Wheel Love

Team MYCK is dead.

No, don’t bring out the coffin just yet. It ain’t over, we’re just doin’ a lil reshuffling to our sponsorship programme.

First and foremost, it ain’t a sponsorship programme. Never was, never meant to be.

When we started Wheel_Love, we not only did it to help out the industry (if you can even call it an ‘industry’) but also to do something different. We never really believed in that whole team sponsorship jazz (probably cus we weren’t good enough to get sponsored) – wear this logo, must use this wheel, don’t let us catch you with a GAP t-shirt, make sure you wear your sponsored products when you shoot an ad bla bla bla.

Almost makes it seem like a job.

Rollerblading isn’t a job – and should never be. If it was, it’d be a TERRIBLE job. The kind with bad pay, silly hours and zero respect, not something your parents would boast during reunion dinners.

To us, rollerblading is about having fun.

Back to the subject at hand, Team MYCK is dead, long live Wheel_Lover.

No, the MYCK brand is still very much alive (with batch 2 coming in sometime Apr 07 *fingers crossed), it is just the team that has just moved a little bit. The MYCK brand of wheels as you probably realise, is run by Wheel_Love (kinda like how Rat Tail Dist owns and runs 4×4 and GC). So all we’re doing is taking our the two MYCK riders Nik Suhaily and Craig Brocklehurst and bringing them into Wheel_Love, and renaming the ‘sponsorship’ programme Wheel_Lover.

Wheel_Lover is more than just a name. Yea we’d flow our riders wheels and threads and use them in promotional materials, but it doesn’t stop there. In someways, it seems that Wheel_Love works FOR our riders and not vice versa. We’re taking it upon ourselves to promote our riders in any way possible – video edits, magazine profiles, advertising materials etc. Strange as it seems, our ultimate goal is to get our riders recognised enough for bigger companies to poach them (lets just hope they remember us when they get their first pro boot).

So what does that mean for our riders? Well, they still do what they do best – have fun on skates. Along the way we’ll push them products, take them places and hopefully make their names big. This also means that they aren’t bound to our products – if they wanna try out other wheels – go ahead, if you’d like to wear a different shirt for your photoshoot – no worries. After all, rollerblading is about heart, not glory.

We choose our riders carefully, taking only rollers that we KNOW are in it for the long run. So we aren’t gonna get bogged down by petty politics. At the end of the day – our riders are our bois, homies, compadres, kawans, peng you, kamchengs, machas, heng tais, member and of course brothers.

Anyway, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank Nik and Craig for what they’ve done so far and hope they continue to stick with us. And, we’d like let you guys know that we’re looking for another Wheel_Lover to join the fold, we sort of already have someone in mind, but if you think you deserve a chance – email us at hello@wl33.com.

So you wanna be a Wheel_Lover

• Loves to skate (no duh!), doens’t have to be the BEST skater out there, though it helps. At the end of the day – heart counts.
• Looks at the sport and know that there is more to skating than grinds and airs.
• Though Wheel_Love is run by rollerbladers, we don’t see a problem taking on reps from other “wheeled activities”.
• Geographically near the Klang Valley – its kinda hard to take your pic when you ain’t in the same country (ask Craig!)
• Has a good head on his or her shoulders – we’re talking brains here. Not necessarily straight A students, but just someone who can think before reacting.
• We don’t care what colour your skin is, who you pray to or what car you drive – so long as you are chill – we down.

-sukeats