PALACE PUT A STAKE ON THE TABLE IN 2019

Palace Skateboards is owned by the two men who have run it from the start. Levent Tanju, who founded the company in London in 2009, and Gareth Skewis, his co-owner, still control the business. There is no parent company, no luxury conglomerate, no private equity firm on the cap table. That answer has held for seventeen years, and it came close to changing once.

Two Names On The Company

Palace grew out of a skate crew filming around London in the late 2000s. Tanju started the brand in 2009 with that crew as its center of gravity. Skewis came in as the business half of the operation, and press coverage and company records have named the two of them together ever since.

The corporate entity is Palace Skateboards Limited, registered in England. It files public accounts, which is unusual for a brand this guarded, and those filings are the only hard window into how the company performs.

The Stake That Went On The Table In 2019

In September 2019, WWD reported that Palace had been holding quiet talks to sell a stake in the business. The investment bank Rothschild was advising the process. According to that reporting, Tanju and Skewis were looking for a partner to help fund a retail expansion, build out the organization, and manage a company that already stretched across three continents.

The talks were described as exploratory. Tanju did not respond to requests for comment. No deal was ever announced.

That episode is the reason the ownership question keeps coming back. It landed in the same window that Supreme sold to VF Corporation and New Guards Group, the company behind Off-White, went to Farfetch. Every independent streetwear brand of that generation was being valued, courted, or bought. Palace looked at the same door and did not walk through it.

What The Filings Actually Say

The public accounts explain both the interest and the caution.

For the year ending 31 January 2018, Palace reported turnover of £25.9 million, up 79.3 percent from £14.4 million the year before. Gross margin widened to 63.9 percent from 62.5 percent. That is the growth curve that brings bankers to the door.

For the year ending 31 January 2025, turnover was £34.03 million, a 3 percent rise on the previous year's £33.14 million. Across seven years the business roughly doubled, but the explosive phase flattened. A company growing 79 percent in a year is a different asset from one growing 3 percent, and the version that went looking for a partner in 2019 was the first one.

Ownership You Can Read In The Drops

The most useful evidence of who controls Palace is not in the filings. It is in how the product reaches people.

Palace runs releases on a schedule it sets and enforces itself. Autumn 26 went out across nine markets on two separate dates, a structure we mapped when the season launched. Drop 1 landed at Dover Street Market LA in store only, with nothing online for that release. When the brand put out its South2 West8 collaboration in China, the release was locked behind WeChat rather than the global webstore.

That is not how a brand behaves when a partner needs quarterly numbers. Region by region control, in store exclusives that cap the audience on purpose, and a webstore that sometimes simply does not carry the thing are all choices that trade revenue for control.

The retail footprint tells the same story at a slower pace. Palace opened a Hong Kong flagship in early 2026, with both co-owners speaking about it publicly. In Seoul the brand took a floor inside Lotte World Mall at Jamsil and set a third date in the city for 22 August 2026. Stores arrive when Palace decides a market is ready, not when an owner wants a growth line to move.

Even the licensing follows the pattern. On the Detroit Tigers collaboration, the interesting part was the fleece construction rather than the logo deal, and a recent baseball capsule revived two defunct teams at once rather than chasing the biggest available badge.

Tanju Took A Second Job

In January 2024 Tanju took an outside role as creative director of FILA+, a new elevated sportswear line at Fila. It set off a fresh round of speculation about his commitment to Palace.

He did not leave. Palace has continued to ship full seasons, open stores, and run its own calendar since, and Tanju appeared alongside Skewis for the Hong Kong opening in 2026. The Fila role is a second job, not an exit.

Where That Leaves The Answer

Palace is independent. Two people own it, one of them came up in the crew the brand was named for, and the closest it has come to outside money was a conversation in 2019 that ended without a deal.

If that ever changes, the first signal will not be a press release. It will be in the drops, in a webstore that suddenly carries everything, in a release calendar that stops being awkward on purpose.