Draft:Paul Schmitt, Skateboard Designer & Engineer

• Comment: Fails WP:ANYBIO, requires significant coverage in multiple independent secondary sources. All interviews with the individual are considered primary sources and not independent or reliable. Dan arndt (talk) 04:56, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

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Paul Schmitt, photo by Zach Moldof

As the author of this article I need to disclose that I have a personal and professional connection to Paul Schmitt. My work as Florida Division of Arts & Culture master artist in skateboard architecture and culture, my work as a journalist and anthropologist, and my work running a nonprofit have all placed me in direct dealings with Paul. I have done my best to write this article to professional standards, but I don't intend to misrepresent the ways that this article intersects with my personal and professional life.

Paul “Professor” Schmitt is a Floridian skateboarder, scientist, educator, and businessman. His innovative approach to the design and manufacturing of skateboard decks played a significant role in the creation of the contemporary 7 ply concave skateboard deck designed to pop, flip, and spin, as well as the invention of plastic slide rails that some skaters affix to their boards. Professor Schmitt’s sequence of evolving designs grew from the requests of professional skateboarders who needed their equipment to meet the rapidly-evolving demands of their cutting edge innovations. When skaters needed the board to flip and spin and respond to counterforce he tweaked the design of the deck to meet those demands; when skaters needed more leverage to pop the board higher Paul changed the design to give the boards more pop and snap; Paul is credited with putting the first nose on a skateboard, as well as the first contemporary popsicle shape. In many ways, today’s skateboards do what Paul shaped them to do. His intuitive approach to skateboard design incorporates a preponderance of factual data, an expert comprehension of physics, a mastery of woodworking, and a commitment to producing exactly what people want.

His wood shop has produced boards for many of the top pros and top companies since 1983, and his board design and manufacturing process can be found in most skateboard factories around the world. Paul still skates, and remains a singular pillar in skateboard culture’s capacity to accommodate and encourage so many people’s pursuit of self-actualization through creativity.

In 2020 Paul’s unique significance was formally recognized, and he was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame for his lifetime of achievements and contributions.

Early Life

Paul was born in 1963 in Washington DC, to parents Loraine and Charles Schmitt. His family moved from DC to Wisconsin, and in 1973 Paul started skating. Not long after, his family moved to Tampa, Florida in 1975. In 1978 he invented plastic skateboard rails after Alan Gelfand told him, “It would be cool if rails slid!”, and in 1980 he started experimenting and researching to create a process for producing skateboard decks. He attended Tampa Bay Vo Techhigh school, and for his senior project he was assigned the task of making cabinets for sailboats. This project–selected for it’s level of challenge after Paul had excelled for the duration of the woodworking program–required Paul to solve a lot of problems involving bent wood cabinets for bent wood boat hulls. He graduated in 1982, and in 1985 he moved to Costa Mesa, California to run the woodshop for 80s titan Vision Skateboards.

Education

High school - Tampa Bay Vo Tech

While at Tampa Bay Paul enrolled in wood shop. His teacher found him to be exceptionally proficient, and stuck him with the most difficult work study he could coordinate: making cabinets for sailboats. Thus, Paul set about learning to bend and curve wood in response to the contours of boats that navigate the Gulf of Mexico, and this would have a big impact on his skateboard design and production process.

Paul went “back to school” in the mid 2000s to learn Mastercam software.

Skateboarding

Paul started skating in 1973 in rural Wisconsin. After Paul moved to Tampa, there was a tremendous amount of skateboarding happening all around him. Paul became a regular at the Rainbow Wave skatepark, and although skating was popular at the time, Paul became part of a tight-knit community of Florida skaters that included Rodney Mullen, Alan Gelfand, Bruce Walker, Tim Payne, and others.

Rails

Paul started making rails from wood in 1978. The original design was intended to extend the life of the deck. But, later that year Paul started making rails from plastic in order to increase the board’s capacity to slide after Alan Gelfand had suggested the idea to him. Paul was able to source discarded material from a factory using UHMW plastic sheets for cutting boards. Paul cut, drilled, and routed the strips to create a product that allowed any skateboard owner to modify their board, and soon began selling them to skate shops around the world.

Boards

Paul started pressing boards with his mom's car in 1981. Paul formed his own molds from wood, glued and layered veneers in the molds, and drove his mom’s car up onto the molds to press them overnight. By 1983 Paul was selling boards he made himself, and by 1985 Paul was in California running Vision Skateboards’ wood shop– one of the biggest skateboard manufacturing facilities in history up to that point.

Skateivity

Skateivity is a word coined by Paul, and a central concept for his design process. The term is the combination of skate and creativity, and it highlights skateboarding’s capacity to engage creative thinking. Paul uses it to describe the ways that different individuals create their own distinct but mutually legible interpretations of how to use a skateboard.

Skateboard Industry, Schmitt Stixx, and New Deal

Schmitt Stixx & Vision

In 1978 Paul formed Schmitt Stixx. From 1978 to 1985 Paul ran his own skateboard business in Tampa, Florida supplying shops around the world with rails, and later supplying local skaters with boards he made in his early experimental woodshop. Paul later forfeited the Schmitt Stixx brand to a former business partner as a solution for a legal dispute.

From 1985-1990 Paul worked for Vision Skateboards running increasingly-large manufacturing facilities. In 1987 Paul founded a separate woodshop of his own to accommodate additional manufacturing for Schmitt Stixx–this would later come to be PS Stix. In 1990 Paul, Andy Howell, and Steve Douglas–2 of Vision’s top pros at the time–left Vision to start New Deal Skateboards along with Floridian pro skater Monty Nolder. At the same time, Paul worked out a partnership with Steve Rocco. At the time Rocco was another pro skater departing from Vision, and Paul agreed to manufacture boards and help him start his own company–World Industries–with Rodney Mullen, who was part of Paul’s original skate community in Florida.

PS Stix & Giant

By 1993 the continued growth of New Deal and the skateboard industry lead to the creation of Giant Distribution. Giant Distribution rapidly grew to supply products in every skateboard category, and introduced the skateboard video magazine 411.

In 2003 Paul started create-a-skate, a STEM/STEAM program to teach fundamentals of physics, and woodworking through the process of designing and creating a rideable skateboard.

In 2005 Giant Distribution ended.

In 2008 Paul moved his PS Stix facility to Tijuana, Mexico. Today the factory employs 40 people, and produces approximately 400,000 boards every year, using processes and techniques that Paul started creating, and refining, and perfecting, in Tampa Florida in the late 1970s with his first rails.

References

All information in this article sourced from interviews with Paul Schmitt between 2019 and 2024.