Zero

Zero is the brand Jamie Thomas built in 1996 to speak to the dark, gritty side of street skating. It started as a clothing company and quickly turned into a board brand, with Thomas leaving Toy Machine to become Zero’s first pro rider. The identity has been clear from day one: skulls, blood, a horror-movie look and an underdog stance aimed straight at skateboarding’s rebellious roots. No friendly branding, no mass market. Zero is a core, team-driven, video-focused company based in Carlsbad, California.

History

The brand came up through the Tum Yeto distribution orbit and then moved to Thomas’s own Black Box Distribution, the house that pulled together his cluster of brands. In early 2003 Thomas opened a deck-manufacturing plant in Tijuana, Mexico, known as Edieth and Osuna, to press boards for the Black Box brands. In June 2014 distribution shifted to Dwindle Distribution in El Segundo, but the story eventually looped back around: in 2016, lined up with the 20-year anniversary, Thomas took control again and Zero returned to operating independently. Through every ownership change, this is a brand that has always found its way back to its founder.

Video legacy and the Leap of Faith

Zero makes the most sense through its videos, a long run of full-length releases that built the brand’s reputation from 1997 onward. That very first full-length already carried one of the most legendary images in skateboarding: Jamie Thomas’s Leap of Faith, an ollie over a rail and down a roughly 18-foot drop at Point Loma High School in San Diego. He never rolled away from it, and it still stands as one of the most mythologized attempts ever filmed. Along the way Zero took three straight Thrasher King of the Road wins, from 2004 to 2006.

The skull and the team

The signature graphic is the skull: the Single Skull, the Three Skulls with blood and the Blood Splatter Skull, alongside the Blood Skull decks signed by Thomas himself. One long-running bit of trivia is that the Small Skull looks a lot like the skull worn by Sid in Pixar’s Toy Story (1995). The roster has run through names that defined an era of American street skating: Jamie Thomas himself, Chris Cole (a two-time Thrasher Skater of the Year and a brand shareholder around 2011-2014), Elissa Steamer, Erik Ellington, Jim Greco, John Rattray, Adrian Lopez, Tommy Sandoval, Jon Allie and Ryan Smith. On the collab side, the standout is the Zero x Bam Margera capsule, with Bam long tied into the Thomas / Black Box world.

If you want a deck with genuine street pedigree and a dark look that’s recognizable at a glance, Zero is an easy call. Line it up against the rest in the deck catalog.