Enter Juice Clothing, Est 1993
Welcome to Flow:Blog post #3, in which I was going to brag about my second skate video production, The Juice Clothing Promo Video…
However, upon beginning to write, it turned out to be a lot about Juice the company itself, and I considered that that was a story worth sharing, due to the impact that Juice had on the Australian skate scene during the ‘90’s and early ‘00’s.
Juice Clothing was created in 1993 by one of my skate mates, Guy Miller, and one of his friends, Richard “Rat” Ramsay. According to Guy, the name actually was coined by another of our friends and one of the early team riders, all-terrain destroyer Bart Carnes, while they were bandying around names for the brand in a hazy bedroom.
Juice was one of the instigators in Australia to embrace and push what I believe to be the first of the most prominent & direct identifiers of “skate fashion” that has adorned the culture, that being baggy & oversized clothing. Although, I readily acknowledge that ravers and hip-hop crew were also rocking similar stuff concurrently, but to my memory it seemed like it was mostly attributed to skaters – I am indeed open to discussion on this topic!
Guy Miller, co-owner of Juice Clothing, an iconic skate brand of the ‘90’s & ‘00’s, doing some of the things he loves.
Outside of their love for skating, one of the main reasons for the duo starting the brand was that there was a severe lack of baggy or appropriate skate clothing available in Oz at the time, and what was imported was really expensive – shout out here to New Deal “Big Deal” pants.
Richard was the “business” guy, and Guy was the creative, given that he was studying design at college. He also became the team guy by default, as he was skating with many crew in the Sydney scene so he consequently had the contacts and subsequent outreach.
To be honest, I didn’t think much of it at the time of inception, mainly because I was blinded by everything from the USA, as that was where everything was happening and being driven from, so to my narrowminded way of thinking anything else seemed second rate (sorry Guy!). My journey with Juice began when Guy asked me to get them some clothing to “sample” from on one of my trips to the States. I brought back a few bits & pieces, including some Chapter 7 pants, a brand owned by then ex-Powell Peralta legend, and inventor of the McTwist, Mike McGill. As a side note, I actually worked at McGills skate shop during one of those trips, Mike was a super nice guy, and he also used to sell me Chapter 7 decks for cheap, thanks Mike!
Fast forward to 1995, and after Juice had gained enough momentum to warrant affording a team, Guy asked me to be the first rider. I had gotten over myself (a little bit) by this stage, and happily accepted. I was definitely stoked to have my first sponsor, after nine years of “serious” skating!
Bart Carnes was next up, then arguably the best all round skater Australia has produced, Jeff “Skunk” Williams got recruited. Following Jeff was Sydney’s street skating gatekeeper & pied piper, Michael “Davo” Davidson, after I asked him to join during a chance meeting at a session in the old Martin Place pit.
With Guy’s keen eye for talent, and need to drop the nepotism (heheh), over time he went on to put together one of the strongest skate teams in the southern hemisphere, including, but not only, Aaron Jenkin, Morgan Campbell, Ben Gauci, Tristan Walker, Monica Shaw, Dennis Durrant, Danny Gluskie, kiwi wizard Nick Lister, and a then unknown Chima Ferguson.
Richard “Rat” Ramsay, co-owner of Juice Clothing, keeping the dream alive on a solid one at G-Land in Indonesia in 2022.
Now, to rewind a little in skate sponsorship history.. During the late ‘80’s boom, which consisted predominantly of high-flying vert skating, some of Australia’s best of the time were being paid a little to do what they loved by companies such as Hardcore and Cockroach. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, skating all but died (not that I noticed as I was too enamoured by it) for several years as it morphed into street technicality and ~40mm wheels, which killed speed but aided & abetted the manoeuvring of the oversized rolling popsicle sticks in every which way. A new breed of skater was proliferating, and their natural terrain was the urban jungles of cities worldwide. This made virtually extinct the notion of needing anything purpose-built, making it more accessible than ever for anyone with concrete at their doorstep to get wild in the streets.
