House Brand Showdown: Nine Shop-Deck Own-Brands Put Through the Wringer

House decks get a bad rep. The thinking goes: if a shop's real business is selling other brands, their own deck is just a logo on cheap Canadian maple, sold to tourists and mums buying birthday presents.

Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's a £35 deck that outperforms things at £60. We wanted to know which was which, so we did the unglamorous thing: bought nine own-brand decks from independent UK shops, skated them for a month each, and took notes. Rain included. Obviously.

How We Judged Them

Three criteria, because we're not scientists:

• Pop — how snappy the tail feels off the flat and off a ledge. Subjective, but consistent across testers.
• Weight and shape — does it feel like a deck or a plank of scaffolding?
• Drizzle performance — the great British equaliser. How quickly does the tail go soft and soggy on a damp session?

The Contenders, Ranked

1. Slam City Skates — house deck. The one to beat. Crisp pop, a sensible modern wheelbase, and it stayed lively even after two wet Brixton evenings. The artwork is understated, which we respect. If you're near the shop anyway, just get this.

2. Native (Leeds) — own brand. A touch heavier than the Slam City, but the shape is lovely under the foot and the pop held up through a full month of hard skating. Yorkshire value for money.

3. The Vines Supply Co. (Derby) — punchy pop, slightly steeper kick than we expected, brilliant for tech tricks. Lost points because the tail showed pressure marks within a fortnight. Style over longevity, but what style.

4. Prime (Manchester) — in-house deck. Solid mid-table citizen. Nothing wrong, nothing electric. The weight is on the plummy side, which you notice on flip tricks. Still a perfectly good first proper deck.

5. Fifty Fifty (Glasgow) — light and lively out of the wrapper, and the pop was genuinely impressive for the price. It faded faster than the others once the Scottish weather did its thing. Buy it in spring, not November.

6. Souled Out (Coventry) — a chunkier, older-school shape that'll suit transition rats more than street kids. The pop is fine. The vibes are immaculate. Sometimes vibes matter.

7. Cabotin (Brighton) — a boutique-feeling deck with lovely art and a slightly soft tail. Great cruiser-to-park crossover board; less convincing if kickflips are your whole personality.

8. Black Sheep (Newcastle) — honestly a touch stiffer than we'd like, and the concave felt flat after a few weeks. But the price is right and the shop's good people, so it stays on the list.

9. Lockwood Shop (Preston) — the budget end. Pop was inconsistent board to board — our two test decks felt genuinely different. One was great. One was a shelf. A lucky dip, essentially.

What We Actually Learned

The gap between the best and worst house decks is smaller than the gap between house decks and the £12 mystery boards sold in sports chains and seaside arcades. That's the real takeaway: buying from an independent shop, even their cheapest own-brand, gets you a genuine skateboard.

Second lesson: drizzle is the great deck assassin. Whatever you buy, don't leave it in a damp bag in a hallway. Wood is a sponge wearing a graphic.

The Verdict

If pocket money is tight, the mid-table decks here will outlast three pairs of budget shoes and teach you more than a supermarket board ever will. If you can stretch to the top two, you're getting genuinely pro-standard wood with a shop's name on it — and when it snaps in three months like all decks eventually do, you'll be back in a real skate shop talking to real skaters.

That's the bit no review can score: the house deck is a membership card. Wear it out proudly.