A few years ago being a home owner in the skate industry was good enough, but nowadays you've got to secure your future by become a business owner. Fully focused on the goal, the 3 man super team of Eric Ellington, Jim Greco, and Andrew Reynolds have recently formed the foundation of their new distrobution company named Baker Boys Distrobution. The first product to be launched is Brigada Eyewear. Overseeing all aspects of the company, the boys are ready to provide the core skateboard market with eyewear that better reflects the flavor and style of today skate market. Enough of my dribble, get it straight from them.

SGV: Can you please explain the name?
GRECO: Brigada means brigade.

SGV: As in the Bones Brigade?
GRECO: No, not as in the Bones Brigade. As in a crew of guys... a mob crew.

SGV: Why are you so excited about this project as opposed to all you other projects?
GRECO: Because we're gonna make real eyewear for real skateboarders. All the eyewear companies pushing to skaters are actually surf companies. We're gonna provide really good eyewear for the kids out there.
ELLINGTON: And we're funding it all ourselves.

SGV: Is this the first time you guys are putting up your own cheese to start something?
REYNOLDS: Yeah, it's better this way. Every other deal with say; Altamont or some shoe deal or whatevers, you have a lot of say in it, but still, someone in the end is ultimately the boss who's making the final decisions. This time we own everything and we can basically take this company wherever we want.

SGV: All 3 of you guys have been in the game for a while now, and have skated for a few different companies. What is the most important business lesson you'd say you've learned along the way?
GRECO: To own everything from the ground up. Don't give a single percent to an existing distribution. It's like they don't wanna give no percents to you... no percent. They wont give any skateboarder any percent so we can't give any to them. No percents for them. It's like I can't get any percent, no percents for me! I'm gonna be fucked like some 45 year old hooker prostetute who can't fuck anymore and pay the pimp. FUCK THAT SHIT! I'm not gonna be like that.

SGV: Is this the start of your new empire?
REYNOLDS: Well you gotta start somewhere. Look at the owners of all these big skate companies...
GRECO: All freestylers.
REYNOLDS: Hehehe. Yeah, they started with one little thing and the next thing you know they got huge companies. I had a dream the other night that Jamie's (Thomas) whole thing fell apart. It was like whoa... everything was just gone.
GRECO: That would suck.
REYNOLDS: Totally.

SGV: Is this the first company you guys have started by yourselves? It seem like a long time coming.
GRECO: Yeah this is our first company where we did it all by ourselves. One day we just woke up and smelled the coffee. We realized that we ain't got shit, and that we better make some changes. Plus, all of us wear sunglasses, so what are we gonna do? Go give it up to someone else? Wait for someone to come up to us and say, "let's make a sunglass company!" How hard can it be to make it our reality? It's not. We found everything; the place to have it made, got our own sales team, we found ways of doing everything we needed. Luckily we got a first class education from watching all the companies that we were involved in.

SGV: So what does the team look like so far?
GRECO: We got Andrew (Reynolds), Eric (Ellington), myself, Terry Kennedy, Dustin Dollin, Leo Romero.

SGV: Sounds like a sick ass team.
REYNOLDS: Basically we're making stuff for skaters. Don't go out there and by some crap from some company that has nothing to do with skating.

SGV: So are you guys starting up your own distribution for Brigada?
GRECO: Yeah. You said something about an empire earlier, that's exactly what we are building. It's called Baker Boys Distribution. No warehouse yet, I'm just doing it out of my spare bedroom and there's no need to pay for space that we don't yet need. But eventually as the distribution expands we will get a warehouse and put a skatepark in there and everything.

SGV: Are there any other startup companies whose business models you might want to follow?
GRECO: We don't wanna model it after anything really. If anything we will follow Baker's blueprint.
REYNOLDS: If you look around it's very obvious. Take Jamie Thomas for instance: he started with one board company, ZERO. Then he built on by adding Mystery, then Zero Apparel, then Fallen shoes... so now he's got what he's got. Look at that, and he's just a skater just like us.
GRECO: I can't stress to you how cool our shades are gonna be. It's gonna be only shit that we would actually wear, not some fucking associates from some surf company saying, "this is gonna be cool, let's put it out" It's really what we wear, it's the real shit.

SGV: How hands on are you guys with the whole design process?
ELLINGTON: Everything. From the design to working with the sourcing agent, everything.