“Throughout my childhood, I loved to be outside, whether it was snowboarding, surfing or just being in the woods, so wanted to combine this into a brand,” explains Moritz Lorenz of the vision for his outdoor adventure lifestyle company, Jeckybeng. “I want to show people these adventures you can have on your door step. You don’t need to climb Mount Everest. As soon as you move your ass off the couch, you can have an adventure of your own.”
Based in Nuremberg, Germany, Jeckybeng make an array of clothes, tools and accessories to enable this pursuit of adventure. It all stems back many years to when Moritz was backpacking in India. A simple misunderstanding of a name imprinted itself in his head. When spelled phonetically, it became Jeckybeng. So, in late 2011, when he grew dissatisfied with his work as an art director and started up his own brand, Jeckybeng was its destined name.
But outdoor goods are often very technical and require years to test and research, and, of course, plenty of money. With a budget of shoestring proportions, Moritz set his sights on something a little more DIY and with a commitment to sustainability.
With resources limited, he chose to work with a raw material that was deemed worthless: old skateboards. With the help of a carpenter friend, the first product he developed was a surf comb for changing the waxing a surfboard.
“All the surf shops, you get surf combs but they are all plastic,” says Moritz. “I wanted to make it more natural, sustainable and so I went for recycled wood.”
Luckily, the tough, layered maple of skateboards is built to take some punishment and so worked perfectly for the job of scrapping wax. And following on from this, they were soon making surfing fin keys and screwdriver sets from more old shred sticks – all tried and tested by Moritz and his friends on their adventures.
From these beginnings, Jeckybeng has expanded into clothing and accessories but the DIY cottage-industry approach to manufacturing still runs through Jeckybeng does; Moritz screenprints the organic tees and cooks up Jeckybeng’s organic surfwax in his workshop, the duffel bags are made by his girlfriend, and the beanies are all knitted by his mother! Moritz also chooses to shun what he calls “corporate stores” and only supplies to local independent shops as well as selling via the Jeckybeng website.
“It’s just a reflection of my lifestyle. It’s my own thing from the heart. It makes me happy everyday,” says Mo. “Everything you are doing is for yourself and what you love. There are so many inspirations out there that I could do this my whole life. It’s like running Jeckybeng is the missing puzzle piece in my life.”
Check out more from Jeckybeng at our HUCK Indies exhibition at Stand A2.213 at ISPO, Munich from February 3 – 6.
You might like
Venice Biennale will not award artists from Israel & Russia due to war crime accusations
Art Not Genocide — Both countries will still be allowed to exhibit work at their respective pavilions, but be excluded from judging considerations, as they have leaders facing arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.
Written by: Noah Petersons
“I didn’t care if I got sacked”: Sleazenation’s Scott King in conversation with Radge’s Meg McWilliams
Radgenation — For our 20th Anniversary Issue, Huck’s editor Josh Jones sits down with the legendary art director and the founder of a new magazine from England’s northeast to talk about taking risks, crafting singular covers and disrupting the middle class dominance of the creative industries.
Written by: Josh Jones
The suave style and subtle codes of gay San Francisco in the ’70s
Seminal Works — Hal Fischer’s new photobook explores the photographer’s archive, in which he documented the street fashion and culture of the city post-Gay Liberation, and pre-AIDS pandemic.
Written by: Miss Rosen
Joe Bloom’s View From a Bridge
More stories, more human — The artist and creator of the vertical video generation’s most loved storytelling platform explains the process behind creating the show, and the importance of bucking trends.
Written by: Isaac Muk
When David Wojnarowicz became Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud in New York — In 1978, the American artist and his friends donned masks to pay tribute to the French poet, who was born a century before him. Miss Rosen traces the differing yet parallel lives of the queer revolutionaries.
Written by: Miss Rosen
Inside Bombay Beach, California’s ‘Rotting Riviera’
Man-made decay — The Salton Sea was created by accident after a failed attempt to divert the Colorado River in the early 20th century. Jack Burke reports from its post-apocalyptic shores, where DIY art and ecological collapse meet.
Written by: Jack Burke
