About Us

This site is created and managed by Shannon Grendahl, the original creator/inventor of Scribe Industries.  Shannon Grendahl founded Scribe Industries in Minneapolis, MN along with Jason Roy and Steve Thomas.  This intro is written by Shannon Grendahl.

In 1992 we began experimenting with different materials we could use to modify our Rollerblade skates to allow us to grind objets the way we could with skateboards.   We knew  we could do some amazing tricks not possible with skateboards considering the limitations skateboards had.  The main problem we faced was that the skates of the time were not designed for such performance.   Attempting even basic grinds with the skates and wheels of the day came with severe risk of injury.  Try doing a rail with Rollerblade Lightnings and four 88A 72mm wheels.   We did and we got hurt, badly.  We soon realized that we needed to thicken the part of the frame that grinds along edges to get a smooth slide, and we needed harder wheels in the center so we didn’t hang up.  Luckily, the trend in skateboard wheels at the time was to have low-profile wheels that were thin.  Slow, technical tricks were the trend of the time in skateboarding and the wheels being made for skateboards fit perfectly within the Rollerblade frame.  Anti-rocker was a natural progression thanks to the skateboarding trends of the day.  This left us with only needing to find a solution to the frame thickness in order to achieve smooth grinds.  My father had a metal-working shop nearby and the machinery needed to make the prototypes for our first grindplates.  We looked up plastic manufacturers in the area and went to visit a few to look into available materials.  The first one we went to gave us samples of many materials to work with.   I think the owner of the plastic company found it funny to see a few teenagers coming in the door saying we need to learn about plastics because we are starting a company and looking to sell products around the world.  Much like seeing kids with a lemonade stand telling you that they were looking to corner the market on lemonade stands in the state.  He gave us many types of materials we began working with.

We made prototypes from several plastics, including nylon, polycarbonate, and polyethylene.  We decided that UHMW (ultra-high-molecular-weight) polyethylene composite worked the best.  It wore slowly, wasn’t brittle, and was flexible enough not to hang up on cracks.  As we developed prototypes, we realized that the thicker they are, the easier they slide across rough surfaces and crevices.  An angle was needed on the side so that the grind plates didn’t touch the ground when you were turning., otherwise, your foot would shoot out.  We also needed to counter-sink the holes so that you wouldn’t need new bolts or hardware to attach the grind plates.  Lastly, we had to make slotted holes for mounting on different frame sizes.  At this point, we began making grind plates for some of our new friends.  Steve and I had recently met John Robinson, John Schmit, Shane Nelson, Nate Strandburg, Jordan O’Brien, Joe Sansby, and Brian Lecy.  We gave them some of our grind plates to test.   Our group of friends skated with technology years ahead of the rest of the market for over a year and we learned to do many tricks which were ahead of their time.  Soon, everyone saw what we could do with our hardware and wanted grind plates for their skates.  The rest is history.  

We started a company and called it Scribe Industries.  I wanted a name that was one syllable.  It had to be simple.  I wanted there to be less than 6 letters in the name.  I also wanted a word that sounded familiar to people but wasn’t definable to most people.  I also wanted a name that had a dual-meaning.  Steve and I were discussing the elements I wanted in the name and he grabbed a dictionary and said “why don’t we look through this”?  I thought that was a great idea.  I knew we’d find a name we’d both agree on within an hour or so.  He opened it up to the middle of the book, looked up at me and said “Scribe”.  I said “Yep that’s it”.  He agreed and it was that simple.  The first word he looked at on the first page he opened to was the perfect word.  Call it divine intervention if you will, but what are the odds of that?  Scribe fit all those parameters and a Scribe is a person who writes.  We knew we were writing the future of a sport, the name was perfect.

Within two years, we secured OEM contracts with Rollerblade Inc. and Kryptonics Inc.  We also secured international distributors.  Our products were being sold worldwide on several different continents.  We had formed a joint venture with GEM Inc (owned by Mark Bloom) whereby Scribe Industries and GEM partook in filling orders for our retailers and distributors.  Scribe and GEM owned shares in the joint venture, but Scribe’s partners never gave up rights to ownership of Scribe or any of our intellectual property.  By 1995 our domestic sales were in the millions, along with OEM contracts worth more than our domestic sales.  We had also secured international distributorships worth nearly the equivalent of our domestic sales.   With profit margins ranging from 50%-80% we were doing quite well for being 20 and  21 years of age.

In 1997 there were purchase offers for Scribe worth multiples of annual gross revenues.  Our investor made a fraudulent claim to the Secretary of State that he had bought out the partners of Scribe  (Such a purchase never happened).  We have a copy of the document he presented to the state and presented it in the ensuing court depositions.  One day we went to our office only to find the locks had been changed.  We went to our bank to see our names had been removed from our bank account.  We then discovered we had been illegally removed from ownership of our own company.  I (Shannon Grendahl) bought out the majority of Steve’s shares giving me majority ownership and sole right to the intellectual property of Scribe (including Harvesting the Crust which we paid Throne Productions to produce for us).  I launched a lawsuit to recover our rights of ownership and sue for damages, including complete ownership of the joint venture.  I had evidence of bulk transfers and fraudulent conveyances by GEM worth  more than GEM’s shares in the joint venture, which gave standing to sue for damages in excess of the material value of the JV.   Unfortunately, GEM destroyed the reputation and image of Scribe in short order, lost all orders and contracts, and bankrupted the company.   At this point the attorneys lost confidence in the ability to recover damages.

In 2009 Dan Fabiano (“Con-Artist” brand owner) produced products with our Scribe logos for a few years.  This “Scribe” ran from 2009 until 2015, but never really grew to its full potential since it lacked the fundamentals which made Scribe the iconic brand of the 90’s.  This “Scribe” had no actual connection to the original and closed in 2016. The logos used by this “Scribe” entered the public domain in 2019, and we began producing them in 2021, along with the actual Scribe logos we created since most people thought it was a continuation of the original Scribe.

In 2021 Scribe was legally re-released by the founder with products for sale worldwide.  This time we are bringing back abandoned logos from the sport’s early days, such as Senate, FR, Fiction, Videogroove, Cozmo, Rise Above, Third World, Thirty-Fifth Ave, Daily Bread Magazine, Box Magazine, and others.  Most of these logos haven’t been available on clothing for over 20 years.  When a logo hasn’t been used in trade for three years, it becomes an abandoned logo and can be appropriated by another company.  Therefore, we are bringing back our iterations of these iconic logos so that the fans may have articles of clothing with logos from their favorite brands from the beginning of the sport.