For those new customers not in the know, we do something special at Christmas every year, it is called the Christmas sticker giveaway. We don't talk about it during the year, or warn customers it will happen, it is a nice surprise to come home one day to an envelope of totally rad skate stickers! Last year we gave away over 40,000 stickers! This year we have as many stickers but WAY more variety. More brands involved, more different types of stickers so it is almost guaranteed you will not get the same type of stickers as your mate. Why do a sticker giveaway? Instead of a Christmas card or an email with a Santa skating gif, we get together with your favourite skate brands and create something to say thank you for supporting us, a local Australian skateshop, and hopefully we stoke the WHOLE Australian skateboard community. It should put a smile on ya dial, and make you want to get outside and thrash up some local terrain. Who gets the stickers? We rank our customers by sales value, send the most stickers to customer number 1, then go down the list until we run out of stickers. The cut off, where we ran out of stickers, this year is around the $150 mark, which is a set of wheels and trucks. Please thank the brands We can not do this type of giveaway without the skate brands. We pay for the mail out, but the brands give us the stickers for free to send out. There is a real cost to sending out 30,000+ (we lost count) stickers all over Australia. You can make a difference, by reaching out socially and saying thank you to all the companies that helped us give you some frickin rad stickers. See below all the brands and the type of stickers they sent. I have also linked to their social media accounts where you can, liked them, share them, thank them, tell them your life story, take a photo of what you did with the stickers and post them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Make a noise, make a disturbance, tell em that they are rad, and show the brands, that said it was too hard to send stickers to Australia, that there is a real benefit to stoking the Australian skate community!! Not all stickers and colour variations are shown below. If you got a bonus one, something different, post up a photo or tell us on Facebook. Show me the money!!!! This is what 30,000+ stickers looks like: Caliber Trucks, Volante Wheels and Blood Orange Bushings These guys are serial sticker offenders. Always generous every year in the sticker giveaway. They were one of the top contributors. PLEASE send them some love. Caliber on Facebook, Volante Wheels on facebook and blood orange bushings   Rayne Longboards Another yearly contributor, never missed a sticker giveaway, always willing to support the local grassroots, I give you frickin Rayne lubben Longboards. No swear word stickers this year, so we wont get in trouble from the mums. They have been HUGELY generous. If you dont like em, love em, link em on the web I'll come round to your house and personally remove all the stickers from your helmet and decks!! Find them here: Facesmash, Utubes, Tnstajizzl, Twaters or just hidin in their crib     Loaded Boards and Orangatang Wheels Everyone ones favourite longboard junkies. These guys make weird normal and never stop having fun. I'm telling you, these guys love Australia, support everything the scene wants to do, and I'm convinced they would shave their heads and send us hair if we wanted to make a giant toupee. There is only one thing you can do - BE GENEROUS and givem big online hugs here: LOADED Website or Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or YouTube (ambassador channel) or Flickr or Instagram or Pinterest ORANGATANG Website or Facebook or Instagram   Concrete Wave Magazine They want to stoke you, spark you into action, search out new terrain and most of all subscribe to the delicious feast that is longboarding. Michael Brooke loves feedback and ideas. So sock it to him, on his facebook and his website He is also the mastermind behind Longboarding for Peace.   Riptide Bushings New to the sticker give away is Riptide bushings. We have been using Riptide for years and they support skaters, events and races. When we did Newtons and Keira we were a mail point for skaters arriving for the race to collect flowed bushings. It may not seem much but it is nice to see all types of products getting active on the skateshop level. Give these guys a tickle on their facebook. You should add them on your newsfeed, they have awesome products rolling out all the time.   Paris trucks Another newbie to the sticker game. Joey and I have chatted a bit this year about the scene, new product development, and his company has a huge future. We love his trucks, they turn, dive and carve like they are made from seagulls. Look out for V2, in store soon to pop like candy. He also flowed divine and Elephant stickers. If you got some of these stickers, you should be stoked. So say thank you, get on the interweb and do some clickin. They are webbin it here or Fbook or tweet or instagram your stickers you got here or just watch their vids. Seriously thank them, they sent some amazing stickers. There was so many variations we could not scan them all!!!   