Ricky Krieger, a pro wakeboarder, is paid to go around the world and wake board. Krieger also owns and operates his own business, The Shop: Wake-Skate-Snow-Dirt.
Krieger was born and raised in Nine Mile Falls, Washington. He is a father of two children, and married to Candas Krieger.
The Shop offers top quality equipment for all major water, dirt, snow, and street sports. The store started back when Krieger just finished high school. His reasons for starting the store started back in his junior and senior years of high school.
“At the time, I was teaching locals to wakeboard,” Krieger said. “When I sent them out to buy wakeboarding gear, they were sent back with different gear than what I recommended, because the shops they went to recommended it.”
Krieger got tired of dealing with the confusion those situations created, so he opened his own shop that provides lessons, gear, and endless wakeboarding knowledge.
All employees at The Shop are required to have been, or currently be, pro-level in at least one of the sports that the store offers equipment for. This is so the employees can offer knowledge on a professional level to meet all customers’ needs.
“Working here is a blast,” Dillon Batt, an employee at The Shop, said. “It’s not so much for the money, but for having Ricky as a friend to work alongside and being around what I love: wakeboarding and snowboarding.” The Shop is merging with Tobler’s Marina in order to start making boats for wakeboarding and other water sports. The two companies are coming together to create a new, much bigger shop.
The new business will still be called The Shop, but the logo of ‘Wake-Skate-Snow-Dirt,’ will be changed. Due to legal reasons, The Shop has yet to reveal the new idea for their logo.
“We are looking for about 20 to 30 acres in North Spokane or
Hayden Idaho.” Krieger said.
The new shop will be making custom boats for wakeboarding, custom wakeboards, and still be selling all the top and best quality gear for wake-boarding and longboarding.
“The new shop will be finished in a few months. The overhead cable will pull one rider back and forth,” Krieger said.
Inside the new building, around the walls on the inside of The Shop, will be an indoor wakeboarding track. The wakeboarders will be pulled by a zip-line while they hit all sorts of jumps and ramps that will allow people to train all year around. This is a completely new and different idea for Spokane.
Not only will the locals be excited, but this will also bring another great activity to our town. This will be great for visitors and it will bring in professional wakeboarders. Although, Spokane will have to wait for the indoor wakeboard track to be completed.
“The track should take about a year; maybe two at most” Batt says.