Recently I had a chance to talk with Andre Coral,one of the owners of Low Pro Fingerboards. Like many I was very impressed with Andre's boards and I wanted to know just a little bit more about the man behind Low Pro.
First and foremost, lets get the silly formal questions out of the way.
What is your name, age, location and how long you have been fingerboarding?
I am Andre Coral, I am 26 years of age, and I was born and raised in Lisbon, Portugal, but for the past 3 years I have been living in London. I have always had contact with fingerboarding, from owning my first Tech Deck and trying to bust some moves over 4 years, but it wasn't until 2007 that I actually started to practice landing tricks on dememand.
How did you get into fingerboarding?
Basically from interacting with my friend Gil, he is the other owner of LowPro.
What made you want to start making your own fingerboards?
Making the boards and brand was just the extention of not only my field of expertise, but my love for fingerboarding. Gil and I thought it would be nice if we could ride our own boards, to be able to manipulate how much concave or kick angle and fully customize them to fit our needs and improve our skill.
Gil started to develop shapes and I started to develop all of the imagery and learned how to shape and mold, and together we explored all of the possibilities of board making. We will never say we are the best and never say we have the perfect deck, half the fun of making decks is looking for that perfect deck.
I agree, sometimes it is more fun hunting for something than actually finding it.
Do you have a team for LowPro?
The concept of a team for us is something that has to be natural. We have a team made of 3 good friends of ours, that test the products and provide feedback. Above all they are our friends, and becoming a "team" was something that came naturally, we believe it is more important to be good friends of those that you sponsor, rather than sponsoring according to skill, publicity or importance to the scene.
What are some of the current products you are offering from LowPro?
Right now we are concentrating on making decks and distributing our LowPro Tape. Decks will be available in 2 different shapes(the K1 is more mellow and the K4 is more hardcore), and can have graphics or be blank with different woods. Decks come with a catalogue and a sheet of LowPro Tape. We strive to produce the best possible fingerboard products we can, we won't sell something we wouldn't use ourselves.
What can we expect in the future from Lowpro?
Whe have great ideas for our future products, we are constantly testing materials before we even consider selling them. We will only sell something once we know it is viable to send it abroad and that it will ensure a minimal level of satisfaction. Some upcoming products will include special edition decks, tuning kits, and our first obstacle, a concrete "C" curb. Above all I am focusing my energy towards the new website. Lowprodecks.blogspot.com served it's purpose for awhile, but we feel we need a better tool for the future.
Sounds great, any final thoughts, shout outs or whatever?
Well, generally I give a big shout out to those that are making fingerboarding what it is today. Particularly to people and movements like BlackRiver-Ramps, and Berlinwood. They have shown us that fingerboarding is not only fun, but it is it's own category. There are alot of other people I could send props to, but sincerely, they know who they are.
Last words?
Some say "fingerboarding ruined my life" I say fingerboarding became my life.
