In a day and age where it’s rarely good news that’s dominating our feed, it was refreshing to hear about the retrieval and resuscitation of enjoi Skateboards, and this interview with company torchbearer Louie Barletta took place to answer any questions you may have. Read on to learn more about why enjoi ceased to be, the creation of Jacuzzi in its wake, rescuing the enjoi legacy from corporate hands, plans for the bright future of the two brands, building a new team, and more…
Interview by Neil Macdonald. Louie airwalking in Asia. PH: Jeff Davis
When enjoi ended, you made one Instagram post and that was it.
I really didn’t want to say a lot of negative things about it, because I was always – in the back of my mind – trying to leverage a way to get it back. I only wanted to dole out enough information to let people understand that we didn’t have it anymore, but I didn’t want to turn it into a huge negative narrative so that if we ever did get enjoi back we didn’t totally destroy the brand.
How did it end?
They started telling me, ‘Oh, yeah, we can’t pay these certain riders this month’, so I was like, ‘You know? Just don’t pay me, pay the riders and just pay me back next month. It was always one of those things where they’d say they couldn’t get money for this, or they couldn’t pay for that, and I was always the one getting it taken out of my royalties. But it came to a point where we just couldn’t do it anymore. They basically put me in a position where they wanted me to start to lie to the riders, which I was not going to do.
It became this thing where nobody was getting paid anymore, but they were saying that in the New Year they’d be doing new budgets, and they were going to infuse all this money into Dwindle. It wasn’t just enjoi, it was all of Dwindle, because some of the team riders from other brands were hitting me up and telling me what their brand managers were saying, and I was just kinda like, ‘Hey man, I don’t know what your guy is saying to you, but I’m being very transparent with my guys’.
Louie Barletta’s Instagram post with heartfelt words announcing the end of enjoi
Early on when the pay was starting to stop, I was very open with the team riders. We had a meeting with the team, and I’d said that it looked like no-one was going to get paid for a while, and that they could leave and go and find new paying sponsors because at that point in time skateboarding was still firing. It was all still going on. I said they should find sponsors that could pay them, because I didn’t see any end result at enjoi where we were going to be getting paid anytime soon. And I understood they had to eat, they had to get paid to just survive.
“They basically put me in a position where they wanted me to start to lie to the riders, which I was not going to do”
The year before, we were at almost the peak of sales that we’d ever had at enjoi, so I knew that it wasn’t an issue with that. There were royalties owed to people on product that had already been sold. The way they were working their budgets was that they were pulling money out of enjoi, and I could see that quite quickly. When I realised that was what was happening, I reached out to all the guys on my team – because I didn’t see us getting money back in the near future to pay them – to say that it would look good if they left now. It’d look like they were leaving a good thing and there’d be a good opportunity to get on something else that’s good. My advice was to leave for something better, and then if enjoi comes back around and we can start paying people again, I’d have no problem bringing those guys back on.
On the flipside, for whoever sticks it out, I’m still going to fight for them to get paid but I didn’t see that happening anytime soon. Straight away Deedz, Zack [Wallin], Thaynan [Costa] split, then Samarria [Brevard] got on Meow. In a selfish way, for myself, it was a huge relief that those guys went on to do something else, because then I didn’t feel as responsible for them.
Wouldn’t that mean that it’d look like riders were leaving enjoi, when you know the company’s potentially going to be shuttered? Wouldn’t it look like the brand folded because they left?
I knew that when Zack and Deedz left it would look like some of our main guys were leaving and it was going to look bad for the brand, but for me it mattered more that those guys’ careers kept going, instead of enjoi going out of business with them still associated with it and none of those guys being able to get sponsored anywhere else. For me it was more important that the guys had something secure. Jackson [Pilz] held on for a really long time, and then one day he called all sheepishly to say he had an offer to ride for someone else, and I was all, ‘Yeah man, do it!’
What else was changing at Dwindle?
