Sporting goods retailer Sport Chek is venturing into skateboard territory.
In the spring, the retailer, which operates under Canadian Tire-owned FGL Sports, started selling Quiksilver, a surf and skateboard apparel brand, and its sister brand Roxy. To promote the partnership, Sport Chek and Quiksilver are hosting 
skateboarding legend Tony Hawk on a three-city tour (Calgary, WInnipeg, Toronto) with skateboarding demos and a meet-and-greet with fans at select Sport Chek stores. The tour wraps up July 18.
“More and more young people are into urban lifestyle sports and we needed to address this target audience,” Frederick Lecoq, vice-president of marketing and e-commerce, FGL Sports Ltd., told Marketing. “It’s just [part] of our business to target an audience that we were not talking to before and we’ve been able to connect now through the distribution of Quiksilver and Roxy in our stores.”
In terms of promoting the tour, Lecoq said the buzz is travelling on its own in social media channels. A video announcing the Tony Hawk tour has nearly 60,000 views.
“When we launched the Quiksilver and Roxy lineup, we realized it was kind of tricky for us to connect with the audience in a traditional way, the way we used to do retail,” Lecoq. “The people who are buying [these brands] don’t read flyers, so the only way we could connect with them was through digital and social media channels.”
