Rollerblade

Rollerblade are industry’s veterans and one of the most important brands in inline skating history. The company was founded in year 1982 by Brennan Olson and Scott Olson, in Minnesota. Since then, Rollerblade underwent several acquisitions and finally became a part of Tecnica Group, a corporation which gathers several well-known and highly valued sport brands under its umbrella.

Contrary to popular belief, Rollerblade was not the first company to mass-manufacture inline skates. However, they were the first company to sell them worldwide and invest heavily in promotion of the rising sport. A testament of their success is the fact that we now use “rollerblading”, a word derived from company’s name, as a synonym to inline skating. Inline skates themselves are often called “rollerblades” or in shortened form, “blades”.

In this day and age, Rollerblade stands for quality. They are not the most innovative of the brands, their catalogue is not as expansive as some others, but without a shadow of doubt – a product with Rollerblade logo on it, is a quality one - from the simplest recreational skates to high end speedskating boots. Company’s approach can be described as steady evolution rather than revolution – this may not appeal to some customers, but guarantees that RB’s skates are always a safe bet. It’s worth remembering that Rollerblade do have resources to give us a surprise from time to time – being in one family with winter sports giants like Nordica, Tecnica and Blizzard Sports gives them an opportunity for technology transfer.

Even though Rollerblade prefers quality over quantity, they offer skates for almost every style: from kid’s skates, through recreational, fitness, speed and aggressive to urban skates. The only area where their catalogue is lacking is freestyle slalom; Rollerblade, to this day, has not created a model dedicated for this type of activity, even though their older urban skate, Twister, was a very popular choice among beginners and intermediate slalom enthusiasts at the beginning of the century.

Rollerblade have always worked with skaters and attracted best of them. There was a time when their aggressive inline skating team was unmatched – the very first pro skate of one of most talented and highest regarded skaters in history, Alexander Broskow, was made by Rollerblade. They were the first company to release a pro-model of an urban skate with Fusion 84 Greg Mirzoyan. It’s worth mentioning names like Ben Brillante, Sven Boekhorst, Robert Guerrero, Vincent Vuvankha and Danny Alridge – all skate or skated for Rollerblade. Moreover, the company is trying to make ambassadors of skating out of people who practice other sports – we can mention a loose cooperation with skiing superstar, Sierra Quitiquit. The company also tries to appeal to skiing audience in particular by their campaign and training program called “Skate to ski”.