Yardsale’s Dan Kreitem on staying true to the culture

In the age of influence, dropshipping schemes and quick-buck programs, there’s an oversaturation of “cool” new hypebrands that make vapid claims of cultural involvement, community, and street cred. Since the rise of streetwear and Virgil Abloh’s impact on the industry, everyone wants in. But through the noise of poorly made t-shirts with uninspired logos, shines a brand that was born out of a subculture and remains true to its ethos.

Dan founded Yardsale in 2013 out of a very specific kind of exhaustion. The kind you get from staring at racks of uninspired clothing all day and realising the culture you love is being dressed by people who don’t actually participate in it. At the time, he was working in a skate shop, he explained: “I kind of was looking around and being like, you know what? A lot of this shit that I’m selling at the skate shop is kind of whack.” Nothing felt like it came from the scene. No spark, no colour, no pulse. Just a conveyor belt of poorly made sameness. And so Yardsale was born, perhaps out of that irritation, but, as we’ve learned from most subcultures, it is usually a far better creative engine than optimism.

The mission was straightforward: make clothes that felt good and make skate videos that felt like him and his friends. Simple, but not simplistic. Inspired by the HI8 dreaminess of the Los Angeles scene, Yardsale leaned into visuals that blurred the line between skate edit and micro-film. “If you watch one of our videos, it’s a compilation of landscapes and scenery from places I’ve been over the years, mixed in with videos of the Yardsale guys doing stupid shit. It’s all blended and filmed in a way that feels like a memory, that’s always been the Yardsale vision and aesthetic.”

Their first video, LDN – LAX dropped in 2013 and blew up, creating a refreshingly new output. Their crossover in aesthetic was a sign of the times, and also proof that people were hungry for something that wasn’t scrubbed clean by marketing managers. “It kind of just like instantly gave me hope because a lot of people were excited about it,” says Dan, “the elements of it being a bit different in a way that kind of hadn’t been seen before, which was cool.”

This is where Yardsale separates itself from the current wave of “streetwear brands” that keep sprouting. Everyone wants Supreme hype without the groundwork and without the subculture that actually gave rise to it. The difference with Yardsale is that Dan and the guys never tried to cosplay the scene; they are the scene. They were outside every day, skating, talking, meeting kids, making stuff because it felt necessary.

As the brand grows, the skate world around them is doing what subcultures always do: shifting, mutating, absorbing trends it once hated and hating trends it once absorbed. “It’s definitely like the influencer bug that everyone’s caught. Even if you’re not necessarily a sponsored athlete, you still have clout in a sense because you’re getting all these followers and likes.” London’s skate scene has changed; this is for certain, but through all this, Yardsale has tried to hold onto the sanctity of the culture without becoming gatekeepers. It’s a delicate dance. Times change; the ethos doesn’t have to. Dan says it best: “I was brought up in a time where self-promoting was considered cringe and not cool. So the fact that people are now self-promoting so much on Instagram is instantly just a ‘fuck skating’, in a way. But times change, and you have to move with the times. But there’s a way to do it and ways not to.” There’s no romanticising the past here,  just an acknowledgement that the internet has re-engineered the culture, whether anyone likes it or not.

What has stayed consistent for the team and the brand is their stance on global issues. As someone with Palestinian heritage, Dan’s unwavering commitment to overt support for Palestine hasn’t wavered. They’ve refused to ship to Israel since 2021, long before political stances became another form of content. For Dan, this isn’t a branding choice; it’s human. “I don’t want to be known for being a company that’s like stayed silent when something so crazy happened,” he says, “it’s fucked that so many big skate brands haven’t said anything.”

Yarsdale doesn’t posture as the “political skate brand” because trying to aestheticise politics is, frankly, the fastest way to cheapen them.

Yet through all of this, Yardsale isn’t reinventing itself every season to appease a trend cycle no one can keep up with. The brand is doing what it has always done: making things that feel true to their world, not the algorithm. And in an era where everyone wants to “look” like they’re from the streets, Yardsale remains one of the few brands still actually on them.