By Hannah Marszalek
Shirts with infinite pictures of Barack Obama. Phrases like “I survived Toyotathon.” Skateboarding videos. Chimpanzees. All of these are mainstays on Chimpskate’s Instagram, a clothing company created by sophomore marketing major Asher Baum.
With over 14,000 Instagram followers, Chimpskate has amassed a substantial fanbase less than a year after its creation.
Baum launched Chimpskate in November of 2020 after having an epiphany during a FaceTime call with his best friend, he said. They found a funny shirt they wanted to buy but were disappointed by how overpriced it was.
“I had already been doing Photoshop for maybe three, three and a half years at that point, and I was like, ‘I’ll just make it myself and we can do it through Custom Ink and it’ll be like 20 bucks,’” Baum said. “I made that really quickly, and then I thought, ‘why not just start making more?’”
Enter Chimpskate. It originally sold t-shirts with witty sayings and Gen Z humor, but it has expanded to include signs, tapestries, drawstring bags and more.
Even though he’s not a great skater, he said, Baum wanted Chimpskate to be targeted at skaters — even more so with skating becoming popular again. Chimpskate sponsors three local skateboarders, Ja’lil Rosado, Mario Callner-DeRosa and Kevin Skelly.
Skelly, a freshman at Anne Arundel Community College, has been skating for about seven years. As the latest addition to Chimpskate’s team, he said he’s looking forward to when Baum posts a video compiling clips of each of them doing various skate tricks.
“That’s always been one of my favorite parts about skating, just getting clips with your friends,” Skelly said. “There’s not much that makes you feel more productive than that.”
Callner-DeRosa, a sophomore mechanical engineering major at UMD who has been skating for a little over two years, was Chimpskate’s first sponsored skater. He is in charge of the team, he said, and provides Baum with input on shirt designs and helps him do research for future products.
Callner-DeRosa said that while it can be difficult to organize the team and get all of them together to film videos for Chimpskate, he enjoys skating alongside them.
“You feed off each other’s energy. When you see someone trying a trick that’s maybe a little scary, it makes you more likely to try your own cool stuff,” Callner-DeRosa said, “It’s cool to watch other people get that satisfaction when they land a trick.”
Chimpskate’s goal is to be a community — not just a t-shirt brand, Baum said.
“This brand for me is for the people, that’s been my philosophy on it since it started,” he said, “I want it to be for people who enjoy meme culture and find what I find funny.”
From November 2020 — when the company launched — through May 2021, Baum was unimpressed with Chimpskate’s success. But after posting videos on TikTok advertising his products, he received a flood of orders on the website.
“That was when I realized the power of TikTok, because honestly, it blew me up,” Baum said.
Baum also cites his confident attitude and the fact that he is never satisfied as reasons for his success. He almost gave up after continuously receiving negative comments on his Instagram page towards the beginning of Chimpskate’s creation, he said, but chose not to listen to them because he had faith in his vision.
“I always knew that this was going to succeed,” Baum said, “When I would first post Chimpskate stuff, I had people on my personal Instagram telling me it was never going to work, but I just told myself it wasn’t my problem.”
Baum said he most looks forward to seeing more people he doesn’t know wearing his clothing. The most surreal moment for him so far was when Ludwig Ahgren, a popular livestreamer on Twitch, wore one of his shirts during a livestream.
“If you’re gonna start something, start it, and it’ll work out as long as you have enough passion about it,” Baum said, “Even if it’s a slow burn, it’ll come around.”
Eoinn Maguire, Asher Baum, Ja’lil Rosado and Ben Hoffman stand in front of a highway overpass. Photo courtesy of Jonathin Zheng.