Small Grants: Nouns Boards

NounsDAO Small Grants
1

TLDR

The beginning of a board brand.

Description

Who?

I’m April @april_xyz_ , a web3 enthusiast who has been exploring the NFT space for over a year now, yet to my detriment I only properly dove into the Nouns eco-system a couple of months ago. Since then I have become obsessed with how this dream of an open-source brand can succeed. Outside of this world my background is in PR & communications (in-house & agency side) having worked for many years in Amsterdam and London, before following my other passion (skiing) and moving to the other side of the world :jp:.

What?

The skateboard is a cult item around the world and a desirable object whether that be for skating itself or simply something you want to hang on your wall. You don’t need to skate, to want a board.

Small Grants funding would allow me to create two or three prototype boards (all different shapes) and test out different mechanisms for applying the Nouns branding & designs (screen printing/painting/lino).

We would document this whole process - creating a video of how we went from designing & producing the boards, right through to them being ridden and tested out. We would be capturing stills of all this too! So we can then push the boards out across social channels. All of this will allow us to get an understanding of whether there is an appetite for this idea to be further progressed so that we could make these boards available to the community and general public.

Not only would we be pushing for the content we create to be shared within the Nouns & the broader Nouns community, we would be reaching out to influencers within the NFT space. Would they create some content for us if we sent them a board to test out? Could we take one to NFT London and get content of the wider community testing out the boards?

How?

The boards are a premium hand-crafted product…they’re beautiful.

The decks are hand pressed and shaped here in Japan. Each deck is built from scratch and every manufacturing step is carefully checked and created under strict quality control. The final product is a sturdy skateboard deck made from the highest quality hard rock maple veneer.

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The big vision

In my mind I envision three potential avenues this project could develop into in parallel:

  1. Personalised boards - periodic ‘forging’ events, at which time Nouns holders can order a board (just the deck, or a full set up) and it will be personalised with their own Noun hand-painted on the bottom.
  2. Standard boards - regular limited-edition drops of boards that anyone can order. We would do small run batches of different deck designs and board shapes throughout the year.
  3. Artist collab boards - special drop events where we collab with artists from the Nouns eco-system to create their own deck design. Extremely limited-run. Paired with an NFT of the deck design.

But that’s not all…we could:

  • explore collabs with other Nouns sub-daos to create specially crafted boards for them
  • host skate events that incorporate NFT on-boarding at crypto and non-crypto events e.g. NFT NYC, SXSW, ETH Denver, Art Basel
  • collab with Gnars to get the boards ridden by their sponsored athletes
  • develop a broader board brand that spans all seasons…surf, snow etc

ASK: 1.5eth

Outputs:

  • Feedback. This would be the most important output, I want to understand the level of appetite inside & outside of the community for a product like this. In order to do this though I need to be able to show, not just the final product, but the craft that goes into the process.

  • Two (maybe three depending on the price of eth) board samples to test designs

    • Board one - noggles branding (standard board design)
    • Board two - a Noun painted deck (personalised board design)
    • Board three - blank board (I’m heading to NFT LDN and would love to get this board tagged by people from the ecosystem I meet there - creating as much content as I can at the same time of them engaging with the deck and sharing their opinion on it)

  • Content:

    • photography for social and to be used as potential future assets (e.g. website)
    • one video produced showing the whole process from design, production and finally to riding
    • influencer social content - reaching out to my personal network to get the boards featured on the Twitter feeds of well-followed individuals inside and outside of the NFT space

    n.b. the photo & video content would all be created by a professional photographer who focusses on the extreme sports industry

How much?

0.75eth = design and production of two (maybe three depending on the price of eth) full skateboard set ups (boards, wheels, trucks) & engage an artist to paint the personalised Noun deck

0.75eth = professional content creation - photography, videography & editing

If you have any questions you can reach me in discord april || pinklobster.eth#5026 or on Twitter @april_xyz_

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Eth address: 0x716448A774A891493b993da88fD4c988090E9A47

2 Likes
2

We need more skateboards. I personally would love to buy surfskate. Is it possible to make a surfskate?

