IPATH wants your soul

IPATH, the skate company who make clothes and shoes like this non-offensive looking black number have now got a bmx team. If you want to know team details etc you can check them here.

Just like when any outsider comes into bmx, the "rape our women, steal our children" mentality is afoot and they've been accused of wanting to bleed the sport dry. It's kind of like a mini version of when Nike came on the scene. If you haven't seen it already, there's a really good feature on a blog called 20 negative about Nike entering bmx (yes, physically and metaphorically) They got characters of the calibre of Joe Rich, Nuno from Odyssey and John Povah (Etnies TM) plus a few to give their opinions on the matter. It makes for interesting reading and is pretty relevant to the whole IPATH thing.

Nike and IPATH aside, I don't really see the need for a company to "put back into bmx", so long as they've got a good product. If a brand chooses as part of their marketing to put on events and support loads of riders then good luck to them, but in the end, it's the investment in making a better product, that'll win me over.

One thing that I see as a real positive about IPATH is that they have a green angle on the materials and manufacturing of their stuff - that's something that so far we don't have much of. Bmx might have it's share of environmentally minded, anti-consumerism, build-trails-on-a-farm-and-grow-your-own-food types, but there aren't so many companies that are willing to take the risk and put these kind of values out there. Maybe it'd be too unpopular, maybe they don't care, maybe it'd cost too much - who knows?

FBM etc do their veggie oil bus trips and Superstar have a "Nature Blog", but no one is really putting it out there as a feature of their products, so that's at least one positive to come out of an evil skate brand coming to steal your cash. Now I'm off to ride my bamboo bike.