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At 15, he's the world's CEO of 'fingerboards'
Published: November 8, 2008
ANDOVER — When Mike Schneider started fingerboarding in the fifth grade, everyone else was doing it.
All of his classmates were fooling around with these tiny skateboards that can be measured in millimeters, using their index and middle fingers to ride them and do tricks like Ollies and kickflips.
But while the trend died out in the mainstream shortly after, Schneider kept with it.
The 15-year-old went from spending hours practicing tricks to building his own boards and starting his own company on the Internet, becoming a top player in an underground fingerboarding community that reaches across the world.
If fingerboards are the miniature version of skateboards, then Schneider is the CEO of a miniature empire.
"I was good at it, so I just started out making boards, because I thought I could make them better, and people bought them," he said. "And it started getting bigger."
The Andover High School sophomore runs Flatface Fingerboards out of his family's Stirling Street home, selling fingerboards, parts, ramps and even T-shirts, stickers and other merchandise bearing his own company logo.
He has tutorial videos all over YouTube, showing off his moves to the 7,885 people who subscribe to them.
And today, he will hold the country's first open fingerboard event — Fingerboarding Rendezvous 5 — at the Knights of Columbus hall, Sutton Street, North Andover. He expects more than a hundred people from New England, New York and as far away as Texas and California to attend.
He has had teens from Germany and England come to past events. Fingerboarding has stayed relatively popular in Europe.
"I have a couple friends who still do it around here," Schneider said, "but you make friends everywhere."
Fingerboarding started as a hobby in the late 1970s, many of them made from materials as simple as cardboard, coffee stirrers and Hot Wheels axles.
They became collectible toys in the 1990s. Skateboarders even use them as 3-D model visual aids to understand potential tricks and maneuvers.
Web sites place Schneider, also an avid skateboarder, on a short list of the most influential people in fingerboarding.
"The basics of skateboarding are easier, but more dangerous," Schneider said. "Some tricks on fingerboards are actually kind of complicated. ... One guy managed to somehow break his pinky finger a few years ago."
He has his own workshop in the family's basement, where he makes boards, ramps, edges and benches. A vice attached to one table holds the fingerboard mold in place to shape the boards. Another Craftsman machines places the tiny bearings on the wheels. Each board is created using six thin strips of wood glued together.
It takes several hours to make a board.
"It's time consuming stuff," Schneider said.
He is also the U.S. distributor for the largest fingerboarding company in the world, Blackriver Ramps out of Germany. They used a photo of Schneider on the cover of their latest catalogue. He flew out to visit the company last year.
The entire Schneider household is dedicated to fingerboarding, with a skate park in the sunroom, and boxes of merchandise spread around its many rooms and hallways.
He has his own video camera, computers and editing equipment for his videos. They have cabinets full of granite used to make benches, tables full of ramps, and boxes and boxes of shirts.
Despite losing parts of their home to miniature skate parks and merchandise, his parents have been supportive, opening their house to fingerboarding events in the past.
Eric and Ellen Schneider said their son wanted to be a doctor until recently. Now it looks as if they has a business man on his hands.
"It's his passion," Eric Schneider said. "I go with it. ... It's just outgrown the house now."
