If you want to start your own skate brand or just offer custom board prints online, you’ll likely need to dropship your skateboards. Most people don’t have the know-how, cash, or space to start pressing and laying their own skateboard decks.
Why order a huge set of boards when you don’t have any customers yet?
Why just add more work for yourself when you end up shipping these boards out?
It’s true that you don’t want to send your customers a crap product, there are some reputable skateboarding dropshipping companies out there.
Let’s look at the options.
General Pricing Chart
Below is a more detailed breakdown of the options listed in this chart including my experience ordering from Point Distribution Skateboards.
However, let’s get to the raw numbers first.
| Company Name | Custom Designs? | Drop-Shipping? | Average Time to Shipping | Single Deck Price ($) | Bulk Deck Price ($) | Country |
| Point Distribution | Yes | Yes | 2-4 weeks | $49.95 | $29.95 (10+) | USA |
| Hex Skateboards | Yes | Not Clear (They claim to) | X | X | $21.75 (50+) | China |
| Ali Express | No | No | 4-6 weeks | $7+ | $7+ | China |
| Ali Baba | Yes | Yes | 4-6 weeks | $16.90 | $10.90 (10+) | China |
| Custom Skateboards | Yes | Not Clear | 4 weeks+ | $20 | $15 | USA |
| Wood Chuck Laminates | Yes | No | 4-8 weeks | X | $25 (25+) | Canada |
| Board Pusher | Yes | Yes | 3 days | $54.99 | X | USA |
You can see that some options are definitely cheaper than others, however, you really want to be careful not to send crap to your customers. Large brands like Element and Almost manufacture their skateboards and hardware in China and they manage to have great products.
Regardless, there is still a massive amount of crap out there.
What are Custom Boards?
If you are going to sell your own skateboards, you’re going to need your own designs.
Custom boards refers to companies that will print custom designs on decks for you based on a pdf or png image that you send to them. Typically, each company has guidelines and steps written out for how to do this. These steps might slightly differ from company to company.
Luckily there are many options that provide custom boards for a solid price.
Who are the best and biggest skateboard companies out there? How much do they earn? Check out my guide to the best skateboarding brands here.
Drop Shipping Options
Point Distribution Skateboards
- Medium shipping times
- Custom decks
- Higher price
- Dropshipping
- Good quality
Point Distribution Skateboards is the only one of these companies listed that I have ordered from myself.
Their site is archaic looking and they were not exactly fast when I ordered due to a backlog of orders, but they make quality skateboards and are based in the US. They also are relatively affordable and offer to help implement a website ordering integration if you meet a threshold of ordering at least 15 decks a week.
The decks are also fantastic and feel great while riding. I haven’t snapped my custom board yet, but to be fair haven’t been skating frequently due to cold weather.
They are responsive by email and phone and are based in the United States.
Aliexpress
- Slow shipping
- Custom decks (sometimes)
- Questionable quality
- Cheap prices
- Dropshipping
Aliexpress is the notorious large Chinese online marketplace that is similar to what Amazon is to the United States. There can be some gems in here, but they aren’t particularly known for their quality.
Alibaba is for B2B (business to business) sales while Aliexpress supports sales straight to consumers. This is great if you want to start selling skateboards for little to no money. However, Aliexpress is notorious for long shipping times, difficulty getting refunds, and sloppy order fulfillment.
Aliexpress is positive because they have extremely cheap and competitive prices and you can get started with basically nothing. Not every dropshipper listed on Aliexpress with do custom deck orders though.
Hex Skateboards
- Custom decks
- Unknown quality
- Slow shipping
- Cheap prices
I don’t really know anything about Hex Skateboards besides they are a B2B company based in Germany that creates and ships products from China.
They are newer and ran a very aggressive marketing campaign a few months ago. I saw their ads all over Facebook. I can’t really speak on their quality and to be fair, lots of great skate companies manufacture in China. Hex Skateboards is reasonably priced and has a slick website interface.
You do need to order at least 50 boards to make an order though. They also claim to have dropshipping, but it wasn’t clear to me how this works with them.
Do they allow you to send them 50 unique addresses?
Have you ever wondered what modern skateboard wheels are made of and can you make them at home? If so, check out my article detailing just what material we use to create skateboard wheels with different hardness.
Bulk Ordering Options
Alibaba
- Slow shipping
- Custom decks (sometimes)
- Questionable quality
- Cheap prices
- Dropshipping
Alibaba is the B2B version of Aliexpress. The same issues that plague Aliexpress apply here with long shipping times, questionable quality, and shoddy order fulfilllment.
Don’t expect to be able to ever call your Chinese drop shipping company on the phone.
Custom Skateboards
- Custom decks
- Quality boards
- Slow shipping
- Cheap prices
Custom Skateboards look very interesting as a company.
It seems to be run by just a few people and is very grassroots looking. The company was started by a guy who started building decks for a large company in 1998. Their site links to another website where the Custom Skateboards owner shows off his own personal deck artwork. Some of these look very cool, but are a bit pricey.
Wood Chuck Laminates
- Custom decks
- Good quality
- Reasonable prices
- Slow shipping
Wood Chuck Laminates are a Canadian company that looks very interesting.
They also seem to pride themselves on their communication and avaliablility. They are slightly cheaper for bulk boards than Point Distribution, but you need to order at least 25 decks for them to take your order. They do have great reviews online though and seem to be a reliable and solid choice.
Wood Chuck Laminates do not offer dropshipping.
Board Pusher
- Custom decks
- Good quality
- Fast shipping
- Expensive prices
Lastly, there is a company called Board Pusher that is based out of Colorado.
They very confidently boast a 3 days until shipping time for their board orders and this is completely different from the usual 4-6 weeks that most custom deck companies show. Their boards are definitely the most expensive option out there, but not so much when comparing single deck prices to say Point Distribution.
The thing that sticks out from this company is their time to shipping.
If you are a skateboard hardware nerd and want to learn more about bushings, check out my detailed manufacturing and use guide here.
Conclusion
So these companies aren’t the end-all list for drop shipping options. They are the options I was able to dig up myself from the web and my own experience. Also, note that certain companies like Hex Skateboards are quite new so they also might not last.
Dropshipping is a cool idea if you want to sell skateboards and you want to keep minimal overhead costs. Just make sure that you have the right option and you don’t accidentally give more business to the low-end crap skateboard manufacturers.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and look out for more posts from Board and Wheels.