By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Inside an unassuming cream-colored brick building on Lafayette Street in downtown, the city’s newest skateboard store embraces the Shop Small moniker.
The fittingly named Small Skateshop, 510 Lafayette St., is the new spot for skateboard decks, trucks, wheels, bearings, clothing, shoes, bags and other merchandise around skate culture. It’s located a couple blocks north of the city’s main downtown shopping strip on East State Street, where Ground Floor Skateboards operated for eight years before closing in February.
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Small Skateshop will celebrate its grand opening on Friday.
Owner Ben Larson, who has run his own skate brand Losing Skateboards since 2016, decided to fill the void for a local shop left after the closing of Ground Floor, where he had worked for about four years.
“Skateboarders are very community-driven,” Larson said. “I think people appreciate the community aspect of something local where you know the person and it’s not a big chain where the person behind the counter doesn’t necessarily know what’s going on in the community.”
Larson screen prints graphics, some designed by local artists, on hardwood skateboard decks and sells them at a dozen or so shops across the Midwest. Now, he carries that line of Losing Skateboards in his own store, along with skateboard brands such as Girl, Thunder Trucks, Spitfire, Venture and Mini Logo, to name a few.
“It’s limited stock right now and building every week or so,” he said.
The 29-year-old small business owner’s space doubles as the workshop for his screen printing business, Screen and Squeegee, which he has run for about a year. He handles large commercial jobs and custom orders for local businesses and artists.
Larson has been a screen printer for about a decade, including time at Rockford Art Deli in downtown, and thought bringing the businesses together provided the perfect opportunity to continue printing skateboards while giving the local community a new storefront. He hopes the two businesses feed off each other.
“Hopefully people are coming in and putting together their kid’s first skateboard and saying, ‘you know what I have a lawn care business or I’m the Guilford athletic director’ or something, let’s get some T-shirts made,” he said.
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He also hopes the shop will draw customers who may not skateboard, but appreciate the clothing style and culture.
Among the array of skateboard deck graphics is a Rockford-themed board designed by artist Ryan Duggan and featuring Symbol, the 47-foot tall vermilion red sculpture that towers over the Rock River along the recreation path. Duggan’s graphic is one of the newer ones in the Losing Skateboards lineup.
“It’s fun to pay a little respect to Rockford itself and where I’m doing them,” Larson said. “Most of the Losing boards, the goal is to sell them all over the country. … Even if they don’t get the Symbol graphic to the degree that people in Rockford do, it’s important to the people in Rockford and it’s still fun to have for other people.”
Larson said he’s been skateboarding for as long as he can remember, and he got his first proper skateboard at age 11 as a gift from his dad.
The name Losing Skateboards was derived from a competition he entered with friends years ago. They called the team Gonna Lose as a way to show they were entering to have fun and not taking the competition too seriously.
“Winning or losing isn’t important. You might as well be happy with what you’re doing.”
About | Small Skateshop
Where: 510 Lafayette St., Rockford
Grand opening: Noon to 8 p.m. Friday, May 10
Regular hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sunday
Online: smallskate.com (Coming soon); losingskateboards.com
Social: Instagram: @small_skateshop;
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas