From Bushmade Skateboards to Sweet Protection
The story begins in 1986 with a film. After watching the skateboard drama Thrashin’, a crew of friends gets totally hooked on the sport. But at that time, skateboarding was illegal in Norway, so the friends had to smuggle hardware, wheels, and mags across the border from Sweden. “We built our own boards,” recalls Ståle Møller. “But we didn’t just copy the originals; we were all about making our decks better.”
That’s how the first skateboards rolled out in the tiny village of Trysil, a town at the foot of the mountains deep in the Norwegian wilderness. They tested their creations on a homemade halfpipe hidden in the forest, constantly fine-tuning their rides in Møller’s dad’s garage. Ståle’s first brand was born, and Bushmade Skateboards was characterized by the precautions surrounding their illegal skate scene.
When the ban on skateboarding was lifted in 1989, the tinkerers could finally skate in public. But they didn’t stop at just crafting boards; the crew also dove into designing outdoor gear and building standout helmets. “It bugged us that the existing gear was holding us back,” Møller says.
This was the spark that ignited a one-of-a-kind success story.
