SK8 M8S was never meant to do clothing...
It was a podcast archiving the London roller skating scene, going back as far as we could, because nothing online had ever done that. All these stories, all this history, and nowhere to find any of it.
Two skaters met randomly, ended up talking for about three hours, and realised there was so much in the scene that people just didn't know. We borrowed a studio from a friend, got a jingle made by a skater we knew who could sing, and started filming. We had a name, we had episodes banked, we had a plan. The garments were just something we made to wear on camera while we figured out the rest.
Except people kept asking about the t-shirts whenever one of us wore them out skating. We kept saying no. We weren't a clothing brand, and nobody even knew we were filming a podcast yet because we wanted to bank a few episodes before putting them out. Then Tissy #412 asked so many times we eventually said yeah, made her one, and someone else saw it. That was it. Orders started flooding in. We genuinely thought it'd be about twenty t-shirts and it'd die down. We had four episodes banked and we ended up posting them six months late because we were pressing and cutting and packing every single day.
The SK8 numbers came from early conversations.
Three digits, 000 to 999, one per person, and once it's yours it stays yours. We were thinking everyone would get the number they wanted because there's only going to be like twenty of us in this anyway. We weren't thinking about the thousand. We just liked what it meant: a skater's own identity, something that connects you to something bigger without asking you to prove you belong there.
Although this started with two passionate skaters trying to archive the scene, eleven months in, June 2023, we went our separate ways. The community and the impact it had on us meant SK8 M8S carried on.
From the very first t-shirt printed for Tissy #412 on 29 July 2022…
there have been limited drops, community suggestions that turned into real products, SK8 Numbers claimed across the UK, Australia, Malaysia, the US, France, Denmark, Nigeria and more. Garments at rinks, car parks, sports halls, street skates, wherever skaters actually are. Families with matching numbers. Friends who became friends because one of them spotted the other wearing SK8 M8S and asked about their number. People feeling like they belong to something without having to explain themselves to anyone.
Bi Weekly Bearings, our mailing list, gets everything first. That's just what we give back to the people who want to be there.
Sadly the podcast never came back. People still ask, and we haven't ruled it out. If you want to be part of bringing it back, get in touch.
A lot has changed and we're still figuring things out. But the one thing we said before we ever printed a single t-shirt, was that this had to be for every kind of skater, no matter where they are in their journey. That's the foundation this was built on.