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Justin Keskin loves cliches. He said his friends always make fun of him for how much he uses them. While he laughs at himself about it too, there is one cliche that really resonates with Keskin: “If you love what you do for a living, you won’t work a day in your life.”

For Keskin, this means a little more to him now than it used to. Just over a year ago, Keskin quit his traveling sales job to commit full time to his skateboarding brand, Wool Skateboards. Keskin designed his brand to encapsulate the warmth skateboarding gave him.

“I wanted to do something that just reflected my own idea of what skateboarding meant to me of just goofing around and having fun and just not giving a f*ck, whatever was going on in the world around you,” Keskin said. “Because your life could be falling apart, but as long as you’re skateboarding, it’s all good.”

Wool, the self-proclaimed “softest brand” in skateboarding, first started in 2017 as Keskin’s side project. Keskin tries to release new merch every few months and has even released two full length skate videos in the past year, titled Toy Box and Ramschadel.

Keskin, a local of Syracuse who has a degree in graphic design from Champlain College, has been snowboarding or skateboarding for most of his life. He had always been drawn to the idea of merging two of his passions — design and skateboarding — to create a skateboarding brand.

He had created smaller projects in the past that didn’t work out quite the way he had wanted, including a snowboarding brand named Black Unicorn Death Cult. But this didn’t dishearten Keskin, and with the help of a friend who had also started his own skate company, Keskin was able to get in contact with woodshops and skate shops to help him bring his vision to life.

But soon Keskin faced a larger issue: what to call his brand. He looked back at his previous projects and realized the names that he came up with were too specific, just like Black Unicorn Death Cult. But one day, while he was driving, the word “wool” came into his head and something about it spoke to him.

“The more I thought about it, the more I really liked the multiple levels that it worked on, because wool is an organic fabric that can be worked into many different things,” Keskin said. “It just worked.”

Keskin said he was able to visualize the design of the branding of Wool’s name, and quickly finalized his ideas. Afterwards, Keskin used Wool as a creative outlet, something he had been yearning for after years of working a sales job.

This creative outlet became much bigger for Keskin, as boards around New York and the country quickly started supplying his brand. Keskin and Lenny Draws, a British artist, worked together to design the logo for his most recent skate video and merch drop, Ramschadel.

In his earlier projects, he had stayed away from his more niche interests, specifically metal music, because he knew not everyone would find that appealing. But with Ramschdel, Keskin wanted to make a heavy-metal edit that showcased local skaters while using his favorite music to go along with it.

Keskin edited Ramschadel himself. The entire video was put together in a week — Keskin estimated he spent 48 to 72 hours editing it.

The skaters themselves were important to Keskin. Initially, the skaters for Wool were mostly friends of Keskin, but as his brand grew, so did the team. He began getting clips from skateboarders around the country, but wanted to stay true to his identity.

Keskin said one of the most important things he thinks about when deciding on skaters is their “X factor.” He wanted originality, creativity and for his skaters to be different.

“My idea is just to try and not be different without a purpose, but try and make something that stands out a little bit on its own, but also on its own merit,” Keskin said. “It’s just a little off from what everyone else is doing.”

Ramschadel, which dropped Oct. 28, features clips from around the Northeast, with the most coming from Syracuse, Philadelphia and Albany. The style of the edits matched the music, which featured songs from a variety of metal bands. Clips from two of the skaters, Nicole Hawkins and Eli Cary, exemplified the gritty feeling of the edit, with fakie backside tailslides on low ledges and boardslides at the DIY skate park at Ormand Spencer Park in Syracuse.

While the local skate community is important to Keskin, the community values him just as much. He said he’s well-connected with skaters from around central New York and has shared his brand with all who want it.

In his hometown of Syracuse, Keskin was able to help a new local skate shop, Flower Skate Shop, stock for their first opening in October of 2020. John Moore, co-owner of Flower, said that when the shop first opened, the only boards on their racks were Wool.

Courtesy of Justin Keskin

“I think it’s super dope that someone from Syracuse is making boards and is doing the whole thing,” Moore said. “It’s sick that our relationship with Justin is so cool…he goes above and beyond for Wool.”

But for Keskin, he’s just making art. He knows that skateboards are made to be used, not just sit on shelves. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an art — it’s just a functional art.

“I used to get worried about what stickers look like and graphics, and I remember one of my friends said to me — it’s a tool,” Keskin said. “You throw (skateboards) around, of course, it’s going to get damaged. So yes, it’s functional art, but it’s also a tool.”

With his tools, Keskin has been able to inspire the community and grow the skate scene around Syracuse. He sends his boards to shops around the country but makes sure he shouts out smaller shops that Wool supplies.

Even local skaters feel Keskin’s influence. Keskin encouraged skaters like Sinceyer Smith to pursue skateboarding later in life. Smith, who is featured on Ramschadel, said that Keskin motivated him to make his own shop in the future.

“I want to do something like what (Keskin) is doing,” Smith said. “I want to have a skate shop when I’m older, with my own brand and probably have some of his stuff in there too.”

But beyond the community he has built and the lives he’s touched, Keskin is just happy to be doing what he loves.

“What I want (Wool) to capture with it is that feeling of going out and skating with your friends,” Keskin said. “It (doesn’t) matter if you’re going to skate a bowl or a parking lot, just that feeling of hanging out with your buddies and just having fun.”

Published on November 14, 2022 at 10:31 pm