Archive for the “Companies” Category

Since when do you have to be rich to snowboard? It’s with that question in mind that Rob Foy along side his friend Benson Miller and professional snowboarders Brandon Bybee and Jason Murphy founded Blank Snowboards.
The concept for Blank Snowboards is all about the purity and love of the sport, not about all the other stuff. Blank makes snowboarding more affordable without compromising the quality. In short Blank create boards that can hold up against any of the top quality brands currently available on the market, while still offering huge savings.
At SnowBroader we think this is a great idea and innovation. Snowboarding is slowly loosing it’s soul because of all the marketing shit going on. Getting back to basics - aka the ride and the fun - is the most important thing…doesn’t matter if it is on a Burtro or a Niton…What do you think? YEAH or NAY?

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Finnish Pro Snowboarder Jussi Oksanen and film maker Brad Kremer start Mizu, a company producing a water bottle out of stainless steel in order to fight against the waste generated by the 38 billion - yes! that’s huge and it’s only for the US - bottles of plastic!
Stainless steel bottles are a very lucrative business in the US in particular but the demand is growing fast in Europe as well.
We can only double big up Jussi for creating his company around this product because the idea is good - financially - but mostly for the environment and our health.

Here’s Mizu’s mission statement. Our advice: support such initiatives!

Two snowboard professionals lucky enough to spend our lives traveling the world and snowboarding for a living.
That’s a lifestyle that demands a lot of hydration.
We think plastic water bottles suck.
We think 38 billion of them a year choking up our landfills and refusing to decompose, sucks.
We also think that the fact that the amount of oil used to produce plastic water bottles in America is enough to fuel about 100,000 cars for a year really sucks. And for the record, we think that bottled water costing more per gallon than it costs to fill your car not only sucks but makes us suckers.
We believe that saving your hard earned dollars while cutting down on waste is truly a good thing.
And that’s not all. We at Mizu respect our health: we need it to be on top of our game.
What we don’t need are chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA) leaching out of plastic bottles into the water we drink and messing with our mojo.
So we took action. We created a water bottle out of stainless steel that not only stops our ever-growing waste addiction, but also means we get to drink our water pure, chemical free and tasting like it’s meant to. A bottle that represents who we are and the life we live. Mizu bottles are 100% recyclable, tough enough to sustain everything from months of snowmobiling in the backcountry, back- to- back flights and surf trips to every day abuse.

We are Mizu, because we believe in living life today in a way that will give you the tomorrow you would like to see.

Seb from Aaven just sent us some pics of the new Aaven board line for next season.
Along the Fisherman 156 and Friend 159, they added a new 153 twin tip mega freestyle deck!

The Aaven crew is true to their board graphics. With a base common to all decks come really nice illustrations using the board as canvas.
Next year it’s all about fishing on mountain lakes! Check it out!

My friend, Battery Catapult is unique, one of a kind machine in the whole world! It is tested and proved to be very useful tool especially in snowboard city events. The strength of Catapult is that it gives opportunities to create totally new and creative event formats!
Many of the top riders of the world have tested the catapult and it has been a success. There´s still a lot of creative ideas of new kind of event concepts that haven’t been done yet. With the catapult it’s possible to do it and create events that stand out, in places it wouldn´t be possible without the catapult.
Intrigued? Check out this video.

The original snowboards, developed in the 1960s had no fixed bindings, the riders stood on the board like a surfboard. When Jake Burton won a competition in the late seventies using bindings they rapidly became the norm.
In 1988 Greg Todds shed his bindings and began developing a ‘stomp-pad‘ as an alternative. Cholo Burns helped Greg develop the prototypes and together they created a company and began production of the Noboard pad.

The Noboard is a peel and stick pad that can be applied directly to any snowboard deck.
The pad is made of a special polymer rubber designed to shed snow and ice and provide maximum grip even in very cold environments. It is sold in a package with a leash and fastening hardware.

“In the beginning, the snow was so deep we couldn’t even find our binding straps, So Geets(Greg Todds) decided to shed them. That was 1998 and he hasn’t used binders since. First boards and prototypes were garage pours of our homemade molds. Once we knew that we wanted to spread the love of noboarding a company was formed and true professionals were brought on to further the equipment.

The combination of speed, weightlessness and the freedom of moving your feet around like a skate or surfboard provides a truly exhilarating experience.”

Noboards are available in Europe through a shop in Switzerland.
Didn’t get more detailled infos about that but Cholo told us they are repimping their website this month with a few videos showing what noboard is about and more important stuff so check it out if you are interested in experiencing the original feeling of surf!

A simple but smart innovation that was awarded with a BrandNewAward is the Myway map holder. Their product will not appeal to freeriders looking for virgin runs but it will to a lot of riders going around to discover new resorts. Don’t look stupid anymore trying to find your way in the wind and snow, and get more rides in! You’ll probably see a lot of those in the Alps this winter…
“Sometimes old ideas are best fit for solving modern problems. Thus Catharina Wikström looked back to antiquity in order to reinvent the ski resort map. Fed up with unhandy, delicate paper maps, which can hardly be handled with gloves, she invented a new version of the papyrus scroll. Her tear-resistant resort map is stored in two plastic poles (ca. 13.5 cm long) and can be rolled up and unrolled conveniently – even with gloves on. Inside the jacket, this device needs little space and is ready for action whenever you need orientation in the mountains. MyWay is a perfect adaptation of an age-old invention. No doubt, the old Egyptians would be thrilled.”

