We are the Ninja Pyrates.
We’ve been in operation for 4 years now, 3 years in Brooklyn, NY, and this past year in Atlanta, Georgia.
Our mission is to make high quality and innovative flow arts equipment available at accessible prices, both online and at festivals nationwide. In doing so, we spread the love of playing and share the benefits of non-competitive, intuitive, movement-based activities. We focus on tutorial content and facilitating space/reasons for people to come together. We provide structure to help build our community through teaching, learning, and performance opportunities. We are filled with honest curiosity and the willingness to push the boundaries of what is considered industry standard.
In the beginning, we worked full time at both Ninja Pyrate and our respective jobs for what seemed like forever before we were both willing/able to take the leap to full time Pyrates. Krisstina was the last to quit her employment, March of 2013. Skiffle was laid-off twice before he took it as a sign from the universe to go full-time pyrate.
Skiffle produced various festivals and events in Seattle, Austin, and New York for the prior 10 years. Krisstina had full-time jobs since she was 14, from fast food to door-to-door sales to nanny, but her last position was as Senior Music Licensor for Sir Paul McCartney at MPL Music Publishing, Inc.
Once, at Burning Man, Skiffle attached a red wagon full of Krisstina’s props to his belt and pulled it around like an ox. It was then that Skiffle asked the question “Why do you need all of these fire, glow, and practice staffs? Why can’t you just have one staff with detachable heads?” After a lot of laughter, silly ideas, trial and error… the Ninja Pyrate modular staff was born. We hitched a trailer to the Third Earth Fireproof van and went on tour, beginning our labor of love…
The props that are“most popular” changes all the time. It’s hard to say how long it takes to produce our most popular items as we have an expansive inventory and also do large production runs of things. Most items we make from scratch, some things we modify, and as a recent development we have started wholesaling things like juggling clubs for those festivals at which we are the only prop vendor. Production takes up a huge portion of our lives. We spend hours every day, seven days a week, building props. We rush to stock for festivals, we have to remake things in between, and there is never an idle moment without a project in our hands.
The process for testing our products also greatly varies. Some things you can beat to death and see that they will be fine, while others require more in-depth measures.
On top of our own testing in which we relentlessly beat things on concrete and corners, we sent our carbon fiber fire staff out to a friend and it was burned/documented in various scenarios (allowed to cool vs redunked repeatedly, etc) 131 times over a few months. This is one example of many, but the basic idea is to do everything possible to break it. Importantly, you have to stand behind your work and warranty your products against manufacturer defect.
We are growing roots here in Atlanta. and are developing a space that is soon to become the next Floasis, linked with the Brooklyn flow space that is still growing. We will be providing free workshops, spin jams, teaching opportunities and space to work on all forms of creative projects in the Atlanta area.
We are also redesigning most of our products in carbon fiber as the “ConTech” line, while developing new (to us) products such as the AcroStaff and more.
We plan to keep pushing the Evolution of Revolution.
For more information on our products visit ninjapyrate.com, visit our facebook.com/ninjapyrate/.
In 2016, we plan on attending Texas Flow Fest, Flowstorm, FLAME, Kinetic, Wildfire, Fahrenheit, Playthink, Mountain Flow Fest, Earthdance Florida, Flow Camp, Mo Flow, Flow Down, and Florida Flow Fest, so come find us!
Comments 1
I made a montage to go along with the article. Happy Holidays!
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1086394711404901