Dingo is a unique Australian making it big in L.A. He has come out with some amazing quotes over the years which have made him unusually controversial. My favorite was the ‘Paris Hilton of snowboarding’ line from Transworld… It was classic and it stuck. I haven’t met anyone in snowboarding that doesn’t associate him with it. Dingo’s life in L.A. makes for quite a story; from an average 14 years old to snow-lebrity, hype-man and marketing guru. He has his own T.V. show, hypes for rapper Lil Jon, is heavily involved with the Grenade crew and has a million new ideas going all the time. I’ve been catching up with Dingo over the last few weeks and we put down a few words for you guys, hope you like it.
Hey there Dingo! Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. You’ve just recently finished an Australian tour with Lil Jon and WuTang – How’d that go?
Really amazing! We sold out Sydney and got a huge crowd in Melbourne. It was a lot of fun, for first timers throwing shows I think we did pretty good. Normally, I’m on the other side of the fence and just partaking in shows… It’s a lot different when it is actually your’s and you’re responsible for everything!
We got to see you hyping for Lil Jon. That’s got to be a buzz huh? Do you get to tour with him all the time?
[Laughs] Yeah, I have been with Jon for a couple of years now. It’s a lot of fun – he just has great presence and a lot of energy. I’ve got energy too so it’s fun to get out there and let it out with him! It’s quite a trip. He was my favorite rapper and now I get to hang, work and travel the world with him and the clique. We all family.
When you’re not on tour, where’s home at the moment? How do you like living there?
I can now say that West Hollywood is my home. It’s a great spot and I’ve got a lot of really close friends here. And this is where it all happens – clothing, entertainment! If you’re going to make a run, there is no better spot than L.A. to make your home base.
How’s the Fuel TV show going? You’ve just finished screening season two in the States, we saw the board game commercial here a while back, is there going to be more?
The show’s going really well! Fox has really got behind the show with the commercials and advertising. I just found out that for the next two months we are getting the main billboard on 20th Century Fox Studios. It’s like a 30 foot billboard! I was in the Fox/Fuel TV HQ the other day and saw the mock up – pretty unreal! I never would have thought that just turning a couple cameras on would have turned into one of Fox’s biggest action sport reality shows and got me and Danny a billboard in Hollywood next to The Simpsons and American Idol! It’s a lot of fun and television is a huge passion of mine. I have been trying to pitch and sell shows since I was 17 years old. So to have a show that we created and get to be Executive Producers on is huge, I have learned a lot. Third season is coming out in January.
What about Grenade… What’s your day to day involvement there? Any exciting projects you can let us in on?
My actual title over there now is Director of Alternative Marketing. We never had titles till recently – I liked it when people used to ask that and I’d be like, “well, I don’t really know” [Laughs]. But alternative marketing, for us, falls under basically all marketing outside of snowboarding. We have really branched out in the past couple years, expanding into all action sports and creating our Spring/Summer line with denim and shoes. We have been working on Moto for a while and now have a fully functional moto glove. We have a Metal Mulisha glove and a Hart and Huntington glove. We also have a Jake Brown glove that he uses on the Megaramp. Danny Way also runs the gloves when he skates Mega. So we are now making products that actually fit into the right areas of these sports. I also deal with a lot of the collabs with the other brands. Right now we have an Oakley Frogskin on shelves that did really well. We have a second one coming. Sshhhhhh, don’t tell anyone. We have our second Rogue Status jacket coming out with two colour ways which we will be showing at SIA. There is a Krew glove that will be at the show in Denver too with some other goodies I cannot talk about yet! We have a great deal with New Era now and have about 15 different styles of hats! So that is a little on what I do at Grenade. We have a great group over there now and moving forward we are all very exited on the road we are headed. It’s been a crazy ride for me at Grenade. Having been there since day one, I have seen it all go down and been apart of it all!
So give me the run down on how you ended up in the States and how you got to be doing all this?
I got on a plane when I was 14 with a dream! My family believed in me and that was it, I was gone. I’ve always thought big and dreamed big and unless you try you will never know! Believe in yourself and what you are doing… and just DO WORK! Danny (Kass) taking me in when I was 16 was a big help too. He has been my family since I was a teenager and always will be. Pat Bridges from Snowboarder Mag – he handed me a mic when I was like 16 at the World Quarters. Thanks Pat! And from there I started announcing. At the time I was on 5150 pro team and working the both of them. From there I was was working as team manager for Grenade, announcing and snowboarding. I was getting little TV spots here and there too. When I was 19 I got the MTV show ‘Made’ and it brought me to a bigger level. I went on to have a column in Snowboard Mag, Dingos Dirt and ‘Ask the Dingo’ in Transworld. I have now hosted the Transworld Rider Poll Awards three times and have just worked ever since. I love everything I do – I put 110% in and get the rewards!
This year you and the guys at The Enterprises were working hard to bring the MegaRamp to Australia. Obviously that didn’t happen, what went down there? What’s going to happen in the future with that event?
Yeah, we put a lot of time into that but unfortunately we just didn’t get the ticket sales we needed to be able to go ahead. It is very expensive to build the ramp itself. We were about nine weeks into sales and the numbers weren’t there so we have had to postpone the event to a later date and possibly change the location. But it’s just a little bump in the road. We pulled off the music shows amazingly and our goal is still to take action sports to a whole new level here in the future, so 2010 here we come! We ain’t done yet I can tell you that much!
What is on the cards for you in the next 12 months? What are your main projects and events?
Well, a lot! Tradeshows, lots and lots of tradeshows. Olympics in Febuary. Lil Jon’s new album comes out in Febuary… so there will be some fun times there. We’ll make some more TV shows and then probably go to another tradeshow.
Any chance we’ll be seeing more of you in Australia next year?
Oooh yeah! I got plans for Australia. I love it there, if I could live there I would! With Monster launching in Aus, there is going to bring a lot more opportunity to do lots more out there and bring a lot more action sports to Aus! And some more music! We got plans!
Well, thanks for your time Dingo! Been great seeing you back here and it’s awesome to see you doing so well.
