Robbin de Wit, our warehouse manager, is a well-known character in the Dutch skate scene and now a guest pro on Polar. During his lunch break, we sat down with him to talk about his work, his vision, and his thoughts – particularly about the video part that comes alongside his guest board and this interview. He also gave us deeper insights into his shift in perspective: from “chasing the dream” to building a career in the skate industry.
Hey Robbin! You were born in a city called Gouda. Is that where the cheese is from?
Yes, that's correct. I was born in Gouda.
I went to school there and I'm always making jokes that the cheese is from there.
Are there lots of factories around?
I'm not sure the cheese is still made there. They use it as a marketing thing. There's a lot of people coming to town to go to the cheese shops in the city. But you have more cities in Holland like that.
It was perfect for growing up skating, as it is so close to the bigger cities in South Holland. When I was 24, I moved to Rotterdam, but I was always traveling to Utrecht, Rotterdam and also to Amsterdam, from around age 13. Those three cities are like 20 minutes by train, so it was super central for skating. Also, this was the time when I met Sneep. From a young age, I started filming with him regularly.
I think your last part was released about two years ago, right?
Yeah, that was two years ago. That's funny, the part came out the day I started working for Polar. I was thinking about it last week. I think it was 28th of March or something.
I got told that besides working full-time as the warehouse manager at Polar, you still skate kind of every day. Is that true, and how do you handle it?
I think I skate about four days a week. Maybe that’s not every day, but I skate quite a lot still. Now with the obstacles in the warehouse, it's super easy.If you skate for 15 minutes, just by yourself, you already feel like “oh, I'm kind of skating”, you know? Because you're constantly skating 20 minutes, for example.
You were working in warehouses, or the industry, for many years. What would you say should someone know before starting to work in a warehouse?
Sometimes it's quieter, but when it's ‘go time’, you must count constantly. If you pick products the whole day, you count the whole day. At the end of the day, you are mentally exhausted. So, I think you need to be able to do the same tasks for the whole day.
Sometimes this gets hard, but then we switch. Then you do one day of scanning products, and then one day picking. I oversee all of this, making sure that everything goes great, but I also always pick or scan. I always try and manage the stress and keep everyone motivated and happy.
How many steps a day does a picker make during ‘go time’?
I don't know, I checked my phone. I think normally I walk like 15,000 steps during the working day. But that’s just my steps. It can be more if you are picking items.
A question for the brand’s fans, is there stock of Big Boys with the old embroidery patch in the warehouse? Yes or no?
[Laughs] Yes and no. Something might be coming up in the near future, keep an eye out.
Are the warehouse skate sessions you have only for people working there?
Yeah, mostly. Normally when we skate in the warehouse, it’s Luke, Ludo from the warehouse team and me. Rob [Maatman] also works at Keen and sometimes he stays after work too. On the weekend we invite people sometimes. But it’s always smaller crews. We don’t have that much to skate and
sometimes the warehouse is super full. At the moment we’re not really going in on the weekend to skate much. I was in the warehouse for six days a week during the filming of the video part, and I was a bit over the place to be honest. Five days of work and then one day at the weekend to film.
So the part is filmed entirely in the warehouse. How did this project come together?
Yes. The warehouse crew, some friends and Pontus all have guest clips. This part was Pontus' idea. It came together with the board I got given when they surprised me. That was a special day, the board surprise and a new ledge came to the warehouse.We started to film two weeks after the surprise and did eight or nine sessions for this part.
You probably had to get creative, build new things and come up with new ways to skate the same obstacles?
Yeah, at some point some stuff looked the same. In the beginning we moved stuff around a lot. Pallet up, pallet straight. We also got some old benches that we lit up at night, because I remembered PJ Ladd doing lines on two similar looking benches in ‘Really Sorry’. Just to make the warehouse look different, you know? The good thing about it is that I sometimes want to do tricks, but never really found the spot for it. And now I could build it. We tried a lot of options and I'm super happy with it. I hope people will like it.
The part is filmed during the time that we were shipping out of the Winter 24 collection. So you can see the warehouse is fuller in some clips than in others.
Pontus calls you “The Warehouse King”. I mean you did a whole career as a street skater, being AM for many years, and it’s just insanely hard to turn pro. Now you got a board and then got the opportunity to underline why you got it.
That’s true. I wanted to show people that it’s not only because of my work in the warehouse, but because of my skating. When I started working here, I was skating for Almost and then Pontus always gave me shit about it, “just get a real board.” At first, I wanted to separate things a bit. Like, “this is my skating and that is my work.” But at some point, I became so involved with the brand. Almost helped me a lot over the years, but it never really happened, so I'd rather skate a Polar board. I just got boards in the past and I was never really thinking that I would ever get a guest board or anything like that. They did a good job keeping it a secret.
You were sponsored throughout those earlier years, traveling a lot all over Europe and the US too. In the Dutch scene, you’ve got the status of a veteran. What was the point where you decided to choose a different path than what people call “chasing the dream” and focus on a job in the industry instead?
I definitely tried it. When I was 17, I only had a shop sponsor. Later, I first got sponsored by DC as Holland flow, and then later by Girl, Royal and so on. I went to the US, but didn't have the really warm welcome I was hoping for. I changed my ticket, flew back after two weeks and was like, “this is not really for me”. I still wanted a career, but I think I just wanted to focus on my own projects in Europe, my crew with Sneep. I even went back to working four days a week pretty fast. It just was not my thing. I went back there for another trip that was really fun, but that was more of a skate-cation vibe.
I mean, we are talking about a time when American brands mostly had one European rider in their team and if that spot was taken it was just insanely hard to get in the spotlight. A very hard time for European skaters.
Yes, also how I am personally. I'm a quiet person and in a big group I'm more the outside guy, and I think sometimes maybe that also doesn't work. But that's how I am and I don't want to change it. It’s fine, I tried.
I think this is a natural transition from chasing a career in skating to working in the industry. Some people just stick to their careers, don’t want to let it go and in their late 30s, they got lucky if they found a spot somehow.
That's true. Also, I think every part I ever filmed I was always working at the same time. I think during the times that I was working a bit less, then I was less productive. You always say, “next day, next week”. We always went out skating at the end of the week, and I always went to film something or just have fun. That’s how it was for years, and it still is.
