History of Ken Block and DC Shoes

Being a big fan of Ken Block and of DC Shoes, I decided to try and track down some information on him and how he came about owning one of the coolest sports brands on the planet. Even his wiki page doesn't have a lot of information on how it all happened so I thought it best to collate some information.

Ken Block was born November 21, 1967, in Long Beach, California where it's unknown if he immediately strapped to a skateboard and pushed down a big hill. 23 years later Ken meets Damon Ray at college (I can't find what he was studying) where the two of them start selling clothes under the name Eightball. By 1993 They've formed Droors Clothing (DC) and created snowboarder trousers that look like jeans (they only seemed to get popular in the UK over the few years).

The next few years look pretty action packed while they formed Circus Distribution and Dub Outerwear and start to sign up extreme sports stars to their cause. It takes them until 1994 to actually make a shoe with first the Danny Way signature model and then the Colin McKay signature.

After this the world really opens up to DC Shoes with sponsorship of athletes in BMX, skateboarding, snow sports and rally while also introducing a girls range. All of this activity made them attractive to Quicksilver who snapped them up into their Global empire.

As for Ken, well he pretty much got involved with every sport that the company sponsored - he is the rockstar of the sports world. His most famous activity must be his gymkhana videos in his rally spec Subaru Imprezas. In a strange shift in allegiances he now drives for Ford and did his Gymkhana 3 video in a Ford Fiesta!

As an aside, we in the UK still can't buy the DC Pro Spec 2.0 rally spec shoes!!!

Virgin Atlantic TV Ad Shoes

SPOTTED: Lots of people have been talking about the new TV advert from Virgin Atlantic and wondering where they got the shoes from. The whole advert looks like it might be part of a James Bond film as it's so glamorous and brings us back to the glory days of flying. This seems to be something that Richard Branson and the team are very good at!

So....where can we find the shoes from the ad? After a rummage around Virgin's Facebook page we found a link to the shoes at Schuh - Vigin TV ad shoes