RAJ MEHRA Mehrathon Trading. Raj Mehra is the owner of Mehrothon Trading in Montreal, Que. and the Canadian distributor for Baker Bogs. The recent addition of Baker Skate- boards to Mehrathon’s lineup spells good things for one of Canada’s fastest growing distributors. —Mike Prangnell. What does Baker Skateboards bring to the table?- Baker was de?nitely a missing piece of the puzzle. Since we started, we’ve wanted that brand. Mon-etarily, it will mean more sales, but nothing drastic. Baker is an image brand. It goes perfectly with the Baker Boys lineup we already do: Deathwish and Shake lunt. We are a smaller distributor and a brand like Baker helps strengthen and elevate all the other brands we carry. in turn it will help bring more cred-ible brands into our business plan.

What is the state of skateboard hardgoods sales in Canada?
2011 sales were down for us. l believe it was a combination of a few things. The economy in Canada is not great and it’s even worse in the US. This defnitely had an effect. Also a huge factor was the crappy weather we had in 2011. in a lot of areas summer didn’t really get going until mid-July. it’s like May and June didn’t even exist. This created a very late start on sales ot as many people were buying regular skate hardgoods. A lot of money went to longboards and longboard completes. One thing that really helped us this year was the tour we did. Bringing pros to a store and having them meet consumers goes a long way.

What does the future of Mehrathon look like?
We love our business, we love our brands and we love what we do every day. I think and hope that people deal with us because we are small. l’m on the phone, l’m at the trade shows, l’m visiting the stores and l’m also in the warehouse packing boxes. Our plan is to grow brands that we connect with and that mesh with our distribution lineup.

Article from SBCbuisness.com