I’d given Dwindle an ultimatum that they either pay up and square up with us, or I was done. We couldn’t keep going with this thing. The way it was. Bod [Boyle] had quit months earlier and When Bod left this new guy stepped in and his whole thing was, ‘We could save all of Dwindle, let’s talk to Walmart and get enjoi into Walmart’, and my initial gut feeling was for every single dude who got an enjoi panda tattoo, was that they were going to see their favourite brand in a Walmart big box store. That was all the fuel I needed to stay, so I stayed and just kept saying no to every brand manager meeting where the Walmart thing got brought up. I knew for as long as I stuck it out there, I would keep it out of Walmart and big box stores.
When were the seeds of Jacuzzi planted?
At the very beginning, the first round of not getting paid, our team manager Jeff Davis got let go straight away. We’d literally came off the High Wire Tour where we were having these demos where there’d be 200 kids there, and I was just like, ‘Skateboarding is happening again, this is sick! Jeff, now’s the time we start an enjoi sister company and start bringing on some more rad people’.
We got back from that trip and that next Monday was when all the cuts started happening, and Jeff was one of the first dudes to get cut. We’d already spent two weeks on the road daydreaming about this sister company that we were going to start, so we already had it in the back of our heads that we were going to do a sister company, and at some point I was basically, ‘Alright Jeff, this enjoi shit is not fucking working, it’s not going to sustain for much longer, what do you wanna do?’
“We’d already spent two weeks on the road daydreaming about this sister company that we were going to start”
The whole Jacuzzi thing, I gotta give it to Jeff. It’s all due to Jeff, because I was feeling really defeated. I tried my hardest to save this brand that was my blood, sweat and tears for 19 years, and to have it taken away because some corporation bought it, and to have no say in what the brand was going to do, or become? I was really defeated, and Jeff was like, ‘The only way this is going to work is if we just start a brand’. I was down, but we had to get the right people involved, so that’s when I reached out to Steve Douglas the second I quit enjoi.
How quickly did Jacuzzi come about then?
I’d been working with the back-end stuff, the production stuff, at Dwindle since 2002, so I already knew that if we were going to start another brand, we had to start it at the right time of the year. Production at Dwindle was 90 days out back then, so working backwards from 90 days, we had to launch a brand so that it comes out in the Summer/Fall, when people in the Northern Hemisphere are still skating. We couldn’t start a brand and launch it in January. When Jeff got fired in the August or September, he wanted to start a brand straight away, but that would have been the worst time ever, sales-wise.
We already had it in our heads when we would move forward with Jacuzzi. It was just all about waiting and seeing if this enjoi stuff was going to turn around and what they were gonna do.
So Jacuzzi was there, ready to go.
Exactly. All we had to do was flip the switch and it was go time. Jeff didn’t have a job, so he was just drawing graphics non-stop. He was working on what the look of Jacuzzi was going to be, and that’s why I credit Jeff with a lot of what Jacuzzi is. I was still trying to save enjoi when Jeff was working on Jacuzzi. It wasn’t for nothing because if there was that infusion of money at Dwindle, we were bringing Jacuzzi in as the enjoi sister brand. There was a clear path we could go down, whichever way Dwindle went.
The first run of Jacuzzi boards with a Full clip of team riders
Jacuzzi was already being set up to be different to enjoi.
We could not just start a brand that was like enjoi 2.0. It would always be compared to enjoi. It had to have its own look, its own feel. Sure, we can have some of the same dudes, but it had to have a different look and feel for two reasons: one, we’re going to fail if we just try and do enjoi 2.0 on our own, and two, if enjoi does work out and Jacuzzi becomes the sister brand, we need two brands that look totally different. Girl and Chocolate had two totally different looks. I knew from the very beginning it had to be totally different from enjoi.
When you know exactly what you think a skateboard company should look like, is it hard to do something different? How do you shift your mind like that?
