以下文稿转自Weartested.com

翻译：Uncle.Suo

You’ve seen it and heard it. China is on the come up. Untapped perfect marble ledges and quirky spots overlooked by skater-friendly police makes China every skater’s wet dream. The majority of Pretty Sweet and Plan B’s B True were filmed in cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Shanghai. However, any and every skater who visits China must take a pit stop in Shanghai to experience China’s biggest skate scene. Once you’ve skated local spots like LP and Fuxing Park, stop by FLY streetwear on 704 Changle Lu to kick it and meet locals who’ve been helping hold down FLY Streetwear for the past 15 years. In light of the recently released FLY streetwear x Vans Syndicate Cricket Shoe Pack, we’ve been given the opportunity to sit down and talk with two key players in the collaboration: Jeff Han, the founder of FLY streetwear, and Tim Sedo, co-designer, ex-Professor and current Asia-Pacific Regional Marketing Manager of North Face.

你们已经感受到现在中国滑板的发展了吧，那些还没有被发现的大理石台子、古怪的地形以及任滑手肆意挥洒的警察叔叔让中国成为了所有滑手的梦。你会在很多Pretty Sweet和Plan B的视频中看到深圳、广州、上海等中国城市的影子。无论是哪个滑手，在来到中国以后，势必要去上海感受一下中国最大的滑板场面。而你滑行在上海的Lovepark（上海音乐厅）、复兴公园这些著名地形时，就一定不要错过去拜访那些在长乐路704号为FLY Streetwear 努力了15年的人们的机会。乘着最近Vans Syndicate X Fly Streetwear 限量联名款套装的发布的机会，我们有幸和这次合作双方的关键人物——FLY streetwear的创始人韩敏捷和鞋款设计主脑Tim Sedo进行了一次访谈。

 

The Jeff Han interview:（与韩敏捷的访谈：）

The Nike SB “Milk” Blazer was dedicated to you; can you explain your story of working as a milkman and then starting China’s first skateshop, FLY?

我们知道你曾经合作推出Nike SB “Milk” Blazer，那么你可以告诉我们你如何从一个牛奶业务人员到成立中国第一个滑板店的故事吗？

Well, my earliest line of work was manufacturing airplanes. I would learn how to put together airplane engines. My formal education is low, after graduating middle school I never went to high school. Instead, I went and directly learned how to engineer, like making computer parts and other industrial abrasives for airplanes. Eventually it got boring. After about a year working at the airplane manufacturing company, I didn’t have interest anymore. Every day I would climb over the factory’s walls and go out to skate and make it back before work was over to punch in. So for a whole year it was like that; I would go to work in the morning and finish everything in an hour, and then sneak away to go skate. After a while I realized this couldn’t continue and that I was wasting time. So then I got a job at one of Shanghai’s biggest milk companies. I think that a lot of people thought that I personally sold milk, for the record, I was never a door-to-door kind of milkman; I was just working at the sales department of the milk company. So shit, actually…I guess you could say I sold milk. However, everyday I wore a black suit with a black tie to work. Cause you know, you had to act professional; I had to go talk to a lot of huge supermarkets and see if they would distribute our milk. Every day at work I would do this, and then fill out order forms and customer paperwork; there would be actual milkmen to send the milk there, but I was just in charge of the sales. Looking back, working at the milk company helped me a lot; before working there, you could say I was a pretty shy person, someone who didn’t talk a lot and kind of just lived in his own world, which revolved around skateboarding. But the position at the milk company forced me to break out of that shell; I had to go and talk to a bunch of people that were completely different than me. Later in 2007, Nike SB and Matt Irving helped design the Milk Blazer as a tribute to my time spent working at the milk company which I was really thankful of. Altogether, I worked at the milk company for about 3 years. But then I wanted to start a skateshop. I think my desire to start a skateshop was a result of me just wanting to be able to skate more—when I worked at the milk company, I had absolutely no time to go out and skate. Honestly, I had no idea whether or not it would make money, I just wanted an excuse to go out and skate more. The story of how I got started is interesting—I remember a friend of mine brought me to Guangzhou, where I found a bunch of extremely cheap skate shoes straight from the factory. And so I brought a bunch back to Shanghai and just sold them to friends in the skate scene. It sold out fast, so I thought, maybe opening a skateshop could work out, plus I’d get to skate every day. So I started FLY skateshop in 1999. Those times weren’t easy. I would take a 27-hour disgusting train with no AC packed with Chinese farmers to Guangzhou. I’d bring a huge over the shoulder bag and pack it with shoes directly from the factory—I was foolish back then, I didn’t know that you could just ship them up to Shanghai, so instead I brought them back myself. I remember that was around the end of ’99, close to the Chinese New Year, and I brought it back to the Shanghai store to sell to the public. I brought back Duffs, Axion, NSS, Airwalks, Vans, and DVS, sold them for super cheap, probably around 280 to 300 kuai (40-50 dollars), and they sold out fast

