DC Shoes

DC Shoes was founded in 1993 in Carlsbad, California by Ken Block and Damon Way as one of the founding post-1990s American skate-shoe brands alongside Vans, Etnies, and Emerica. The brand was conceived from the outset as a deliberately-professional-skate-team-anchored alternative to the broader athletic-footwear category, with the original 1993 team including Danny Way (Damon's brother, the legendary X-Games gold medalist), Colin McKay, and Ken Block himself. The brand expanded substantially through the late 1990s and 2000s into one of the defining American-anchored skate-shoe brands. The DC Shoes vocabulary settled around several specific shoe models: the iconic DC Court Graffik (the brand's defining 1990s-era court-style skate shoe), the Lynx (a cup-sole skate variant), the DC Spartan (a 2000s-era mid-top skate shoe), the Ken Block signature programme (which extended into rally-racing-and-motorsports apparel after Block's broader career as a Gymkhana motorsports celebrity), various team-pro signature models, and the broader DC apparel programme. The brand has done long-running collaborations with skate-specialty retailers and the broader streetwear-specialty network. The brand is owned by Boardriders Inc. (the publicly-listed American action-sports conglomerate that also operates Quiksilver, Roxy, and Element — Boardriders is owned by Authentic Brands Group since 2023). DC Shoes operates approximately 200 retail flagship stores globally — anchored to California (the brand's home), plus extensive wholesale through skate-shop and athletic-footwear specialty retailers globally including the broader US, European, and Asian skate-specialty distribution network. The brand has been one of the defining post-1993 American-anchored skate-shoe brands.