About TGM Skateboards

Some shops sell skateboards. We live them.

Where It Started

Our roots go deeper than the TGM name. Back in the ‘70s, we were MGM Bicycles — a Midwest institution with nearly a dozen stores spread across Michigan. Bikes were the business. Then something happened that changed everything: the urethane wheel.

Before urethane, skateboard wheels were made of clay or metal — hard, loud, and unforgiving on anything but the smoothest surface. Urethane changed the physics of the skateboarding overnight. Suddenly wheels gripped. They absorbed the road. Skating stopped being a novelty and started being a lifestyle. We saw it happening in real time, and we started putting boards on our shelves right then and there, back in the ‘70s, long before skating was cool to sell.

By the mid-’90s, the bike industry had collapsed — mass retail had taken over and the independent shop model was getting squeezed out. For a lot of stores, that was the end. For us, it was a pivot. In 1996, TGM Skateboards was born — built from the bones of a decades-old bike shop and fueled entirely by a love of skating. We weren’t starting over. We were finally becoming what we always should have been.

The Midwest’s Core Skate Shop

Nearly three decades later, we’re still here. Still skating. Still the Midwest’s largest brick-and-mortar skate shop — and we didn’t get there by accident. We got there because we care more than the other guys.

Walk through our doors or browse our site and you’ll find over 1,000 pro decks, 500+ longboards, and more than 5,000 pairs of skate shoes. The selection is massive, but that’s not the point. The point is that every single product on our shelves was chosen by someone who actually skates. No filler. No guesswork. Just gear we’d ride ourselves.

When you place an order with us, it’s not being pulled by a warehouse worker checking off a list. It’s being packed by someone who gets it — someone who treats your order the way they’d want their own handled.

Built on Wheels

We’ve always been a skateboard company first — that’s never going to change. But our history with wheels goes beyond the board. Back in the day, we were behind Roll at the Dome, the legendary inline skating event held at the Pontiac Silverdome where you could rollerblade the entire concourse of one of the biggest stadiums in the world. That was us. Wheeled sports have always been in our DNA.

We still carry inline hockey gear and equipment for players who know the grind doesn’t stop when the season does. It’s not the heart of what we do — but it fits who we are. We’re people who move on wheels, in whatever form that takes.

Disc Golf? Yeah, We’re Into It.

We know — disc golf and skateboarding don’t exactly share a mailing address. But hear us out. Disc golf in particular has become something we’re genuinely passionate about, mainly because one of our OGs is down with it. And the more we looked at it, the more we saw it: the same independent spirit, the same obsession with feel and form, the same culture of people who do what they love because they love it — not because it’s popular. We get that it’s a different world. But it’s also not that different. We back it.

When we started carrying disc golf in 2020 we saw immediately that this wasn’t a trend — it was a movement. So we went all in. We remodeled a dedicated section of our store to showcase around 3,000 discs on display, with over 5,000 more in the back ready to ship. If you’re looking for selection in the Midwest, you won’t find anything like it.

That’s what we mean when we say it’s not just a job. It’s a lifestyle. It always has been.