WKND

WKND is a Los Angeles board company run by Grant Yansura, a filmer well before he was a businessman, and it describes itself as a “skitboarding” company: it makes no difference whether the video turns out to be a street part or a sketch shot with an actor hired off Craigslist. The absurd humour isn’t a marketing layer bolted on afterwards — it’s literally the reason the brand exists.

History

In April 2025, in a Thrasher piece titled “This Is Skitboarding: Ten Years of WKND”, Yansura wrote that they started the company ten years earlier out of his apartment kitchen, which is where the boards were stored. He’d come out of the fallout with Rip N Dip, and the idea arrived in a van full of friends complaining about their board sponsors: if nobody was going to put out their stupid ideas, they’d do it themselves. The first video, American WKND, is from 2015. Today there’s a warehouse in Glendale and a steady catalogue, but along the way there are episodes like 2021, when an entire season of product ended up on the floor of the Pacific in the largest recorded ocean-freight shipwreck. They had no shipping insurance.

Alexis Sablone was the first woman on the team and got a pro board in 2017; she drew the graphics for the Sir Palmer video (2018) and parted ways with the brand in early 2020. Sweden’s Sarah Meurle joined around 2021 and turned pro off her part in Rumble Pack. Andrew Considine turned pro at 35, possibly the oldest person ever to do it.

The team

With pro models in the official catalogue: Alex Schmidt (there since day one), Trevor Thompson, Andrew Considine, Jordan Taylor, Tanner Burzinski, Nikolai Piombo, Sarah Meurle, Karsten Kleppan — the brand’s first international rider — Filip Almqvist and Christian Maalouf. Around them are Tom Karangelov, Shintaro Hongo, Zac Gracie, Riley Pavey, Johnny Cumaoglu, Guy Azulay, Avery Johnson, Fredrik Winsents and Salomon Cardenas.

The boards

The bulk of the catalogue is logo boards in just about every width going, from 7.75” up through the long 9” sizes and mini models for kids, plus team boards like the Mumbler and the Wrought. The technical addition is the B.E.E.F. construction (Basalt Energized Enzyme Fibers), which reinforces the deck with basalt fibre. Almost all the artwork comes from the Sympathy Dropout studio. There’s also a New Balance Numeric collaboration with its own video, “272”.

Who it’s for

Good buy if you want a board from a small, genuine company with enough width options to actually get your size right. Don’t come here for big-brand prestige or a contest roster — WKND is the opposite of that. If you’re unsure which width you need, start with the size guide and then compare in the deck catalog.