好的~我最初的行当是飞机制造，就是学着把飞机发动机组装到一起的那种工作。我学历不高，初中毕业后也没上高中，就直接去学了关于飞机计算机零件和工业模具制造。之后在一家飞机制造厂干了一年左右，在那段实际，我几乎每天都会翻厂区围墙出去滑板，然后在下班打卡前回来。我会在每天早上在刚上班一个小时内完成所有我需要完成的工作，然后就溜出去滑板，那里枯燥乏味的活儿让我逐渐对它失去了兴趣，在我发现这样完全就是在浪费时间的时候，我就辞去了飞机制造厂的工作，去了上海最大的牛奶公司工作。朋友们认为我是上门送牛奶的，哈～实际上我是在牛奶公司的销售部工作，送牛奶的人很多，而我是销售主管。不过我想你也会说我以前是送牛奶的吧。。。不管怎么说，那段时间我必须穿着正装上班，那是工作要求，你懂得。在那里我不得不日复一日的奔波在各种超市之间，同时还要填写大量的订单和客户文件。回头想想，在牛奶公司的工作的确教会我很多，让我打破了羞涩不爱说话，整天滑板的自我封闭世界，牛奶公司的工作需要我和别人不断打交道，所以我变得和以前大不一样。最后在2007年，耐克SB和Matt Irving帮我设计了Milk Blazer，这是在是一份大礼，让我感激不尽，也很感谢在牛奶公司的工作经历。总的来说，虽然我在牛奶公司干了三年，但还是想开一间滑板店，因为在牛奶公司我没有时间去滑板，说真的，我没想着赚钱，只是想多一点时间去滑板而已。想想我刚开创滑板店的时候发生的一切，都很有趣:我的朋友带我去了广州，在那里我进了一批特别便宜的滑板鞋，带着这些鞋回到上海卖给我滑板的朋友。鞋卖的很快，就在那时我觉得我的滑板店可以成立了，而且从此以后每天都可以去滑板。1999年我的店铺开张了，一开始的日子有些艰难，我得忍受27小时的挤满不愿意说话的农民叔叔的火车到广州进货，然后背着巨大的包从工厂把鞋带回去，当时竟然不知道用汽运发回上海，而是自己坐火车背回去，真是傻透了。我记得那是在99年末，接近中国的新年，我把带回上海的Duffs, Axion, NSS, Airwalks, Vans, 和 DVS卖给大家，卖的超级便宜，大概200到300块（40-50美元），很快就卖完了。

How is the skateboarding scene different now, from when you started?

从你开始滑板到现在，你觉得滑板的气氛变得怎么样了？

Hmm…that feeling I had when I first started skating…actually, I think I originally started skating cause I thought it would attract the ladies, yes, I remember and I admit it. I actually think if you ask a majority of the skaters why they started skating, it probably has something to do with picking up girls. However as you skate more and more, you find that the most interesting thing about skating lies within the process of starting from “can’t” and accomplishing “can”. This is what makes us different than animals. Animals fuck and eat, fuck, and then eat, that’s what’s most important to them. For humans, fucking and eating are important, but so is creating something, and the process of creating something out of nothing is truly addictive. Back then, we were all pretty inexperienced, but skated out of raw passion; there were probably only 30 skaters altogether in Shanghai. When we all skated together it was good times only, we never had any dreams of becoming pro skaters. The happiest times skating was after learning a hard trick for so long and being able to do it in front of them, and the friends showing their support with high fives and cheering. I mean, it was almost kind of gay; a bunch of shirtless dudes hanging around each other hugging and high fiving after a skater landed a trick… but even so, these times were truly the happiest just because of that raw passion. Nowadays in China, skateboarding has developed pretty fast over the years and the pro skaters now don’t skate as much with raw passion as before. Money certainly plays a factor in this as well. So from my eyes, I feel like that’s the biggest difference.

嗯。。。最初滑板的感觉。。。。就是。。。想吸引姑娘。我个人觉得很多滑手滑板的原因都可能是为了吸引姑娘们。滑板是一个让你说“不会”到“会”的有趣过程，人和动物为什么不一样？因为它们最重要的事就是吃完睡，睡完吃和啪啪啪~而人不单单只是吃、睡、啪啪啪～人们还会去创造一些东西，事物从无到有的创造过程是会让人上瘾的。我记得那时候我们滑板，除了热情以外什么都没有，滑手也很少，整个上海大概只有30个人在滑。我们在一起玩的很开心，也没想过成为pro，只想着成一个学了很久的牛逼翻活，把动作秀给朋友们，然后一起击掌庆贺。你想想一群赤膊小伙因为一个人成了一个动作就相互拥抱相互庆祝，那种单纯的热情，现在想想都很欢乐。而现在，中国滑板发展是一年比一年好了，可是pro不像以前那样充满了激情，金钱逐渐变成了主导因素，我想，这就是现在最大的变化吧。

What do you think is the most important thing in running a successful skate company in China?

