Skateboard maker still rolling along

By Leslie Earnest

Feb. 17, 2008 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Paul Schmitt was 14 when he pressed his first skateboard under the tire of his mom’s car.

It was, he recalls, “the development phase” of his first business.

Since then, the owner of PS Stix Inc. in Costa Mesa figures he has produced more than 10 million boards, enough to stretch from California to New York and back if placed end to end. They’re designed by his clients and sell under a wide range of labels, including Alien, Flip, Habitat and Element.

“He’s the premier skateboard manufacturer in Southern California,” says John Bernards, executive director of the International Assn. of Skateboard Cos.

Schmitt has been involved in a variety of skateboarding ventures over the years, ranging from distribution to manufacturing. Today he’s immersed in CreateAskate.org, which uses skateboard construction to teach math, physics and other not-so-fun subjects.

Schmitt, known as “the professor,” doesn’t come off as a paragon of success. He has zero interest in golf, won’t wear a suit unless someone dies or gets married, and tools around town in an aging PT Cruiser.

And get this: His Newport Beach home has two pools in the backyard -- one for swimming and an empty one for skateboarding. If he’s not in his skating pool, you might spot the 44-year-old Schmitt whizzing around at a public skate park surrounded by other skaters who are decades younger and significantly shorter.

“His life is skateboarding,” Bernards says, adding: “He’s not the only big kid in the skateboard industry.”

Schmitt gets serious when he talks about how things have changed. A sport born of rebellion and individuality has spawned a global industry. “It’s not this tiny thing anymore. It’s this big thing,” he says. “And there’s much more price pressure.”

Schmitt watched competitors shutter their businesses as skateboard construction shifted offshore, and four years ago he took the plunge himself. Half of PS Stix’s boards are made in China. He’s preparing to open a factory in Tijuana that eventually will replace his Costa Mesa plant.

“The challenge of the business is: Are you adaptive enough?” Schmitt says. “And I’m not going to take my lifetime of energy put into this thing and not be willing to adapt.”

The sport’s popularity has swelled and shrunk over the years. In 2006, U.S. skateboard sales were $76.1 million, a 2% decline from a year earlier, according to the National Sporting Goods Assn.

Schmitt’s having none of that. His CreateAskate.org program is generating new skateboarders while sneaking in lessons about biology, science and conservation. “They don’t know they’re being taught,” he says. “They’re just making a skateboard.”

What does Schmitt get out of it? “I’m having a blast.”

He began developing the program in November 2004 and moved it into the first classroom, in Traverse City East Junior High School in Michigan, a few months later. “I’ve got kids that enroll in my class now just so they can do the CreateAskate project,” says Scott Diment, a technology education teacher who incorporated the program into his curriculum. “I have some kids that want to take the class over and over again to make another deck.”

Geared to 5th- through 12th-graders, the program teaches students about density, scale, expansion and contraction. “They have to spell those words too,” Schmitt says. Students stage fundraisers to pay for supplies. If there’s money left over, it’s used to plant trees or donated to American Forests.

When he speaks in classrooms, Schmitt doesn’t really like to introduce the whole “success in life and be a millionaire” thing into the equation, but mentioning the two pools in his backyard does get students’ attention.

“The kids at school are like, ‘Yeah!,” he says, shooting both arms into the air.

Retailers are coaxed to get involved by offering discounts or allowing students to hold the fundraisers at their shops. They also are encouraged to learn more about skateboard construction so they can teach young customers. Then, the theory goes, the skateboarders will be smart enough to know when they should buy bigger wheels, or a new board with a longer nose.

Jeremy Batter, owner of Modern Approach surf shop in Del Mar, Calif., was sold after listening to a recent pitch from Schmitt and then making his first skateboard.

“I didn’t really know anything about the rockers and things like that,” says Batter, 21, as his freshly laminated board dried under nearby lamps. Now Batter says he’ll encourage Torrey Pines High School in San Diego to launch the program.

“It’s going to bring them to our store,” he says. “It’s smart for both him and us.”

leslie.earnest@latimes.com

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Big man on wheels

Who: Paul Schmitt

Age: 44

Job: Owner of PS Stix

Education: Tampa Bay

Technical High School

Residence: Newport Beach

Family: Married, with two children

Bedside reading: “A Comparison and Follow-up Study of Vocational Educational Graduates of San Diego ROP,” a thesis by Nancy Hawk