Happy trails, éS.
Sole Tech is putting the brand on hiatus to focus more on Etnies, Emerica, Altamont and their snowboard footwear company. I'm a little surprised that this is happening because their demise has been a topic of skateboard mag gossip columns for at least the last decade, yet never came to fruition. Over the years éS gave us quite a few classic shoes, including the first pro models from Sal Barbier and Eric Koston, along with the Accel. They also let Chad Muska design a pair of sneakers with a secret stash pocket in the tongue and footwear has never been the same.
Arto is from Finland and was the hot new am at the end of the 1990s. He rode for Platinum before joining up with Flip. He turned pro for Flip and is riding for them again after a couple of years on the Alien Workshop. He was on éS for a while until Gravis revamped their footwear program.
Atiba Jefferson took photo.
Slap - March 1999 Volume 8 Number 3
5 comments:
It's pretty incredible how thick and bulky shoes were in that time period (I guess also in the Airwalk prototype era).
This past weekend, I started skating some cupsole Lakais and they're fairly compact but are still noticeably thicker compared to the shoes they replaced. Gonna take another sesh or two to get used to them.
Arto also rode for Etnies after eS and before Gravis. Kid came out of nowhere and just fucked shit up. iirc Moses, a fellow Finn, discovered him.
In the 90's, eS was sole techs tier 1 company. Then some time in the 2000's, Emerica became the tier 1 and even Etnies put together a sick team while eS ended up falling off around the time Koston left, maybe even before then. There's only so much room on a shops shoe wall I suppose. Look at Duffs in the mid 90's. Sick team. Good shoes. Then several years later, toast.
Ha, isn't Mose from Vancouver? just sayin...
Moses
Moses is a Finnish Canadian.
I think Moses found him at a contest in Europe back during the Platinum days.
I want to say Arto also rode for Emerica. I recall an ad where he was switch heelflipping a rail. I'm pretty sure he's wearing Ed Templeton's in the eS ad I posted.
Some of the eS shoes had just the right mount of bulkiness. The Koston Ones, the Quatro and the Ronnie Creager were some respectable shoes. Then thing got really bulky in 1999, as I noticed when finding an ad last night.
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