你认为让一个滑板公司在中国成功运行什么最重要？

Whether or not a skateboard company is successful is entirely subjective. Truthfully, skate companies don’t make much money. From the perspective of profit, you couldn’t really call it a successful company. What I think makes a successful company is when a company can financially support a bunch of workers who share the same passion and mentality towards skateboarding—like a family. I don’t think you can judge whether a skate company is successful just based on profit. Instead, it’s more of the ability to bond people together.

滑板公司成不成功只是一个人的看法，要知道经营滑板公司是不会赚钱的。如果从利益角度出发，就不能说滑板公司是成功的。而对于我来说，成功的滑板公司不仅是能在经济上支持自己的员工能饱含热情和智慧的去推广滑板，而且还能像一个大家庭一样团结一心。我不想一个人单纯的以经济利益来判断一个滑板公司的好坏，还应该看这个公司是不是有能力让人们团结在一起去努力才行。

What direction do you think skateboarding in China will go in the next ten years?

你觉得未来十年中国滑板的发展方向是什么

Skateboarding itself is very global. No matter where you go in the world, skaters will have similar outlooks, methodologies and customs. So in the next ten years, China will also bride closer to western skateboarding’s trends, whichever direction skateboarding takes itself, China’s scene will follow. But to elaborate more, I think it will be more corporate. A lot of skateboarding’s original pleasures may slowly disappear, but this is unstoppable, it’s still progression. Skateboarding itself may become more of a commercial sport, but I still hope the core of skateboarding will remain.

滑板本身就是一项全球化的运动，无论滑手们身处何方，总是有着相同打扮，生活方式和习惯，所以在未来十年，中国仍然会随着西方世界的方向为发展趋势。具体说来，我认为中国会出现更多的滑板公司，滑板运动变得越发商业化，虽然商业化会使滑板那种最初的快乐会慢慢消退，但我仍然希望去保留滑板那些最核心的东西。

I know that all the designs are hand drawn by you, but did you ever take art design lessons or classes?

我知道你的设计都是由你亲手完成，你有过相关的学习经验吗？

I’ve actually never taken design classes or had any formal instruction. I started pretty early, mainly because I wanted to learn how to design my own t-shirts and skateboards. When I started, I used CorelDRAW, which was way before Illustrator. The way I learned how to use the software was silly, everything learnt was either from online or friends. I would just call a friend up and ask them how to fix the resolution or edit a graphic; and then I would write it down step-by-step in a little notebook that I still have and use now. Everything I learned was self-taught, from editing videos on iMovie then onto Premiere, to making designs and logos on Illustrator. And it doesn’t stop, I’m still learning to this day. Truthfully I’ve used a Mac ever since I started, not because I had money, but because I thought the PC was way too hard to learn and use. When I first saw people typing away on the keyboard I knew I wanted to be able to type as fast and literate as them. When I started, I didn’t know how to use anything, keyboard included, everything was self-taught.

事实上我从没有上过设计课，也没有受过正规培训，但我很早之前就因为想要设计自己的滑板和T恤，所以对此有些接触。在一开始时我用CorelDRAW绘图，再之后我开始用AI。绘图软件的学习过程有些愚钝，遇到的所有的问题都要上网查询或者问周围的朋友，让我的朋友教我调分辨率、编辑图片等等，然后我会把步骤记录在我现在还在用的笔记本上。所有的事情都是我自学的，从使用iMovie编辑视频到使用Premiere编辑视频，还有使用AI做设计和logo等等都是。当我第一次看见人家使用软件又快又好的做出设计时，我就知道也需要和他们一样才行。虽然刚开始我什么都不懂，但现在自己已经学会了很多。

Which companies do you draw inspiration from?

那些公司的设计给了你灵感？

Truthfully there isn’t one company I especially like. That’s because I watch, follow and take from everything. However, there’s no doubt skateboarding culture has had the largest influence on me. This generation now is the most globalized yet, there is so much information to see and learn on the Internet, Facebook, and instagram, despite needing a VPN in China to access it. As for drawing inspiration from design, I like every and all kinds, not just skateboarding related. It’s kind of like music. When I first started skating, I remember all I listened to in 1999 was hip-hop. That was stupid of me. Now I realize, as long as the music is good, I should embrace it. No matter if it is jazz, punk or rock, you should embrace it all and not just blindly follow one type of music. Design is the same. I also take a lot of inspiration from architectural, industrial, technological and interior design as well, since that was what I learned before anything.

