Geoff Rowley

Geoffrey Joseph Rowley Jr. (born 6 June 1976) is an English professional skateboarder, former co-owner of Flip Skateboards and owner of the Civilware Service Corporation.

Rowley started skateboarding around 1989 in his home city of Liverpool.

He would skate for the course of entire days, while his friends would only skate for relatively short periods.

In an interview for the UK magazine Rad, Rowley stated that he first became interested in skateboarding because "A lot of people in my school were into skating and I became interested through them."

In the same interview, Rowley explained that his parents were both supportive of his skating, although his father was "not into me sitting around the house all day."

At the time of the interview, Rowley was sponsored by Gullwing, Siesta, Airwalk, and Jeremy.

In 1994, Rowley moved to Huntington Beach, California, United States with fellow Flip team riders, Tom Penny, Rune Glifberg and Andy Scott.

He received Thrasher Magazine "Skater of the Year" award in 2000.

In 2012, Rowley reflected upon the company's move to the US:

We were a totally new company moving to a foreign country, and, ah, I don't we kind of expected it to go "boom", and just fly right in.

We had no expectations; we didn't really know that many people, and we actually just wanted to skate, really.

Because we grew up dreaming of living in California and getting to wake up every day and go out and skate without it raining.

Ah, and I think that was something that, like, all of the guys, when we first moved here, you know, Rune [Glifberg] and Tom [Penny], that was something that, you couldn't hold us back in that respect.

I'd just turned eighteen, Tom was seventeen, ah, neither of us had lived away from home, you know.

We'd moved to a foreign country where we didn't know anybody.

Nobody.

Ah, we had no money, we didn't have any cars, ah, alls we had was the board that we had; we couldn't go breaking those.

we couldn't afford to, at the time, starting a company, we couldn't afford to run through ten boards a month ... Like myself, personally, I skated a lot with Ed [Templeton], like, every day, because he lived, like, right across the road from me.

After two weeks in California, Rowley was featured on the cover of TransWorld Skateboard magazine—he subsequently decided to relocate to the American state.

In regards to his first TransWorld cover, Rowley explained in 2012:

I'd been in the States for, like, two weeks, and I was at TransWorld—we'd been to visit TransWorld for the first time.

And Swift just wanted to go shoot—he needed to shoot a Gullwing [truck company].

He said, "You ride for Gullwing, right?"

I'm like, "Yeah, I think so ... I got free trucks through the distributor in Britain ... I mean, do I ride for them? I don't, I don't know."

"Do you wanna go skate?"

And I went skating with them, and then they put it on the cover of the mag.

In a 2013 interview, Rowley provided further insight into his adolescence, explaining that skateboarding culture was not accepted during his time in Liverpool and it was during the 1980s that the culture became prominent in the city.

However, even following the rise in prominence, skateboarding products were difficult to purchase:

The only place that actually sold skateboards in Liverpool at that time was a record shop.

It was called Probe Records.

When I went in there for the first time they had two boards on the wall, a Skull Skates "Dead Guys" and a Toxic team model.

I think they had two sets of wheels and two sets of trucks.

They had no griptape and one set of bolts.

That was my first memory of going into a skateshop [laughs].

I rode my first complete with no griptape for a month or so until Probe got some grip back in stock.

Rowley's first sponsor was Deathbox Skateboards, a company that was later renamed "Flip Skateboards"—at this time, Rowley was also riding for Gullwing.

In a "Check Out" segment for the Transworld Skateboarding magazine, Deathbox founder, Jeremy Fox, wrote:

Technical, burly, stylish, quiet, punker, street urchin: these are the descriptions that neatly fit young Geoff Rowley ... He doesn't care about music or anything outside of skateboarding.

Although Geoff is from Liverpool (home of the Beatles, by the way) and looks like a rough kid, he is actually one of the least attitude-infested skaters out there today.

Geoff is starting to send out 'waves' across Europe, and when Deathbox ships him over to the US, these waves will certainly come over with him.