Tahoe’s Newest Shop Robbed, But It’s Not All Bad News

Though the SoulHouse project, Tahoe’s newest shop/venue has not even celebrated its official grand opening, theives made off with $25,000 worth of merchandise last week. Despite the setback, co-owners and long-time Tahoe retail fixtures John Chapman and Kyle Smith are forging ahead, hoping to offer residents of Truckee not only a full service-ski and snowboard shop, but a venue for music, movies, dancing and other socialization practices. Located in an old church, the shop is unique in many ways, and we caught up with Chappy to find out more about the burglary as well as his plans for the future.

So your new shop, the Soul House project was recently broken into, what happened?

We had about $25,000 worth of stuff stolen – about 50 decks from Lib and Burton – and they came in through a way and method that obviously exposed a flaw in our security system. Of course we’ve already addressed the issues and now have Fort Knox assembled for anyone in the future thinking of trying it again.

Do you have any way to recoup the loss if they don’t catch the guys who stole it?

We have insurance, of course, so we’ll get our cost back BUT several of the models were already out of stock so we can’t actually make profit off of them or offer those models to future customers.

Do police have any leads? It’s been a few days right?

I haven’t heard back from them on any concrete leads yet but they did lift a couple of finger prints as well as some security cam footage from a gas station down the road.

With all the gloom and doom lately in snowboarding, and shops closing, it makes me feel warm inside that you opened a new shop and theives think they can sell all that gear. When did you guys open?

We soft opened last weekend and will do the grand opening this coming Saturday the 29th. We’re certainly zigging when the industry – and especially NorCal – seems to be zagging. My good friend Wendy Woodward closed Boards n Motion, SnoCon closed, Eastern Boarder closed a location. So many people are questioning why we’re doing it but honestly we’re not trying to do what any of those very good shops are doing.

What are you trying to do with the shop? What will it take to succeed “in this economy”?

So the shop is an actual, 100-year old former Catholic church and it’s such a unique building with high vaulted ceilings that my very first thought when I walked into the space that was a Burton showroom was “holy shit this would be an awesome club or lounge.” So first thought wasn’t a shop. It was club, bar, lounge, dance party USA. And we’ve integrated that from the start into the spot by doing a 150″ screen, full theater surround sound system, booming bass – all with the intent of not just showing movie premieres, but having the space be a “venue” for all types of happenings. Then, we built our “fixtures” as essentially trade show type movable walls that allow us to “de-merchandise” the place very quickly and open up the main hall that used to be where the church had all of the pews. So from the get-go we thought of this dual use feature…..a shop during the day and who knows what during the evening / night…..movie theater, art show exhibit, dj dance hall.

Sounds like a cool thing to have in Tahoe. I dig.

Yeah…..we don’t have a movie theater in town anymore, let alone anyplace to dance or have a party.

So you guys are just going to forge full steam ahead this season? Does this set you back?

We’re full steam ahead yes…..even though Kyle, my partner, and I have almost 40 years of retail between us working at shops like EasternBoarder and PortersTahoe.com we still had to mostly prepay for all of the inventory in here, so now we just need to start selling it. So no it doesn’t set back in the big picture as we have lots of unique brands in here – including things like new D-Day snowboards – and again we luckily had duplicate back stock of about half of the models taken.

Obviously the economy is not booming in Tahoe, since it hasn’t snowed in like, years… How dependent are you guys on tourism and such?

Like a lot of destination resort areas yes the bulk of business is tourism. Different from Colorado and other areas, though, is that we have millions and millions of weekend warriors down in the Bay Area that just need a good dumping from Mother Nature to get them motivated. In the meantime we’re reaching out to the core rider who will go slide a white ribbon of death at Boreal and let them know that we’re here for all of their needs.

Again Kyle and I have years of experience, connections, and being in the area for a long time. An example of that was two weekends ago.We showed Warp Wave’s Warpe du Looke and Drink Water’s Pathology and had a standing room only crowd. Shreds like Eric Messier, Brendan Gerard, Brandon Cocard, and even Chris Roach came out to support it.

Do you have anything else lined up that people might want to know about?

Right now is just the grand opening next weekend where we’ll have a dj, free beer, and special sale items that will coincide with when a certain song comes on. After that yes we’ll do another big party in December that we’re working on.

Sounds like a bummer start to something really cool. How can the Yobeat community at large help (aside from stopping by and shopping, of course!)

Keep your eyes peeled for someone trying to unload all of these decks, but if they’re smart (big if, of course) they could get away with selling skate bananas or regular TRices without too much fanfare. The unique things they got were like a 170 Birdman and 166 Speedodeeps so we’re hoping that those might tip someone off.

The SoulHouse Project is located at 10116 E St, Truckee, California. Don’t miss the grand opening celebration, Saturday, November 29th.

Follow them on social media @soulhouseproject