Episode Summary
On this episode of Utah Business Spotlight, host Peter Anthony sits down with Russ Warner, co-founder of Ghost Boards, to break down how a Utah-built custom acrylic longboard company turned a single piece of scrap acrylic into a fully realized lifestyle brand. Russ Warner explains why memorable products are not built for mass production, they are built from personal obsession, real customer feedback, and intentional design that turns every board into a conversation starter inside a home, an office, or a corporate lobby.
Russ Warner walks Peter Anthony through the Ghost Boards origin story, business partner Brent salvaged a piece of scrap acrylic at a stage-build factory, threw trucks and wheels on it, and handed it to his eleven-year-old son. The board rolled into Russ Warner's driveway and burned a permanent silhouette into the summer grass. That moment, combined with Russ Warner's lifelong obsession with seeing through everything from clear cars to clear speakers, became the design thesis behind Ghost Boards. Today every board is built as functional art on wheels, recessed LED lighting, hand-picked trucks and bearings, custom shapes including swords, guitars, the Netflix N, and the Pizza Hut roof line.
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Contact UsI didn't want to be the fidget spinner, something that went viral and then dies. How do you become a lifestyle product instead?
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The conversation moves into experiential product marketing. Peter Anthony and Russ Warner agree marketing is going full circle, the COVID-era over-pivot to all-digital is reversing, and people want to meet, shake hands, and fall in love with the people who love what they love. Russ Warner explains why Ghost Boards intentionally builds products that interrupt the scroll, prompt the question 'where can I get one,' and turn into trophies, corporate gifts, and statement pieces for offices instead of disposable swag. Peter Anthony shares the QR-code-on-swag idea Ghost Boards is now running with, putting scan-me-for-something-free codes on physical merch to bridge real-world brand contact with digital follow-up.
The brand discussion gets sharp. Russ Warner explains why the Ghost Boards demographic broke every category assumption, typical skate decks sell to nine-to-twenty-five-year-old males, while Ghost Boards sells two-year-olds through sixty-year-olds and is sixty-eight percent female, driven by pink trucks, purple wheels, butterflies, mermaids, and dragons instead of skulls. Peter Anthony reframes it for the audience, the difference between a product and a brand is that a brand has clarity. Everyone can picture exactly what a Ghost Boards sandwich shop or Ghost Boards gym would look like. Most companies have an idea. Russ Warner built a brand.
The episode closes with the operator truth most founders never see. Russ Warner pulls back the curtain on bootstrapping Ghost Boards, five-figure American Express balances on wheels and bearings, payroll pressure, the jump from one-board break-even as a hobby to thousand-board break-even as a real company, and paying himself and Brent only five dollars per board to keep variable cost discipline locked in. Peter Anthony shares a reciprocity hack, a card with the prospect's own photo, a Starbucks gift card, and brownies for their kids, that converted seventeen of twenty-five high-ticket prospects. Order custom Ghost Boards at ghostboards.com starting around seventy-nine dollars for small boards and one-hundred-ninety-nine dollars for forty-inch decks. Utah Business Spotlight is produced by The INCubator AI Marketing Agency and filmed in Sandy, Utah.
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