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Yeah absolutely! There are a few decks that are ideal for surf skate and if you get some surf skate trucks and wheels on them then you’re good to go.
We could definitely produce some fully set up noggle surf skates :call_me_hand:

4

this is a fun idea! i think the prototype boards could make make sense with some solid marketing plans.

“we would be reaching out to influencers within the NFT space. Would they create some content for us if we sent them a board to test out?”

If this is your part of your marketing plan I think it would make sense to first align with an influencer and this propose with those details included. what if its an influencer that Nouns DAO feels is off-brand for community? what if all the influencers they ask say no? or want some eth?

Another potential use case for one, I could reach out to The Skatepark Project and see if they would be interested in auctioning one off for their foundation.

If part of the content strategy is having wwell-followed individuals from the NFT space in your network featuring the content, can we list them here?

What social channels would you be pushing this to?

I see the first output for you in this project is feedback, if your main focus is on the big vision of these becoming a larger scale project – if you are planning to do a larger proposal for the DAO, I’m not sure it would make sense without a very compelling business or marketing case.

Can we shift the ask to USDC so we can be confident with the output of either 2 or 3 boards? If we end up funding Small Grants can send the equivalent amount of ETH at that time

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5

Have you checked out Gnars DAO yet? They are a subdao that specializes in this arena. There have also been several board props in the past that you should check out and also chat with @Benbodhi. He did a crazy board design contest and has a million designs from so many talented artists. Maybe there could be a partnership of some kind there.

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6

Thanks for all the feedback Oni!

Regarding the influencers, at this point this really would just be me asking for favours from people I know in the space rather than any form of official partnership. In my mind the main output would really be the video that shows the craft of making the boards themselves and then them being ridden by ‘normal’ people. Any other content I would be able to create at this stage around them would be a bonus!

I do have a couple of people in mind, but I’d be hesitant to put them into a proposal as a certainty, or in any form of list. That really wouldn’t be the main objective of this 1.5eth. On reflection I perhaps shouldn’t have included that in the proposal at this stage.

The main social channels for the push at this stage would be Twitter, and YouTube for the video content. I’d then look to reach out to others that are running Nounish Instagram accounts to share our content their too. I don’t see there being a great deal of ROI in starting an independent Instagram at this stage when there are already a lot set up already trying to proliferate Nouns on the channel. Nor do I think it is where our target market would be at this early stage. But we would have a stack of content ready for when/if we decided to do so.

Feedback perhaps is the wrong word…appetite is perhaps more appropriate. I want to understand if and where the demand is. Would people just want to purchase a deck as a decorative item or would people want the complete set-up? Is there much interest from Nouns holders or it the majority or interest from the wider community who would be purchasing the standard board? Etc.

If I were to move forward and put a larger proposal to the DAO then of course a full marketing plan would be included in that. What I learn during this phase would have a big impact on what that plan looks like.

We could certainly shift to USDC. $2000 would allow me to create three boards and the content outlined.

Love the idea of reaching out to The Skatepark Project to auction one off…I’d definitely explore that with them.

There is so much to discuss around the points you’ve raised and I feel like I can’t really do it justice in a few words, but if you’re interested in learning more I’d love to jump in VC at some point. All of what you have mentioned is definitely front-and-centre of my mind. With the right marketing the idea really could take on a life of it’s own. I’d love to get it up and going and see where we can take it.

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7

Hi Andrew! Yeah I have been hanging around in Gnars for a bit and have made the guys over there aware of the concept. One idea I’d like to explore with them is some form of social campaign where one of the boards ‘travels’ and we get it in the hands of as many of their riders as possible.
If this proposal progresses and I’m able to get a couple of physical boards I’m going to try and connect with Gami at NFT LDN, as I know he is going to be attending, and see what we could do.
The board designs is something I’d like to chat with Ben about at some point too. The only thing is with all of these boards being made by hand we’re limited with how we can apply designs.

2 Likes
8

Very cool. I like what you’re doing and I think it would be worth you applying for the prop house that just opened and if you don’t get it, apply for a grant in the Gnars community and with small grants. Go for it!

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Thanks for your feedback Andrew, really appreciate it. I’ll shoot my shot with Prop House this round :crossed_fingers:t2:

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10

I’ll be watching out for it. You’ve got the early lead for my Nouncil vote. :smiley:

1 Like