Avril Lavigne is making good on her “Sk8er” roots. The Canadian star teamed up with a Southern California skate shop called Paliskates to release a limited edition sweatshirt, with all proceeds benefitting the store after it burned down during the Pacific Palisades wildfires earlier this year.

The sweatshirt, in Paliskates Founder Erica Simpson’s words, is very punk rock, using a skull-and-cross-boards motif with both “Paliskates” and “Avril Lavigne” printed on each sleeve.

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Simpson told ASI Media that the two met for a video with the GRAMMYs shortly after the shop burned down, and Avril was a surprise guest. Simpson and Lavigne hit it off, and Lavigne emailed her a few days later with the idea of doing a merch collaboration to raise money for the store.

“She offered to pay to make the products and donate all of the proceeds to us and promote it,” Simpson says. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Simpson, who says she doesn’t get starstruck often in Southern California, was so moved when she met Lavigne, because her hit song “Sk8er Boi” was such a cultural moment in the early days of the shop and helped get a lot of kids in the door to buy gear and get excited about the culture.

“We’re more than a skate shop, honestly,” she says. “The kids hang out there, and it’s a real community space.”

So Simpson and her team emailed Lavigne some Paliskates logos, and they got to work on the sweatshirt and came back with something that both parties felt encapsulated their “brands,” so to speak.

That concept of co-branding is huge in the skateboard world right now, and expanded into the streetwear space, as brands that once began in the skateboarding world like Supreme and PALACE influence other retail brands (as well as the promotional products space) to release smaller batches of products to create hype over exclusivity. Co-branding also allows each participating brand to piggyback off of the other’s reputation and brand popularity and appeal to a potential new market.

Simpson, as someone in the skateboarding world now launching a limited edition, co-branded piece for a good cause, is aware that this trend isn’t going anywhere.

“That’s what keeps a lot of people relevant and where the market is,” she says. “We’re definitely going that way.”

Simpson believes that Lavigne “elevated” the Paliskates logo and brand, and it was a look at what she could do in the future with other collaborations.

“We’ve been meaning to do more drops and elevate our brand more,” she says, “and really develop our brand more.”

In promo, brands can (legally) use the name recognition of premium brands like electronics, apparel or house goods to elevate their own and borrow a bit of their counterpart’s credibility. For apparel distributors, it’s not a bad idea to look into how brands can use this streetwear drop model to create exclusivity and mystique for their brand.

Bonus points if it goes to a good cause. Kudos to Lavigne for not simply saying “See ya l8r” to the shop after the photo op was over.