Burlington, VT - November, 2002 - For the past four years, Gravis has been building forward-thinking shoes, bags, and gear that are a fresh alternative to what exists in today's global marketplace. We receive invaluable design direction and insight from our family-like Development Team comprised of top dogs from the surf, snow, skate, music, and art worlds. In this spirit, we're proud to announce that we've joined forces with world-renowned graf artist/graphic designer, Stash, to develop two extremely limited edition products that feature special materials, colorways, and custom Stash artwork.

We've been friends with Stash for a long time, and Stash has participated in a number of our art-inspired ventures in the past, the most notable of which being our Artist Series Footbed Project that launched October 2001. Stash, and four other top street-inspired artists, created custom designs that were featured on individually packaged footbeds (insoles) and their action figure-like packaging. The Artist Series Footbed Project was very successful, so the natural next step was to work together on developing a special Stash-inspired shoe.

"Stash was a huge help in making the Footbed Project go off last year, and we wanted to continue to build on the success of that project by teaming up with him again to create special shoe and sweatshirt designs," says Luis Calderin, Gravis Marketing Manager.

For this particular project, Stash chose to focus on his favorite Gravis shoe, the Lokash, and by working closely with our in-house design team, a special version coined the "Lo-Stash," was born. The Stash-inspired Lokash features a full-grain leather upper with Stash's original Subware Visual Maintenance artwork covertly perforated into the shoe's side panel, a footbed featuring sublimated Stash graphics, and a shoe bag adorned with a Stash design. With only 1,500 pairs available worldwide, Stash's shoe is an extremely limited edition product that's being distributed through select Gravis retailers. And for a few lucky people out there, when they purchase a pair of the Stash-inspired Lokash, they just might find a pair of Stash's Artist Series Footbeds included in the package - Willy Wonka's golden ticket can't touch this!

To compliment the Lokash, a limited edition Gravis sweatshirt featuring a thirteen-color custom Stash design will also be available at select retailers. Only 200 sweatshirts are available globally, so if you get your hands on one, be sure to hold onto to it because it's definitely an exclusive piece that many a collector will be looking for.

On Thursday, November 7, 2002, we officially ushered in the global launch of Stash's Lokash and sweatshirt designs at Slinky in Tokyo, Japan. Stash's limited edition Gravis product offering is now available at the following global retailers:

United States
Recon NYC
Recon SF
Union LA
Canada
Uncle Otis, Toronto
Delphic, Toronto
024, Vancouver
Norm'l, Ottawa United Kingdom
No Returns, Birmingham
Fly Clothing, London
Footpatrol, London
Dogfish, Norwich/Cambridge

Germany
Thomas I-Punkt, Hamburg
Firma Bonn, Stuttgart Belgium
Wear, Leuven
Cream, Gent Netherlands
90sqm, Amsterdam
Revert, Haarlem

Japan
Recon, Tokyo
Atmos, Tokyo
Mita Sneakers, Tokyo
Hundred First, Tokyo
Reset, Nagoya

Stash is a graphic artist, clothing designer, and entrepreneur with deep roots in Subware Visual Maintenance and Recon NYC, SF & Tokyo. Stash has been featured in countless art shows/exhibits around the globe, and spends much of his time these days at Brooklyn's Subware Studio as director/designer of Recon, Subware, and Project Dragon.

— Posted by Ari Cheren, MountainZone.com Gear Editor