“I think Time was quoted as calling it the worst new sport… They said it was more about ‘raging hormones.'” – Jake Burton Carpenter on snowboarding’s reception in the lated ’80s.
One of every three snowboards sold worldwide is a Burton. Wrap your head around that. That’s the kind of market share companies in other action sports segments dream of. But unlike the stories of many tech companies today that see an explosion of growth in only a few short years, Jake Burton Carpenter’s larger than life snowboard company took some time to catch on.
To be clear, Carpenter didn’t invent the sport of snowboarding, but he is one of its early pioneers. Having fallen in love with a sled called a Snurfer – that’s snow + surfer – Carpenter had the idea to refine the concept with edges and bindings. Living in a New York City apartment at the time, Carpenter knew that to launch a legitimate brand he’d have to do so from a mountain community, so he moved north to Londonderry, Vermont and began making his making snowboards by hand. That was in 1977.
Growth was slow and steady over time, not to mention ski resorts were initially wary of the liability of letting snowboarders in. Still, Suicide Six in Vermont opened to snowboarders in 1982, and a handful of other resorts across the country followed suit over the years. It wasn’t until the late 1980s, though, that snowboarding really got recognition by mainstream media outlets. And even then, it wasn’t all positive. In its January 1987 issue, Time quoted one Vermont skier as saying, “Snowboarding is not about grace and style but about raging hormones. It is adolescent boys with their newest toy.”
But Carpenter saw the writing on the wall and continued forward. Forty years later, Burton is the largest snowboard company in the world.
Snowboarding ultimately debuted as an Olympic sport in 1998, and according to Carpenter, one of the sport’s most important pioneers, it wasn’t an achievement worth celebrating. “It was not a cool moment at all,” he tells Guy Raz on How I Built This (around 26:30). Carpenter describes the process of a Swiss ski federation deciding to include snowboarding in the winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan as a totally arbitrary decision. One that he wasn’t even privy to. “It’s like the baseball player who finds out he’s been traded in the newspaper,” he says.
For more in NPR’s very interesting series How I Built This hosted by Guy Raz, follow this link, and check out their feature with Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard here.
