Diamond boss Nicky Tershay, better known as Nicky Diamonds, has been building Diamond Supply Co. since 1998 in San Francisco.
Long before the brand was everywhere, he was a pro skater trying to turn something he loved into a real business.
What started with skating slowly turned into making bolts, then clothing, and eventually grew far beyond skate shops.
As Diamond grew, the orders grew too.
Retailers like Pacsun and corporate skateshop Zumiez started placing massive orders, putting the brand in front of a much wider audience.
That growth brought real money and real attention, but it also came with problems. The bigger Diamond got, the louder the criticism became from people who felt the brand was no longer just for skaters.
Nicky has always had a strong core following and stayed connected with them over the years.
But once the brand reached a certain level, some longtime fans started feeling like Diamond left them behind.
To them, it felt like the brand went mainstream and lost what made it special in the first place.
In an interview with Superline Network, Nicky talked about this when he was asked about his collaboration with skater rapper Wiz Khalifa.
He explained that a lot of skaters and fans were disappointed and felt like the brand had changed too much.
Some even questioned what Diamond really stood for anymore.
Nicky said that some of his own pro skater peers asked him if the brand had turned into FUBU or a hip hop brand.
Diamond started as a skater owned clothing brand made for skaters by skaters, but now many people saw it as closer to a rapper backed company.
“So people started to hate, all my fans felt like I abandoned them and like sold out or something,” he said. “So I was building thousands and thousands of more new fans but the core audience kind of gets turned off by that.”
Host Eric Lee then asked him how he was supposed to handle that situation. He said, “How do you balance that like what do they expect you to do just just like only sell to the hundred of people like Zumiez is giving you ten million dollars and you’re supposed to say no?”
That is when Nicky shared the advice that stuck with him.
He said, “It’s kind of corny to say there’s an old thing that this guy in the skate industry used to say all the time and used to say if you stay core, you stay poor.”
That line stayed in his head and made him really think about growth and money.
Eventually, it led to a bigger decision. Nicky explained that he had to shut down the company completely to reevaluate himself and think about how to restart his strategy.
He said he did not want to do the same thing he did before because he no longer wanted to try to please everybody.
So if you are wondering what happened to Diamond Supply Co., it never fully disappeared. Nicky said the brand is still being built, just differently.
He went backwards and started doing more things himself with fewer employees, especially after finding out that some people around him were stealing from him.
For Nicky, it was about control and clarity. He wanted to strip everything back, learn from the mistakes, and rebuild in a way that made sense for where he is now, not where he was years ago.
At the end of the day, business is business. In Nicky’s head, you can never grow your business if you stay core.
From pro skater to brand owner, he learned that growth comes with backlash, but staying stuck helps nobody.
He made his choice, took the losses, reset the board, and kept it moving. That is how it goes when you stop trying to make everyone happy and start standing on what you believe.