying the same thing over and over and over again and falling over and over and over again, and that can cause you to not think clearly and lose sight of the fact that it's just a piece of wood, it's a physical object, you're just trying to get it to do something.

Whenever I was trying something like that and I could feel myself slipping into a negative or unclear mindset, I would sit there for a second, take a deep breath, and think to myself "just stay calm, getting frustrated will only make it more difficult", or something along those lines. I would reevaluate the situation and every time I did I landed whatever I was trying soon thereafter.

Now of course "Stay Calm" is not a great brand name for skateboarding, so I moved it a bit to "Stay Chill". Some might find it...slightly cringy, but it means something, and I feel like that differentiated it from other brands. In skating you have Nike, Adidas, Lakai, New Balance. None of those really mean much of anything, they're not something to really live by I thought.

Now if I had to sit here and say all that I did in the next year we would be here for quite a while. To sum it up, I found a manufacturer, worked with him for a year with customs, designed the shoe, payments. I created the social media, worked to test the first prototype shoes. It was just a lot.

They arrived December 21, 2023 and we opened non-preorders on January 1st (kind of funny, Stay Chill lanuched on New Year's and Bawulwee's Autobahn launched on New Year's). This was my first actual business, LLC and all. I can't say it worked out quite like I had hoped, the vast majority of the entire community I was a part of basically left just before launching, but either way the amount of things I learned is invaluable in and of itself.

You can see the Stay Chill Instagram here and the website here. You are still able to purchase shoes on the website, but if you are reading this just DM me on Instagram, I'll give you a little discount.