说真的，我没有特别喜欢的公司，因为我自己会去观察，去发现，去获取自己的灵感。当然，影响我最大的，毫无疑问还是滑板文化。我们这一代人受到全球化的影响，可以通过网络接触到很多外国的信息，像Facebook、 instagram这样的网站也可以翻墙去看。就像我个人的灵感一样，我不单单只是从滑板得来，还有很多方方面面的东西，就像在我刚开始滑板的时候只听HipHop，太笨了，好音乐那么多，为什么不去试试呢？爵士、朋克还有其他类型的摇滚，为什么只是盲目的喜欢单一的类型呢？设计也是一个道理，所以我会从建筑、工业、科技还有室内装饰等等设计里找到自己的灵感，这也是我之前一直在学习的。

Many US skate and fashion brands are extremely successful in China; do you think a Chinese brand could be successful in America?

很多美国的滑板和服饰品牌在中国都非常成功，那你认为中国品牌还在美国取得同样成功吗？

I would hope so, but I know it will be difficult. First off skateboarding itself is a western creation, an American creation. It’s like an exotic import in China, so to have a Chinese skate company become well known and liked internationally, would be more difficult. You could think of it in terms of Chinese martial arts. If a foreigner came to China to practice and teach martial arts it would be extremely difficult. But I still hope and think that it is possible. I think it would take the Chinese company to have a pretty Chinese cultural style, something different to bring to the table. It’s a matter of bridging Chinese culture with western culture; if it’s done correctly, there’s hope for a company to be successful in the US.

我非常希望中国品牌可以在美国取得成功，而我也知道这很困难。滑板本身就是舶来品，美国发明的东西，中国滑板公司想要知名而且国际化很困难，这就好像一个外国人要来武术之乡教武术一样困难。但是我还是希望，也想要实现它，如果我们做好自己中国特色，带给美国一些不一样的东西，让这些成为东西方文化交流的桥梁，那么它就会是中国滑板公司在美国成功的希望。

What other collaborations have you done, and which companies would you like to collaborate with in the future?

你还和哪些公司有过合作，在以后想和哪些公司合作？

We’ve done a lot of projects with many different companies. With Nike, we had the SB Milk Blazer, the Beijing SB dunk, the Chinese New Year SB Dunk, a Nike SB barbershop dunk, and a bruin collab. With Vans, we’ve released the Rabbit Era’s, and the most recent two different pairs of the Cricket Syndicate pack, altogether 3. We’ve also collaborated with Jansport to make a skateboarding backpack, as well as the Japanese street fashion company Kistoyo, whom we’ve done a shirt and board collaboration with. I’m always looking to do collaborations with larger companies. We’ve also gotten graphic design work done by designers such as Stussy designer Allister Lee, RVCA’s and Heroin Skateboards contributor Andrew Pommier, and also Yanick Nolet who did some of Girl Skateboard’s designs. In the future, I haven’t actually thought about it, but would definitely like to link up with skate companies such as Girl since they have a lot of energy and also have a strong family vibe.

我们已经和很多不同公司有过合作项目，也一直在寻求与大公司的合作，已经和耐克合作推出了Nike SB Milk Blazer、北京SB dunk，、压岁SB dunk、Nike SB barbershop dunk还有bruin collab；和Vans合作了三次，一次推出了Rabbit Era’s，之后两次分别推出了两个联名款产品；我们也和Jansport推出过滑板包；还有和日本街牌Kistoyo推出了一款T恤和一块板面。也与 Stussy的Allister Lee、RVCA’s 和 Heroin Skateboards的Andrew Pommier以及曾参与Girl Skateboard设计的Yanick Nolet等设计师一起进行过平面设计。对于未来的合作我没有想过太多，但希望与Girl Skateboard这样的活力十足又有良好工作气氛的公司合作。

What can we expect from FLY soon?

接下来Fly会给我们怎样的期待呢？

We have a lot of advertisements already filmed and edited that will slowly come out but is a secret for now. As for products, we have new beanies, coach jackets, lighters, and skateboards all recently released in our winter look book. The hope is that next year we will hit it off and release more and more products, and that people all around the world are down to support a Chinese OG skate company.

我们会有一些广告已经拍摄并在编辑当中，我们会陆续放出，但是在那之前，我不会透露关于它们的信息。关于新的产品呢，我们会在最近推出的冬季画册里展示一些毛线帽、教练夹克、打火机和滑板等新产品。我也希望明年与你们有更好的合作并且推出更多新款产品，希望世界各地的人们都来支持中国OG滑板公司。

Source：Weartested