There’s the old saying about good leaders leading by example, but I truly believe that great leaders believe in the people that they are leading, and I just gave Jeff a direction. I said it can’t look like enjoi, and it has to have its own look and vibe. I believed in Jeff to make this brand look different than what enjoi was, and when Jeff tells me that what I’m drawing looks like enjoi, I have to take my ego out of this equation and understand that I can’t draw a Jacuzzi graphic. My DNA will always make it look like enjoi, so I have to take myself out of it, take my ego out of it, and let this be Jeff’s brand. I could do all the technical stuff, all the back-end stuff, I’m totally good with doing all that for Jeff, but when it comes to the art or the look or the verbiage, I have to believe in Jeff, and that’s where a lot of people fail. Because they can’t let their ego go and they have to be the ones to do it all and do it their way. I knew right out the gate that it would just look like enjoi all over again. It has to have a different look and feel, but the overarching storyline is going to be the same.
It’s Jacuzzi ‘Unlimited’ because Jacuzzi already exists, right?
Yeah, but because ‘Jacuzzi’ is a family name it’s a grey area whether it’s trademarkable. We have an agreement with them not to associate with spas or hot tubs. We can’t make beach towels and things like that, and on the flipside, Jacuzzi can’t make skateboards.
When did the reality of you getting enjoi back start to become clear?
Every time that there was an opportunity, that maybe we could get it back, it would spike the passion again, spark this hope, and then it would crash. The guy would get fired, or they wouldn’t be entertaining offers, or it’d be this or that. There was a lot of moments where we thought we could almost do it, and then nothing. We tried multiple routes to try and get enjoi back, and every time you have these little tiny wins you get false hope, and it was that for two years. Us trying and failing, trying and failing.
“Getting enjoi back is just a personal win for me, and that’s why I’m so emotional about it. It’s not just a company, or a brand. It means something deeper to me”
We’d have these days where there would be a breakthrough and maybe a possibility of buying enjoi, and I would be super excited and then it’d fall flat and I’d be super down and depressed, and Jeff kind of got on me one day, like, ‘Dude, it seems like you only care about enjoi. What’s up?’, and I said, ‘Jeff, I’m showing you my personal emotions right now, don’t mix that with my business emotions. When we get enjoi back we’re not stealing all the riders from Jacuzzi to go to enjoi, enjoi is fine on its own’. I want enjoi for my childhood, I want it to be safe – selfishly – for everything that I worked on. It was never the plan to take over Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi is our core brand. Getting enjoi back is just a personal win for me, and that’s why I’m so emotional about it. It’s not just a company, or a brand. It means something deeper to me.
What’s your plan now?
The strategy for the brand is two-fold. Like I said, a huge part of why I wanted to get enjoi back was for the fans, so part of the brand structure is celebrating the history of enjoi, celebrating what we were and how we got here. It’s like a Heritage Division in itself; this is not a heritage capsule, this is an ongoing thing. Let’s celebrate that we did make this epic video, and let’s celebrate that we had these rad guys as part of our team at one point. On the other part of the strategy, let’s start a team. Let’s bring people in who are likeminded people, just like it was originally. We’re not going to take any of the Jacuzzi guys and plug ‘em in, this is a rebirth.
“Let’s bring people in who are likeminded people, just like it was originally. We’re not going to take any of the Jacuzzi guys and plug ‘em in, this is a rebirth”
Subliminal striped tee appearance from 2018. Louie’s perfectly poised back noseblunt seals the deal
People have been wondering if the Jacuzzi team was going to get shuffled around and onto enjoi.
The thing about Jacuzzi is we started from nothing so everybody was able to put their ideas, their thoughts their art styles, their motivation, their energy into making videos for Jacuzzi, and I just didn’t think it was fair to like take anybody away from what they created because I know that feeling, in that I was there helping build up what enjoi was, you know?
When we started enjoi, we were all like, ‘Man, this is kind of a dumb name. I don’t think this is going to work’, and when we started Jacuzzi, a lot of the dudes are like, ‘Man, that’s kind of a weird name’.
Everybody just owned it. And I don’t think it’s fair for team riders to put all their energy into building a brand from scratch and then one day just going like, ‘Hey, we got this other thing back. You’re on this team now’. I think that’d be a grand injustice for everybody who put in all the effort to make Jacuzzi what it is with putting all the time into making video parts and putting their input on ideas and graphics and ads.
