Ladera Longboards - Company Profile

Ladera Longboards is a youth oriented company and was founded in 2001 by Ryan Roberts and Parker Weiss. As 16 year old sophomores in high school, a free choice project was assigned in their advanced wood shop class. As avid longboarders, making a deck seemed more than appropriate. There originally was no intent to market these boards. They were just to feed their hunger for bombing hills.

As soon as this first board, the La Mesa 46" was set up and ready to ride, classmates as well as other students began showing signs of interest. The decision was then made to become official and the company building began. The name Ladera, meaning "slope" in Spanish is the name of Ryan's neighborhood with some of the gnarliest hills in Northern California. Soon there were so many orders to fill that Ryan and Parker could barely keep up. These first boards were all completely hand-made by high school students in Ryan's garage and in shop class in the off-hours, after school and at lunch. Traced, cut, routed, sanded, painted and finished by hand, there was a 2 week backorder for each board. Each one had graphics custom to the buyer either hand-painted, screened or airbrushed.

Currently, Parker and Ryan are full-time college students at the University of California Santa Cruz and hand-making boards has become pretty much obsolete. More time is needed to focus on school work as well as promotion and distribution. Ladera now manufactures 3 models of the best high-performance downhill skateboards in the Golden State. They are all tested on the biggest hills we can find with some of the best downhill skaters in the world. These boards consist of 7-ply Canadian Maple with colorful heat transferred graphics, complete with Randal 180 mm trucks and ABEC 11 Flashback wheels.

Boards and clothing are available online at www.laderalongboards.com or at 10 fine retailers in the state of California. Ladera only plans on expanding and growing from here, always looking for new retailers and distributors. They currently sponsor a downhill skate and surf team based out of Santa Cruz, California. They also just released their first promotional DVD, while the full-length video is still being perfected and is expected to hit the shelves in Spring 2005. The promo DVD is available FREE through the Ladera site.

Ladera's boards are made for skaters by skaters and are making massive waves in the longboading industry.

-Ryan, Ladera Longboards

Ladera Longboards is based out of California, USA. Visit their website at www.laderalongboards.com for more information.