Company :: Vertical Junkies

Vertical: (adj.) 1. At a right angle to the horizon 2. Upright extending or standing in an upright position, or running straight up or down something such as a piece of paper 3. Overhead at the vertex or directly overhead.

Junkies: (n) 2. Enthusiast somebody whose interest in or liking for something resembles an addiction (informal)

Vertical Junkies was started in 1994 in Seattle, WA while I was going to school at the Art Institute of Seattle. Not being able to surf, but close to the snow and the sports that came with it, such as snowboarding, I started the term Vertical Junkies as someone who is addicted to sports which allow you to defy gravity and go vertical. This term could be applied to surfing, skating and my new hobby away from home, snowboarding. The name and idea for a company came about as a class project in college. The assignment asked us to create a marketing strategy, name brand and product to sell. I decided on the name Vertical Junkies, did my first design printed it on a t-shirt and used the shirts as Christmas gifts for family and friends. I got such an overwhelming positive response from the recipients that I realized I had the opportunity to expand this idea to design and print shirts that I could sell in surf stores in Hawaii.

After graduating and moving back home to Hawaii, I decided to go forward and design and print more t-shirts and products to sell to the local surf shops. Products included t-shirts, beanies, shorts, boardshorts, hats and stickers. This gave me the need to find a way to market and promote the products with little to no budget. I decided to throw parties to have people become familiar with the name. I started out by throwing parties at my parents’ house in Kaneohe with bands that were just starting out at the time such as Natural Vibrations, Go Jimmy Go and many start up bands that the musicians till this day play professionally just under different band names now. The parties grew with such crowds that I expanded to throwing parties at night-clubs and bars.

Vertical Junkies was featured in local surf magazines as well as a few Japanese fashion magazines. Surf Business News credited Vertical Junkies as a “hot new company coming out of Hawaii”.

In a nutshell, this brings us to where we are today. Being a one-man-company, (design, production, financing, manufacturing, marketing and promotions) running a small distribution to the west coast, Japan and Guam, I got burnt out of the whole products manufacturing and distribution. Not having the capital to support the production, the overhead outweighed the profit, and it turned from being a fun developing company to a 10-day week job. The enjoyable spark was dwindling, and it started to take a toll to becoming a headache to keep up with. Vertical Junkies did very well, and if I had the energy and funds to pursue it with the retail aspect, it would have continued to be successful. Instead, I opted to cut back on the retail production, and keep it more as a hobby. Keep up-to-date with this site because we will eventually release a few limited edition VJ designs from time to time.

Today, I do annual designs usually around Christmas for friends, family and followers to purchase. It is back to being an enjoyable hobby on the design and clothing end. To keep the name alive, I have kept up with the promotions side that I refer to as Vee-Jay Entertainment. This is how most of you know me today.

With a constant growing database of party people, we have expanded our promotions team even further. With the addition of BlaineTomita, Kanoe Sandefur, and Mike Nagasawa to the Vee Jay Entertainment team, we are now focused on giving Hawaii, even bigger and more fun filled quality events and parties. Our direct connection with the Surf and Skate industry has opened up many doors. We now have the big companies hiring us to do promotions for them. We have worked with clothing companies such as, Volcom, Hurley, Billabong, Oneill, Element, Obey, Local Motion, T&C, Reef, and Lost. Our list of start up musicians has watched many bands take their music to new levels. We were the first to have Jack Johnson play at Hard Rock Honolulu after he moved to California. We took Pepper on their first island tour through the Big Island, Oahu, Kauai, and Maui. Mainland bands such as Slightly Stoopid, Dreadstarr, Warsaw, and national recording acts like Simple Plan have been booking us as promoters for their stop over through the islands.

It’s not the size of our events that matters. What does matter, is that we do a good job promoting each event and inside we know that we gave 110% for everyone to have the best time possible. We’ll never put our name and reputation behind any event that is not set up for the best interest of our patrons.

We have been blessed by God to have such a great team and most of all such loyal friends who have supported our events from the little garage parties to the huge festival events. The VJ crew is one big family that keeps growing and welcomes everyone with open arms. You only live once on earth so why not make as much friends as possible.

Mahalo -Russ Inouye and the VJ Crew