Who are we?

The Rad Black Kids are quintessentially all of us that don’t feel represented by the monolithic views that we are painted over with a broad brush. The need for this brand grew out of a desire from the founder to see faces that reflect his in action sports. He began through building longboards, simply because he couldn’t afford one, so his background in architecture made this possible. The Rad Black Kids initially began building longboards with riders in mind by utilizing the best “rider oriented” boards: Using rider’s choice trucks, wheels, bearings, and true rider quality decks. In 2008 after spending 5 winters snowboarding most weekends in the winter, summer was a chore as there was nothing to do in his small Idaho town. He didn’t have the money to purchase a board, so instead he built a repurposed old board out of a 1996, somehow still ridable deck.

6 years later, in 2014, when the opportunity arose, The Rad Black Kids was established, with durable, weather resistant (inspired by womens’ purses) longboards as the initial product offering. As time went by, and longboards flew off the shelves The Rad Black Kids took the same principles of quality, durability and longevity, and applied them to our first clothing collection in 2015. With each season, the goal of each collection was to create immersive story telling experience. The founder felt as though the garments could tell stories from his home country of Zimbabwe, and stories of Africans in the diaspora. Each piece could be an “soldier” on this crusade of shattering monoliths. 

The Rad Black Kids has now evolved to a brand that is not only better at narrative based product design, but now all our products are now made in Portugal. Sustainability and reduction of carbon emissions are paramount to The Rad Black Kids. We have been planting a tree for every product we sell since our inception in 2014, but now, due to the catastrophic climate emergency we now plant 20 trees for each product sold!