Divine Noticed a bit of new urethane creeping into your crew? Have you got thane line envy? Maybe you are on a mission from God? Three yeses probably means you need some Divine inspiration. They gave us stickers that will make you sing like an angel. Send them a pixel thunderbolt to their face or right in their tweet or do what we do and just hang out on their cloud. Elephant Skateboards Ladies and gentlemen, there is an elephant in the room. Mike and co are probably the raddest skaters on the planet, voted most likely to blow your mind. You have to agree with his ideas: skaters just want to skate, no rules, no divisions, no schools. One of the hardest things I had to do this year was giveaway the elephant stickers we got. They were SUPER limited in numbers. Absolutely kick arse gorgeous. If you got a pink elephant, you know you were in the elite top 100 hopshop customers! You could bay that puppy for big bucks or slap it on your deck and go skate like mike! Cause we all wanna be like mike. Rumour is Mike is very active in this company, if you get social on their arse, you could be talking to the man himself, or at least poking him in the eye, so DO IT - on the facebook or on the twitter or show the world on instagram ya sticker addiction. Riviera These guys sometimes slip under the radar. Their range of completes we have in the Hopshop are hitting all the right spots. Very popular on form, function and price. Have you seen their website? Oh you will lose days in there, so you have been warned. Facebook or instagram or get old fashion and watch videos online. The image below does not do their contribution much justice. They send a schwag of stickers in all colours and all sizes. Face photo me some stickers you got - please!! SuperSports TSG Lush Cult Sabre These are the new kids on the block. SuperSports has burst onto the skate longboard scene with the force of a Supernova. Apologise to Rodney and the gang, I did not get any scans of their stickers, they had some awesome ones. If you go any of there stickers, post up a photo on our facebook. You can find this gang of pirates all over the seven seas including web of superness and FB or TSG or TSG facethingy or Lush or lushbook or cult of thane or facecult or aliens stole my centresets or hands off my sabre or a book of sabre Trust me on the sticker photos - just imagine there are rows of amazing stickers right here   Louis Pilloni (aka SHM and RAD) Lewie gets his own entry because of outstanding services rendered to the sticker giveaway. Louis got us skatehouse media stickers and Rad stickers, plus a few bonus Sector ones thrown in. What can we say about one of the nicest guys in longboard. Thanks mate for the support. Please checkout his indelible work at skatehousemedia and also bask in the glory of Rad Wheels. Bust out some big standy 180 finger typin at Rad's Facebook and  da skatehouse fb location. Give up the love, support the crew and annoy him on his personal facebook, tell him Hop sent ya. Sector 9 They are big, bad and steezy. You love them or hate em or just want to be them or be on their team. When the S9 team rolls into your neighbourhood you hide your girlfriend and pray they pick your car to drive them around to shred your favourite hills. What is amazing is they give so much and expect so little in return, it is like they are this enormous grassroots garage company...the smallest biggest skate company in the world! Sector 9 gave so many bags of stickers we were pouring them into envelopes at some stage. We even maxed out the envelope weight limit of 125 grams with some envelopes. They'll probably burst on the way and shower S9 stickers all over Australia. Apologies if that was your envelope. Have you noticed the Sector 9 Aussies have started a facebook page. It is your duty to like them and put up a comment. Tell em you want to see a Jacko bro board by next Christmas! ASRA Everyone's favourite skateboard association. You know where my loyalty lies. They are the boss at ASRA. They do it for love. They make your life worth living. They are the jonny appleseeds of skateboarding - planting skate seeds all over Australia and the world. They are more grassroots than a savannah. Check it Hopkin That just leaves me. Hopkin Skate or Hopkin Racing or Hopshop or Hopkin Skateshop or Hop or stop treading on my toe. It is all the same company and radness. We are just one big group of skaters servicing you the community. I like to think of you all as friends. Sure you are technically my customers but we are too connected to make you faceless. One of our big challenges this year was to keep ourselves relevant, and in business from the onslaught of US skateshops. One of those shops told me this year to give up and let them share the pie. You my friends are the pie. I corrected him and said they are not some object to consume but it is my community and skate mates and I never take them for granted. I hope you see that reflected in everything we do. We put so much back in to the community by volunteering our time, sponsorship, events, giveaways, providing community space in the shop and online. I believe there is a future for Australian skateshops. I dont believe our future is to buy everything online in America. Those big shops that pay big money to advertise on the top of our Google search results think different. I acknowledge we need to buy stuff at one time or another online overseas. However, give the little guys a shot. Walk into your local skateshop, say hello and support the local scene that supports you. End of rant. I doubt anyone will read this far, if you have. I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas, a steezy New Year from myself James Hopkin (Hop) and all the Hopshop staff. It has been another amazing year. We have so many great ideas for the community in 2013, we can hardly wait! Skate safe. Skate every day. Skate everything.