Words: Ben Shanks Kindlon 2017-12-12 18:23:51
Whitefish Mountain Resort was one of the last ski areas in Montana to allow snowboarding. And when lifts first opened to snowboarders in the late ’80s, the arms of some locals stayed closed.
“Back in ’91, I broke my board and brought it to a shop in downtown Whitefish for repair, and the skiers there were giving me a hard time for being a snowboarder,” Joe Tabor says. “I figured there must be a better way—we needed some proper representation. So I spent the next year getting my shit together to open up a snowboarder-focused shop.”
With 12 boards and 300 square feet in the back of a record store called Sound Garden, Joe launched Stumptown Snowboards on Halloween in 1992. “I did a lot of work for cheap in those days, doing repairs for the cost of the screws, epoxy and whatnot to make it happen,” Joe says. “I made just about every mistake in the book, but survived them for long enough that people started to think I was an expert. I kept learning and eventually developed a reputation as the guy that could fix anything.”
Bouncing back from gaffes is how he learned to run the business, too. “We’d lose money all winter, and then I’d paint houses all summer to pay it back,” Joe says. “Then I’d borrow more, and lose it all again the next winter.”
After a few financial setbacks, he met Kristen, his bride-to-be, who Joe says brings business savvy to the shop. Stumptown moved out of Sound Garden to a storefront near Whitefish’s viaduct, where Joe and Kristen ran the business in front while living in the back. By 1997, they found a downtown location that still stands today. “That’s when we started to get respect as more than just the dirtbag shop,” Joe says. In 2014, they opened a second shop, slope-side at the base of Whitefish Mountain Resort. Over the years it took to close the loop from outsiders to pillars of the local mountain community, Stumptown became a cornerstone of Whitefish’s snowboard scene. Now in its 26th year, Stumptown is the oldest snowboard shop in all of Montana.
“Over time we’ve adapted, trying to become more internet savvy and grow a bit in that regard,” Joe says. “But our main focus is really to be the shop that serves its local scene with a smile. We’ve got a formula that could be considered conservative, but it’s one that won’t bury us. I call it the ‘Cockroach Principle,’ and with it we can outlast a lot of competition. We grow slowly, steadily and do what’s necessary to keep the shop alive, even if that means sometimes giving into things we didn’t want to originally—like ski rentals. We capitalize on summer traffic by selling warm weather apparel in the offseason too. It’s a balance, one that keeps my guys working and my kids eating.”
Along with the cockroach principle, Joe credits the shop’s success to its current employees, saying it’s the young guns that continue to keep the stoke alive around Stumptown. And he likes it that way.
“The next generation’s energy becomes more and more important as I get older,” Joe says. “They’re the new face of Stumptown, and that’s great. I hope that soon no one will even know who I am anymore. Then I’ll be able to just fade out, and go ride.”
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