How did Loll start doing all this lollygagging you ask? Loll’s history dates back to 1997 with the creation of TrueRide, a design and build contractor specializing in custom municipal skate parks. The TrueRide crew designed, built, installed, and serviced more than 400 custom skateboard parks in cities all over the United States and abroad during a 10 year period. A lot of our design and manufacturing capabilities for furniture came from designing and building custom skate parks. TrueRide had a great reputation for building quality and unique ramps. In this second wave of the skate park industry (the first being the parks of the 1970’s) there were many builders designing parks primarily with wood and using steel components for grind rails and coping; or in locations where skaters would “grind” their boards on the ramp. TrueRide was always looking for better materials for the ramps and in this constant search a composite ramp system was developed that was durable, attractive, and needed very little maintenance. Once we had the materials and the machinery it was natural to start to think about what else we could do with this thing we had created. In 2003 Loll outdoor furniture was conceived as a way to repurpose excess skate ramp material. Furniture parts could be nested into the same CNC router files with skate park components and depending on the size of the skate park we would get a group of chairs at the same time the park was cut out. The iconic Adirondack Chair seemed to us like a good product to repurpose the material we used for the side panels of our ramps. Most of the parks we built were outdoors and used heavily by skaters so the side ramp panels needed to be durable and maintenance free. The first material we used was plywood until we found 4 x 8 sheets of ¾” inch thick high-density polyethylene; #2 plastic. Three years of prototyping went into our Adirondack collection before we launched our online store around Thanksgiving 2006. Originally we used recycled post industrial plastic but by 2007 we were able to source post consumer plastic. This is when Loll, as both a product and a company, really started to take shape as something that could be green. An estimated eight recycled milk jugs go into each pound of a Loll Adirondack Chair or about 400 milk jugs per chair. As well as being recycled the material is also 100% recyclable so its purpose can change again into another useful product when that day comes. Our first chairs looked a lot like our skate ramps. We used the same manufacturing techniques to build both furniture and ramps; from computer design, CNC routing, stainless steel screws, and the skate ramp materials. The tan colored surface on this chair is SkateLite which was used as the riding surface on TrueRide ramps. The black sides are the #2 plastic. Eventually we made a switch to mostly just plastic because of its durability, lower cost, and infinite color variety. In 2007 we sold TrueRide to longtime friend and competitor in the skate park business, Spohn Ranch, so we could focus on lollygagging. We hope that you agree it was the right thing to do.