Matt Savadakis ledge work on the Skate Shop Day Jacuzzi Unlimited Panda deck
I lived it. I know what it’s like to start a brand from scratch and put everything, your whole heart and soul, into it. They’re a tight knit squad and I think it only benefits us because we have so many dudes that want to be part of Jacuzzi that we could now take them and be like, ‘OK, you’re part of our sister brand and enjoi’ and it’s one big thing. It’s still me and Jeff Davis running all of it. The heart and soul is still the same so it’s already naturally happening that it’s a brother – or sister – brand. It’s already naturally going to be there because I’m part of both of them, you know, and a lot of the team riders’ DNA is from both brands.
“There are so many other friends of ours that love us and want to be part of what we’re doing that the enjoi squad is filling up just fine on its own”
Somebody had asked me about John Dilo, right? And it was like, ‘You know, John Dilo was an enjoi dude 15 years ago, he doesn’t want to go back to that now he’s created Jacuzzi’. He’s put that brand on his shoulders and brought it up to what it is, why would he want to go back? Why would he want to go backwards? So no, there was never a thought of like taking Jacuzzi team riders to fill the spots on enjoi. There are so many other friends of ours that love us and want to be part of what we’re doing that the enjoi squad is filling up just fine on its own.
You mentioned in the new Jacuzzi ad how nobody ever forgets their ex. Is this a bit like dad going back to his ex? Should the kids be worried?
We’re gonna run this like an old Italian family because I’m Italian. Any problems you have, you go to mom, which is Jeff Davis, and when the problem is big, mom will come to dad and then I’ll hear about it, but I don’t need the kids coming to dad to tell me their daily problems. If the problem is big enough dad will find out, and that’s kind of how I grew up. When we started Jacuzzi, that’s kind of what I said. So yeah, maybe some of the team riders are going to feel like dad has a new girlfriend or something, but really dad just went back to his first girl.
Did you reach out to Jerry?
Jerry was literally the first person that I told when we actually got the trademark back. I called up Jerry Hsu and I was like, ‘Hey man, I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but I just got enjoi back’, And his first words were like, ‘No way, damn, I’m stoked for you’, and then I knew we did the right thing because nobody else’s opinion on enjoi matters to me as much as Jerry’s opinion because Jerry broke bones, tore ligaments and sweated and bled for enjoi.
As much as enjoi’s back, it’s always really been here. In the internet age everything that existed will always exist. It’s just that it’s going in the right direction again.
It’s funny because as skateboarders, we’re so invested in this little culture, this little world that we live in, that a brand existing or a brand not existing is only in our little circle because to the outside world, you could type in ‘Liberty skateboards’ and you’ll find all this Liberty stuff as if it still exists, you know? Of course, Liberty is dead and gone but it still exists on the internet, in that space.
Now for me, the biggest thing about getting enjoi back was that yes, enjoi lives on forever in kids’ memories, in tattoos people wear on their bodies, in clothing, in photos and videos on the internet, but what I wanted to save was the integrity of what enjoi is. I didn’t want it to become a brand in a big box store and that’s the reality of when people are like, ‘Why is it back?’ Well, it’s always gonna be here, we’re just actually in charge of what is happening to it. And to me that’s way more important.
Securing the legacy not only of the brand but of the team riders who rode for it and for all the fans for whom it was their teenage years, was their formative years, like some of the best memories of their life were happening while they’re wearing an enjoi hoodie or something. It’s just trying to protect the legacy of it for everybody.
I mean, we could just whore out the panda on completes and skateboard decks that we know will just sell, but the excitement for me of it is starting a team again, bringing in the next chapter of what enjoi is, instead of just completely dwelling on the money-making side of it. I want this to be a platform again, to elevate people and allow people to live out their dreams.
“I want this to be a platform again, to elevate people and allow people to live out their dreams”
It’s so rad to have been talking to some pros about riding for enjoi, and they’re just like, ‘When I was a kid, that was my favourite brand!’ It’s like, ‘Whoa, that’s so weird, because I’m a fan of your skating now!’ It’s really cool that we have the opportunity of that. I think for me, it’s more important to give other people the opportunity and be part of it and bring it into the next generation of kids, of it being their favourite company, instead of just banking off of the old stuff.