After the inception & growth of Juice during one of the more dire periods of the skate industry, Guy had always aspired to pay the team to do what they do best, and in time begun a new movement in paying the team accordingly, and much better than anyone had previously in the Great Southern Land. This arrangement forced other brands of the era to follow suit, and a new paradigm was set.
My first Juice Clothing contract. Guy always tried to maintain a sense of humour within it all and kept it fun.
Juice went on to pay cash for incentives, and then monthly retainers as things progressed.
There are undoubtedly numerous reasons, with timing being just one, of why Juice grew to become the powerhouse it transformed into from its garage beginnings, and so I’ll outline a few key moments here.
First & foremost, both Guy & Richard were heavily embedded in all of board-sports culture, sharing a love for skating, snowboarding & surfing, and due to this the Juice team roster eventually grew past its initial skate roots to include not only snowboarders and surfers, but also BMX’ers, Moto X riders, plus musicians & DJ’s. Don’t underestimate your passions!
Soon after Juice was started, after a session at Bondi one of Guy’s best mates ill-fatedly played a game of chicken in his car with Guy standing in a carpark. But when he went to hit the brake, his foot accidentally slipped to the accelerator instead and pinned Guy to the wall of the carpark, bouncing off his femur, and snapping it, while the lower ridge of the bull bar grabbed his calf muscle and not-so-surgically removed it. From this incident Guy underwent a long and arduous recovery process, and unfortunately wasn’t able to have his calf muscle replaced, which made skateboarding more difficult, but didn’t really hinder his snowboarding due to the boot & binding setup accommodating a more rigid lower leg & ankle action (Guy went on to shred on a snowboard!). During his rehabilitation time, Guy expended much of his time and pent-up energy in getting Juice to flourish by utilising his growing design skills, as well as spending time developing his photography while shooting the team as well as other skaters for the magazines, which was by far the most important medium of the era, as social media wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye of Zuckerberg or anyone else at this stage.
Davo was a big skate personality right about then, and he was often in the mags. He also happened to work in the city store of Surf, Dive’n’Ski, who were probably the biggest retailer in NSW of skateboards and associated products for a long time. Davo’s influence managed to get Juice into SDS, which in turn influenced other store owners everywhere to get involved, and I’d say that from this point the rest is history.
Team photo from the first Juice Clothing tour in 1998. From right to left: Michael “Davo” Davidson, Bart Carnes, Jeff “Skunk” Williams, myself (Ti Coleing), and Gordon Auchinachie, who was the editor of Australian Skateboarding Magazine, which helped to pay for the tour, and printed an article of it in the mag (of which Guy took all of the photos). Footage also appears in “V2”, the second Juice video.
From the burgeoning growth, Guy looked to expand and start a new brand, Illume Apparel, for Davo and an amazing upstart from Adelaide, Cale Nuske, plus stalwarts of the time Sid Tapia, Mick Yuen, Steve Tierney, and others - but that’s another story..! (Footage of the Illume crew is within Juice’s third video, Flick Of The Switch)
I went on to become the team manager, outside of choosing them, taking care of pretty much everything else for the seemingly ever-expanding network of riders.
With Juice’s continued huge popularity, the vultures had cottoned on, and began circling for a piece of it, and during the mid ‘00’s the knock-off market bootleggers started pumping out low quality copies into the marketplace. Then with a shift sideways in “street fashion”, Juice slowly faded away. This didn’t stop Guy’s dedication to the cause though, as he went on to found Kingpin Skate Supply with vert-skater extraordinaire and Juice video guest Dave “Spinout” Bodnar.
Stay tuned for all of the team’s video parts (including yours truly), among numerous other assorted crew, in my upcoming Juice video blog posts.
A selection of Juice ads, which ran in any or all of Australian Skateboarding Magazine, Slam, Crank, and maybe some others. Featuring a few of Ti’s ads, plus the main team at a point in time, with Dan Ivett, Michael “Davo” Davidson, Mark Harris, Morgan Campbell, and Jeff “Skunk” Williams.
Article authored by Ti Coleing, lifelong skateboarder, industry guy, and head coach & fun-provider at Flow:Skate.
We offer coaching for all levels, however our main focus is intermediate to advanced skaters looking to take their skills & mental fortitude to the next level.
