Snowboard manufacturing is not something you can read a lot about in the snowboard mags or even on the Internet. Strong brands spend a lot of money in marketing, communication, sponsorship, events, and team riders to make sure that when you go out to buy that new board you will choose the right brand with the right image, but sometimes they tend to omit the fact that a nice “Made In the Alps” can also be a strong purchasing argument.
We wanted to know more about snowboard production so we asked John Colvin from the Elan Snowboard Factory, one of the major snowboard production facilities in the world.
In the interview below, John gives us an overview of snowboard production facilities worldwide, and tells us which snowboard brands run their own facilities, and which rely on OEMs. We then discuss the work processes at the Elan Snowboard Factory to better understand how each brand is treated for the production of its boards. John also shared a cool video that details every step of a snowboard’s production at the Elan Factory. Finally we tried to make him tell us what will be the main innovations on our snowboards in the winters to come but hey, he would have to kill us after telling us, so we’d rather wait and see!
It’s a pretty long interview, but you’ll definitively learn a lot about what is happening in the backstage of snowboarding and honestly it’s really interesting to have a better feel of from which production line your board is coming out…think about it the next time you buy a board and maybe you’ll add “eco-friendly factory”, “quality” and “innovation” alongside brand, design and camber profile in your list of criterias.
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Tags:
elan snowboard factory,
john colvin,
manufacturing
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If you scroll down a few posts you’ll end up on our previous BrOADER[tech] post focusing on the Park Pickle, a twin asymmetrical deck introduced by GNU in limited edition for this season. We also featured the totally experimental TRICE Banana HAMMOCK - a powder specific deck rocking reverse camber and “no sidecut” tech! This week we hit you with a new concept which originates from the South of France: Furlan boards!
Furlan boards are 178cm decks that mix freestyle feeling with freeride habilities. How? Good question when you see such a monster deck! Read our product review below.
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While the Lib Tech crew is going totally experiMENTAL with ultra-progressive boards like the TRICE Banana HAMMOCK - a powder specific deck rocking reverse camber and “no sidecut” tech (wide middle and narrower ends), their crazy cousins at GNU Snowboards are introducing the GNU Park Pickle, a true twin deck with a centered stance but with a deeper sidecut on the heelside!
Pete Saari, VP of Marketing at Mervin had this to say: “The Park Pickle achieves perfect balance through asymmetry, a deeper sidecut and asymmetric core on the heel edge balances your foots asymmetry and the different turn mechanics between heel and toe turns. Twin Asymmetric Banana Magnetraction design is the future of all terrain freestyle performance snowboards. Pickle Power!”
The Park Pickle will be included in the 09/10 Gnu Snowboard line but a limited run of 300 decks will be built and released for sale to select Authorized Gnu Dealers in mid December…only in the USofA.
After the return and the clean sweep of the reverse camber - that for reference first appeared in 1985 on the Sims Kidwell -, asym boards might be the second big tech thingy to hit the market in 2010…shit that brings me way back to my first ever Santa Cruz snowboard. But it’s really fresh to see all those experimentations and new shapes being introduced. Totally new, fun riding sensations in perspective for the winter to come.
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