The winners of the ISPO BrandNewAwards have been announced and we want to present you some of them who are really bringing something new to snowboarding in our opinion.

But first we would like to thank all the people who voted for us as we also entered this event. We scored pretty good at the online voting thanks to your votes but sadly were not selected by the jury for the finals. When you see the products the selected finalists and winners came up with, we really couldn’t compete, but it was worth trying.

Now let’s get back to business. The first winner we want to present is Snowpulse and its life bag. It’s not the first time we hear about an avalanche airbag system, but the life bag seems to be really well thinked and adapted to the practise of freeride snowboarding:

“Airbags are standard safety features on most automobile models. If they can safe lives in car accidents, Yan Berchten and Pierre-Yves Guernier from Switzerland thought, why not use them in an avalanche? The result is Snowpulse, one of the most innovative avalanche rescue systems in years. The extremely lightweight,150l life bag comes in a backpack and can be triggered by pulling a loop. Within three seconds, Snowpulse inflates and builds a cocoon around the victim’s head and shoulders, protecting against secondary avalanches and keeping airways clear. After one minute it deflates to create an air pocket, giving you enough space to breathe. The oxygen cylinders can be refilled after an accident, making the system reusable. What a clever product – but let’s just hope you’re lucky enough and don’t need it.”

We hooked up with Noémie, a cute 22 years old swiss dutch chick who grew up in NYC baby. Noémie, still a student in marketing, created a swiss sales group called KARTEL. With a couple of friends, some pocket money and heaps of motivation, they managed to build a structure which today distributes hardcore brands such as Elm Company, Celtek, Airblaster, Colonie in Switzerland.
The example of Noémie is a great one in our opinion, because it shows that with a lot of dedication it is possible to create and grow a business in the snowboard industry. Of course, Noémie has a lot of passion for snowboarding and that’s why she wants to succeed, but most of all you feel that she’s having a blast doing it everyday!!

Check out our 3 minutes BrOADER[TV] episode with Noémie and let us know what business projects/ideas you have for the snowboard industry!

Who cares what’s in the board as long as it rides just the way you want?
That’s what I was thinking for a long time until I started getting interested in the whole “board construction” thing.
So I was quite happy to watch this new video from Elan - you know the boards that are made in the Alps.
Follow Anssi Manninen, Elan snowboards international team rider, as he takes you on a tour of the Elan factory and shows what it takes to build a good snowboard.
In the past years, Elan has introduced a lot of incredible technical innovations in the construction of snowboards, most relevant of all being the Omega sidecut technology.
Their know-how and the quality of the production plant is known all over the world. No wonder almost 20% of the boards available on the market are coming out of the Elan factory, in the heart of the Alps!

So now that you know everything about building a board, check how the Elan team rides them!

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Yes winter is coming, yes we are getting excited, nervous even…but there is still some time to wait before the first snow falls…
Enters Freebord! Freebords are boards that ride pavement like a snowboard for those times of the year when riders can’t get to the snow. It’s hard to explain, but if you’re interested, here’s a short video that show/explains how the board works:

We didn’t have the chance to ride a freebord yet but if you have, gives us your feedback!

A4 Distribution, European Headquarters for CAPiTA Snowboarding and Union Binding Company, is pleased to announce the addition of Joni Makinen as European Marketing Coordinator for CAPiTA and Union.

Joni retired from a legendary professional snowboarding career in December 2006, in which he was world famous for his unique style and power through countless video parts and magazine shots. He had a pro model for eleven years in a row, held a Finish Half-Pipe title, won “The Great Slopestyle” in Japan, and graced the cover of international magazines eleven times.

During this lengthy career, he worked closely with designers, engineers, product managers, and marketing directors on many efforts with his sponsor companies including ThirtyTwo boots and others.

“I’ve known Joni for a long time. I have full confidence he’ll make a great transition from contributing as a rider to contributing on the industry side. I’m proud to have him as a representative for CAPiTA in Europe,” says Blue Montgomery, Brand Manager for CAPiTA Snowboarding.

A4 distribution President Martino Fumagalli adds, “Our brands have a great product and marketing story. We’re looking forward to having Joni help communicate that to the European snowboarding community.”

With this position Joni will be based between his native Helsinki and London. He will be responsible for all European marketing / PR activities and will be the key European Media Liaison for both CAPiTA and Union.

Joni commented, “I’ve seen snowboarding go through many phases, some good, some bad. I’m very happy to work for the companies that are keeping it real and doing good things for snowboarding.”

Bataleon Snowboards just won breakout brand of the year from The Source in EU. They say thank you ! We say Big Up !!!