The “DC” in DC Shoes stands for Droors Clothing.
The official story is that D and C were the first names of the first skaters sponsored by the company, Danny Way and Colin McKay. This is because Droors Clothing, now defunct, was spun out of DC Shoes and they had to cut any ties with the old company.
But the truth is DC stands for Droors Clothing. Ken Block, the co-founder, designed the DC logo we all know and love as an abbreviation for Droors Clothing. Ken told this to Tim Ferriss on his podcast recently:
Tim Ferriss: What does DC stand for?
Ken Block: DC actually stands for Droors Clothing. Almost every word or variation of the word in the English language is trademarked in some way or another. So as we were trying to work on names for the brand, we had all sorts of names that we submitted. Everything was taken.
DC was actually – I had made DC logos for Droors, because of Droors Clothing. It’s just an abbreviation – something you could make a simple logo and put on a sleeve. And so I knew that I could make logos and art for that. So we submitted that and it came back that, yeah, that was possible to do. So the crazy thing about trademarks, though, is even when you trademark something for one category, it doesn’t mean that it’s good for another category. So eventually we made snowboards. But the logo that we have looks kind of like Chanel, and Chanel actually has that trademarked for snowboards. So that’s why you never see our logo done the way it is on shoes on a snowboard. Really random bit of side legal information there.
Learn More
To learn more about the history of DC shoes, and how Ken Block and Damon Way went from a community college class room to a $100 000 000 company, read or article: DC Shoes: Lifestyle Brand Profile.
Photo by Bran Sodre from Pexels
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