Of course I want to do reissues, I want to do interviews with Jerry [Hsu] and Jose [Rojo] and those guys because I think it’s important that their legacies don’t ever die. The second you stop talking about Caswell Berry is the last time you hear about Caswell Berry so if we have enjoi then every once in a while let’s do a Caswell reissue board and do a little interview with him about what he thought about that board, or what he thought about the intro to Bag of Suck or something. Just give that more life and give people a reason to remember Caswell’s legacy. The same goes with Ben Raemers, he’s part of our history, part of our DNA , and we’re not gonna let go of that, but we’re not gonna just sit here and cash in on all that.
Ben Raemers (RIP). Some classic ads from the archives
Because enjoi didn’t wind down or fade away, it had the plug pulled by the owners at the time.
Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing I struggled with. I talked to a couple guys who brought their brand back from the dead. And what I realised was like, those guys brought brands back that they’d either mismanaged, or started to get sloppy with the team riders, or got lazy or had other interests and didn’t put a lot of effort into their brands. And they kind of just died and went away. And then they tried to bring it back when they got interested in skateboarding again, but the thing was with enjoi is that we were on fire right before it ended! It was the corporate company that bankrupted us and took all the money out of enjoi to give to their shareholders. It wasn’t that we had a bad team or that we had some follies going on within our brand that made people not want to buy our brand. Our brand was selling really strongly right until it all fell apart. So it isn’t like enjoi died and we’re trying to bring it back. enjoi got taken away from us and we finally took it back.
“it isn’t like enjoi died and we’re trying to bring it back. enjoi got taken away from us and we finally took it back”
The enjoi logo board delivers on this Bag of Suck era back tail shot by Jai Tanju
You’re building a new team, right?
We are working on a team, we do have people that are involved but I’m very hyperaware of doing the right thing for people and making sure that their current sponsors are able to sell through all of their product, and that it gives it a little breathing room for shops to sell out of all that product before we announce these guys and girls ride for enjoi because I don’t want anybody to get stuck with product and I don’t want anybody to feel like they’ve burned bridges with people. So, we do have team riders in the works. We’re waiting for their contracts to expire and we’re waiting for their product to be sold through. I don’t want to announce one team rider at a time. We’re gonna wait till everybody’s set and settled at enjoi and then we’ll announce the entire team at once.
“I don’t want to announce one team rider at a time. We’re gonna wait till everybody’s set and settled at enjoi and then we’ll announce the entire team at once”
I say all this from living it; I’ve been on the receiving end of people wanting to quit, and it’s like, ‘Hey man, at the end of the day if you ride for enjoi it’s because I’m a fan of your skateboarding and I’m a friend of yours and as a friend I want to see you be the happiest you could be or be the most successful you can be, so if you don’t feel like you’re getting that with us, then I have to respect that and be stoked for you that you found somewhere else that you’d feel happier at’. I wish a lot more people in the industry would think like that as well. Because at the end of the day, we’re all going in the same direction, right? We all want this to succeed, and we all want to see our friends succeed.
When did you last speak to Marc Johnson?
When we got into serious talks about buying enjoi back, I had put out a bunch of feelers to reach out to Marc and I never got any response from it. It’s been that way unfortunately for a few years now.
For me, personally, I think the concern of Marc being at enjoi is very small potatoes to me in comparison to. ‘Where’s my friend Marc at?’ ‘Is he ok?’ Obviously, if Marc ever wanted to be part of it, of course he’s 100% in.
Louie frontside flips into fakie 50-50. We hope to see more of the same with an enjoi board in the mix
We want to thank Louie Barletta for sharing all of this with us, and thanks to Neil Macdonald [Science Vs. Life] for conducting the interview.
Keep an eye on enjoi for future developments, we’re looking forward to seeing that team list! We’re also looking forward to their boards being back on our wall very soon.
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