Per Welinder was a Swedish freestyle skateboarder, who picked up a board aged 15. He was incredibly progressive and was the only person to ever succesfully beat freestyle king Rodney Mullen in competiton. Welinder was also the son of an advertising and marketing guru which rubbed off on him immensely.

In an interview Welinder says he “reached out to Swatch Watch and inquired with them to see what their interest level was to get into sponsoring skateboarding in a big way.” His initiative was correctly timed with Swatch and he opened the door to a new type of commercial development in skating. Swatch then put together a successful skate team, which also sponsored freestyle legends Mullen and Pierre Andre.

Welinder left Powell Peralta skateboards in 1992 to start Birdhouse Projects with Tony Hawk as his main parter. In the mid 90’s Tony achieved superstardom and Welinder became an incredibly wealthy man as a result of his business vision.