We caught up with Gino from Union Discount (Skate Wear Sale Website) to ask about this sick new venture, the ideas behind it and what he's got planned for the future!

What is Union Discount?

Union Discount is a collection of sale items from 120+ skate stores, brought together on one website, so you can filter and browse easily. All items link back to their original store, and all orders go through the stores. It's basically a collection of links. The idea is that you can easily find sale stuff, and that more money goes to skater-owned stores.

Skateboard Clothing Sale

Where did the idea come from?

In 2017 I was skint and lurking for sale stuff, and I realised Grey Skate Mag had a list of the stores that stock them on their website. If a store had grey, it was normally a legit skater-owned store, so I went shop by shop and found some good shit for cheap. I realised in 2023 those could all be brought together into one website, so I worked on it for about a year, and now here it is :)

I also had heard/read about the woes that some stores were going through, especially after the pandemic boom where demand for stuff surged, and then dropped off. I realised if stores are stuck with stock, this would be a great way to help them shift it.

How does it all work?

Shopify makes it super easy to grab all the items from a store in a big text file, so first UD grabs that. Then it stores the info and links for the sale items, and you see them displayed on union discount. it standardises the size, category and brands so you can filter for those. It's pretty straight forward, but there's a ton of non-shopify stores i'll have to explore how to add next.

Whats your background?

Im English-Chilean, I live in Barcelona. I grew up in bournemouth, UK for most of my life. I'm 31 and i've been skating since I was 14. I work for a tech company so it gave me a bit of a background to make something like this.

Are you a one man band or getting help off anyone?

My girlfriend Regina is a graphic designer (and a sick tattooer, check out @reggiescustom), so she made all the posts and design for the website. then my friend alex made the frontend. The backend was all me 🍑

Whats the plan for future?

In the immediate future, adding sorting by price, a search bar, Canadian and Australian stores, and a 'favourite' system so you can save items and come back to them.

Longer term, my hope is that it can grow into a known place for people to get shit for cheap, for stores to make more money, and with enough traffic for it to pay for itself with ads. Ideally I want to run ads directly with brands, like how you see a lot of skate mags do on their websites, instead of some shitty google adsense which will show unrelated stuff. So if anyone has any connections for people to speak to for that, hit me up!! 😤

Skate Wear Sale

Once we're at that point where some money is rolling in, I'll reinvest everything back into it, in the form of giveaways, competitions, making merch, visiting stores, making content, I have a bunch of plans. but for now, the most important thing is to get it out there and get the ball rolling on building a platform that can reach a lot of people, and bring sales to stores. First and foremost it has to be something good for skating.

Anyone u wanna shout out?

Regina and Alex, it wouldn't be possible without them! Shout out to Darwin @mooseskateshop in Bournemouth, he's killing it and is helping keep the scene alive in a town where it might otherwise be neglected. and to every skate store owner, worker, or lurker, whether you're on UD or not—let's keep skating in the right hands and the money flowing in the right direction, to skaters 💪💯

Where can we find all your stuff?

UD is uniondiscount.net — follow us on insta @union.discount and share our posts!!

Safe G, we appreciate your time, good luck with it all!