Small business spotlight: Humidity Skate Shop in New Orleans | Business News

In a narrow storefront nestled between Jackson Square and the French Market sits the oldest operational skateboarding shop in Louisiana.

It’s a distinction that might go unnoticed among those unfamiliar with skateboarding, a sport with a cultlike following that emerged in the 1960s and has grown into a $3.5 billion global market with more than nine million U.S. skaters, a corporate sponsorship ecosystem and permanent status at the Olympic Games.

But for devotees, Humidity Skate Shop is something of an institution, one whose reputation has spread over three decades through the international yet tight-knit skateboarding community to draw customers from far beyond Louisiana’s borders.

Owner Phil Santosuosso began working at the shop, then under its previous ownership, shortly after Hurricane Katrina. He was 20 at the time and an avid skateboarder who wanted to be around the sport as much as he could, so he gave up his day job at a Honda dealership.

Four years later, with the help of a loan secured by a lien against his mother’s house, he bought the shop and started working ’round the clock, seven days a week.

At the end of two years living on couches, paying himself just enough to eat and motivated by the fear of failure, Santosuosso paid off the lien.

While he remembers that time as nerve-wracking, he was fully immersed in the culture, living, breathing and bleeding skateboarding — and still is.

“I’m a skateboarder, not a business owner. That’s how I live,” he said. “Without this, I’d still be skating. That’s been my approach the whole time, so I don’t get burnt out.”

‘No big price jump’

There are a couple of keys to sustainability in the skate shop business, which is niche, rare and increasingly challenging in an era of e-commerce and premium rents.

Humidity runs on a staff of two full-time and two part-time employees. Santosuosso supplements his own income through sponsorships from Australian skateboard brands Butter Goods and Cash Only, who pay him to wear and represent their products while riding. It’s an arrangement that allows him to draw a smaller salary from the shop and keep more money in the business. 

Humidity has also teamed up with international brands on limited-release products, helping to drive sales and cement the shop’s reputation as a skateboarding trendsetter. Collaborations have included Spitfire wheels, boards from Baker Skateboards, work with artists David Harouni and Sal Barbier, a Nike sneaker and a Vans all-weather skating shoe.

Santosuosso also credits the shop’s survival to its longtime landlord, who he said has prioritized leasing the block at reasonable rates to small independent retailers over chain perfume shops and T-shirt outlets.

The shop carries the shoes, shirts and hats worn by skaters, including niche streetwear brands only available at a few stores in the U.S. But the core of Humidity’s business is sales of skateboards and their components, which comprise more than half its revenue of less than $1 million a year.

Santosuosso said his store won’t carry any products that he and his staff wouldn’t skate on themselves. Plus, top-tier skateboarding equipment is available at a far more attainable price point than other sports.

“We sell the same exact thing the dude that won the Olympics rides, and that could be $180,” Santosuosso said. “That’s what I love about skating. If somebody really, really wants to skate, you can figure it out. There’s no big price jump.”

Déjà vu

The biggest competitive pressure on Humidity doesn’t come from other shops, Santosuosso said. It comes from the brands themselves. And it’s more of an issue with shoes than the store’s boutique clothing selection.

“Something like Adidas, sometimes we get the shoe and they already have it on sale on their website,” he said. “That’s the hardest thing.”

An even bigger threat, of late, has been the ongoing road work in the French Quarter that has decimated sales at nearby businesses over the past year.

“This is our second time dealing with this,” Santosuosso said. “We didn’t have a street for two years already once.”

And it’s not just the decline in foot traffic that’s costing Humidity. Last week, the shop’s air conditioner broke down, a failure its owner attributed to dust kicked up by the digging at the corner.

Doubling down on Dumaine

Still, Humidity recently doubled both its square-footage and its rent, expanding into an adjacent unit in the building. Santosuosso dubbed it “the Annex” and plans to keep it as a white box and use it for temporary events like art shows, pop-up shops, video screenings or concerts.

“There’s so many creative people in skating,” he said. “Art and music and everything, and I want to be able to celebrate that on a better level.”

He also hopes to construct a temporary skate ramp in the new space in conjunction with the X Games, which is set to hold its first-ever league championship event at the Caesars Superdome in July.

Later this month, Humidity is partnering with New Balance and a prominent skateboard photographer for a series of events around National Go Skateboarding Day, including a demo and cookout at Parisite DIY Skatepark, where Santosuosso annually builds or donates a new element — this year, a picnic table from Los Angeles school yards made famous in influential skate videos of the mid-1990s.

Santosuosso, who is also planning a benefit show to fund repairs of a community-built skate ramp in the 8th Ward, said giving back to the local skate community has always been his main focus.

“I did this because I genuinely love skating,” said Santosuosso. “Even to this day, we still skate every day and have art shows. If it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t do this. I can go stress out somewhere else and make a lot more money.”