Blind

Few brands have left as deep a mark on skateboarding as Blind, and fewer still packed it into so short a run. Mark Gonzales started the company in 1989 within the orbit of World Industries, the operation Steve Rocco was building in El Segundo, California, to needle the industry’s big players. The name itself was a shot across the bow: Gonzales had come from Vision, and calling his brand “Blind” was about as pointed a reply as you could put on a sticker. With the grinning reaper as its emblem and a raw, sarcastic look, Blind became the face of the technical street turn that rewired skateboarding in the early nineties.

History

The launch was electric. Jason Lee moved over from World Industries as the second pro, and Guy Mariano and Rudy Johnson soon arrived from Powell Peralta, two teenagers whose technical ability read like science fiction, with Jordan Richter handling the vert side. In 1991 the brand dropped its debut film, directed by a young Spike Jonze, still regarded as one of the most influential videos ever made and the blueprint for modern street skating. Gonzales left early, around 1992-93, and Blind carried on as a catalog brand inside the World Industries machine. In 2002, Globe International bought World Industries and its distribution arm, Dwindle, folding Blind in alongside Almost, Enjoi and Darkstar. In 2019 Globe sold Dwindle to a Transom Capital subsidiary for 1.5 million dollars, and the slow erosion followed: private ownership hollowed out the structure until Dwindle collapsed around 2023. In 2025, amid the distributor’s wider unraveling, Blind’s activity went quiet and its site was left on hold, leaving one of skateboarding’s landmark names with an uncertain future.

Team

Blind’s roster reads like a hall of fame. Beyond founders Gonzales, Jason Lee, Mariano, Rudy Johnson and Jordan Richter, the years brought Sean Sheffey, Ronnie Creager (more than two decades with the brand), Jake Brown and even Yuto Horigome before his Olympic leap. The final Dwindle-era lineup featured Micky Papa, Cody McEntire, TJ Rogers, Kevin Romar, Sora Shirai, Jake Ilardi, Nassim Lachhab and Jordan Maxham, a blend of contest skaters and classic street riders.

Boards and construction

Dwindle-era boards were built with the distributor’s Resin-7 construction: seven plies of Canadian maple bonded with epoxy resin, a dependable standard rather than an experimental one. Where Blind has always stood out is the graphic, with reissues of the original reaper and the nineties art that remain collector bait to this day. If you want street pedigree, you can compare other decks before you commit.