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UPDATED: Nov. 16, 2021 at 3:52 p.m.

Since Pierce Brothers started skateboarding in Syracuse at 11 years old, he’s watched skate shops open and close over and over again. He’s now one of five co-owners of Flower Skate Shop, which will celebrate its one-year anniversary next month.

“There have been skate shops in Syracuse in the past — mall stores, that kind of thing. But we really wanted to start something that would kind of come from people that have grown up in Syracuse,” Brothers said. “So having a store, it’s our way of involving ourselves in a more substantial way in the community.”

Flower Skate Shop opened its doors on Oct. 17, 2020, to a skate scene that had a handful of skateparks, a DIY park at Ormand Spencer Park and an indoor park at Black Mamba skatepark. But a major piece of that scene that the skaters of Syracuse were missing was a consistent skate store, and Flower Skate Shop fills that missing piece.

The co-owners of Flower Skate Shop have facilitated collaborations at music festivals and skateboarding events across upstate New York.
Courtesy of Drew Shoup

The shop hosts a variety of events in the community such as rail jams — skating and snowboarding events paired with art and music shows at Snow Ridge Ski Resort. The shop also sponsored A Lovely Time, a music and arts festival, this summer. For co-owner Drew Shoup, the store has been a perfect place to base events around.

“Even when we didn’t have the shop, we would kind of do events or fundraisers for the DIY spot (Ormand Spencer Park),” Shoup said. “But it’s just a lot easier when you have a home base to set all of that stuff off from.”

All the owners of the store have been in or around the skate scene in Syracuse for years. John More, another co-owner, used to work in a skateshop before Flower Skate Shop. While that skateshop ultimately wasn’t successful, it turned out to be the foundation for Flower.

When the store More previously worked at closed about two years ago, he got in touch with Shoup to buy the leftover display and skateboard equipment, which ended up being the first step in opening Flower, More said.

“We closed around 2018, 2019,” More said. “I got the opportunity to take all the display stuff out of there and actually hit (Shoup) up. I’m like ‘Yo, you want to buy all this sh*t?’ Then two years later, we tossed ideas around, and this is step one.”

What came next was purchasing a quaint space in the McCarthy Building on South Salina Street. Similar to many start-ups, Flower started with a small inventory, including a handful of decks and its own branded merchandise, More said.

Now the store is filled with boards from a number of businesses and racks of clothing from both national and local brands. Shoup, who designs most of Flower’s brand merchandise, said the shop sells products by both well-known and smaller brands, and he appreciates that the shop provides a platform for the less-known brands.

Syracuse’s skateboarding community appreciates the owners of Flower Skate Shop because they are established skateboarders themselves.
Courtesy of Drew Shoup

“Pretty much every brand that we carry, there’s like some relationship there,” Shoup said. “Because we have some brands that are very well known, and then we have some brands that are super sick that people might not have heard of yet. And it’s cool to be able to bring those homies in and have people buy it.”

But clothes and boards are not all Flower brings to the community. Brothers, More and Shoup, along with the other co-owners Charlie Giancola and Eli Carey, bring a sense of community to the skate scene, Syracuse skater Thomas Ward III said.

“They’re building something … that’s beyond profit,” Ward III said. “They’re building their own community.”

When it comes to fashion, the shop is also making an impact around the Syracuse skate scene. At skateparks around the city, people are wearing Flower brand clothing.

“On the fashion side of things, what’s really cool is we make our own gear to add,” Shoup said. “I’ve seen a ton of people that’ve been repping that super hard.”

Ward, who works as both a chef and an artist, has his T-shirt designs sold at the shop. He has been in the skate scene for 30 years so he was able to watch the shop blossom before his eyes.

The owners being a part of the Syracuse skate scene was a big deal for Ward and other skaters, who have yet to have a local store around for a long time, he said.

“There is no other shop in Syracuse to go to … because they actually skateboard,” Ward said. “And you can go out and see them skateboarding in the street. You can go skating with them, you get to talk to them. They’re part of the scene.”

Flower Skate doesn’t want to stop growing now, though. It plans on adding both an art marketplace and a mini-bowl to skate on to the next store that it opens. This would capitalize on the relationship between skaters and artists, Shoup said.

The shop will also continue its local involvement with a skate jam at Snow Ridge on Oct. 2 and an event partnering with Forum Barber shop on Oct. 16 as it continues its involvement with the skate scene and people of Syracuse who supported the shop from the start.

“It’s more rewarding,” More said, “seeing it from nothing to how we are now.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, John More’ name was misspelled. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on September 19, 2021 at 11:09 pm