ABOUT MURKSLI
Skateboarding has had a significant impact on my life. Since I've always tried to do things myself, I've dreamt of making my own skateboard decks for a long time. Proper skateboard decks were quite inaccessible in late '90s in Slovenia, and acquiring a new pro deck felt like finding the Holy Grail, especially in the environment where we grew up. In our town, there was no skatepark, and I remember hitchhiking to the skatepark while skipping school and fooling around with my best friends. Those were the times when we downloaded skate films through IRC, and CKY2K was the best thing alongside Flip Sorry.
Later in life, my college notebooks were filled with ideas and sketches of creating a mold and making a board. Too bad I was studying history at the time. I dropped out, thinking of creating my own brand of decks with locally grown maple wood. 'What could go wrong?' I thought as a 21-year-old father of a newborn. I began working shifts in factories to earn a living, and the rest of my resources went into prototype molds, wood, hardware, and tools. Looking back on those times from today's perspective, I see myself as somewhat of a guerrilla engineer, learning on the go. Around 2009, I achieved my first success at my girlfriend's (now wife) house. Her parents allowed me to use a space in their house for experimenting with molds and wood.
I built myself a small workshop there and spent most of my time and money in it. I remember working afternoon shifts in a chemical factory, and when I came home, I spent half of the nights in the workshop, pressing longboards and creating negatives for new molds. One night, I ran out of wood, and had to finish a part of the negative for the casted mold. I tore down a massive wooden door and chopped it into planks. Things got a little crazy, and everybody started asking me what I was 'murkseln' all the time (it's a dialect word that means doing something with some bad habits - hehe). Verb murkseln is German and is used in our dialect. We were living near the Austrian border in northern Slovenia, in Koroška. From that point on, I got the name Murksli. I was constantly upcycling every material I saw potentially useful for my projects.
As the Murksli brand was born in 2010, things really started to go well. I was very lucky to have Bros before Pros (fb/brosbeforepros), Neja and Grega as friends (thekindfolk.org). We worked closely together to introduce Murksli decks to the world. Finally, things began to grow and I was able to invest in a lot of tools. I found myself starting to love the process of creating skateboards and longboards even more than riding them.
From 2012, things really started to take off. Miha and Nina from Multipraktik introduced me to the Orto Longboard project, which rented out longboards for free in urban cafes across Slovenia. They created a fantastic Murksli webshop, and we became great business partners. It was a wonderful era for Murksli, and as the years went by, I started getting involved in more projects.
As Murksli, I was involved in developing a prototype for an electric longboard, which was the first one to reach speeds of over 100 km/h and was ridden by Misho Erban. Collaboration with architects earned me a spot in the exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2016 - 'Home at Arsenale,' curated by the library on home and dwelling.
Respective skateboarding photographer Urban Cerjak, who invented the 'Sapindalografija' process of developing analog photos on a sheet of veneer saw a connection with his analog prints and Murksli decks. I carry on this process to create boards from it. We became really good friends and are still working together.
Creativity never left my mind, even when things went quiet on the outside. I never saw Murksli as a production factory, and I thought about that a lot. When you have standardized processes, it's really hard to get creative with an established production line. I love taking the time to create a product, to ponder the problems that come with developing a prototype, and to make sense out of it.
Decision on going back to college when my first kid was almost 10 years old was a great thing. I slowed down Murksli as an active brand and earned a degree in design engineering, and it was the best time I ever spent studying something that kept me awake and interested all the time.
I also love helping enthusiasts build up a startup project and develop a prototype. As the years went by, my workshop moved, expanded a little (and so did I, hehe), and some of the guests and collaborators became great friends, like Bixie and Polypop. I relish the process of building up, developing, testing, and tackling all the problems that pile up when you miss something tiny. There's chaos when you start turning ideas into reality, and money goes down the drain. Is it worth it? I don't know, and nobody does unless you try to make it happen.
You won't find mass production in my workshop. The process of making a board has to take its time. If you're in a hurry, you probably won't be happy with Murksli because I don't hold any stock. If you're considering ordering one, you have to understand that it takes about two weeks to make it ready for shipment.
