Interview w/ Nick Diamond.

We recently flew over to Los Angeles to meet the founder of Diamond Supply Co. Nick Diamond. His brand is celebrating its 20th birthday this year, and Nick sat down with us to discuss the skate scene in LA, the new generation, and his latest collaboration with Puma…

Scroll down to read the interview, and follow this [Link] to END.’s blog to see a photo recap of the Diamond Supply Co. launch party in LA.

Diamond Supply Co. is a pioneer in the LA skate scene. What is your opinion of the current skate culture in LA? And how do you think the culture has progressed over the years?

It’s progressed because there is a lot more people skating nowadays. It’s more mainstream, it’s just changed a lot. Back in the days, you couldn’t just skate anywhere but it’s much easier now, the progression of skate parks has changed, so many kids are unbelievably good at skateboarding now because they have places they can go skating, skate facilities, it’s just different now, it’s awesome.

We spent the morning visiting skate parks. What do you think Diamond Supply Co. represents to today’s generation and how do you engage with the youth?

I feel like a lot of kids nowadays grew up skating with Diamond, because Diamond has been around for 20 years, since 1998. A lot of kids grew up with Diamond, it’s been part of their up bringing, especially in LA, they know Diamond. Everyone from 30 and under has had Diamond bolts or has been exposed to the brand in some way. I feel like we are an OG company to them, which is cool. The way we connect with youth is that we sponsor lots of young kids. We throw street BBQs in East LA, at Hazard Park our Diamond skate park, we throw events there.

We’re here here to discover your new collaboration with PUMA, what is your connection with the brand?

PUMA was one of the first shoes I started collecting, I used to skate in PUMA back in the early 90s, in the Clyde, which kicked off my sneaker obsession. It’s funny because I had the illest collection, I had a friend that was a pro skater in England, Paul Shire, I’d hit him up and ask him for colours that I couldn’t find in LA. He would go around sneaker shopping for me and send them in the mail. He would send me all these crazy colours of PUMAs, so my friends would be like damn, where did you get those? That was my thing when I first got in to collecting sneakers, the PUMA Clyde was the first shoe I started collecting. When I got the call to do a PUMA collab I was so excited, it just made sense, it was part of my heritage growing up as a skater.

What is your inspiration behind the colour palette, can you tell us more about your signature colourway on the PUMA Suede?

Well on this particular colourway, back in 2005, it started by me making a t-shirt which was black. I wrote the Diamond script using the Tiffany blue colour, the response was so good we decided to use the colourway again. It made such an impact, this time round we decided to use it on a shoe. The last PUMA collab we dropped, was all Tiffany with the black form stripe, so we flipped it this time.

We’re from London, what do you know about the skate culture there?

I like it, growing up, I had a lot of friends that used skate from there. Over the years I sponsored skaters from the UK, I go there quite often. London and Barcelona are my favourite cities, London is awesome for shopping and going out, I love London.

We’ve seen many streetwear brands collaborating and heading towards the high end fashion market. What are your views on this and do you see Diamond Supply heading this way?

I think it’s cool that the fashion world is adopting skateboarding, but us heading that way, I don’t think so. Obviously if there is a brand out there that I like that I wanted to collab with, then I would do it. But we are a skateboarding brand, we’re not trying to be a fashion brand. We make clothes, we are a far reach away from being anything high end. We’re street, we’re skateboarding, kids that like Diamond are skateboarders. Skateboarders aren’t shopping for high fashion.