After Quiksilver you were sold to Altamont Capital Partners? Quiksilver bought Rossignol and then Quik got in trouble because Rossi was as big as Quik, and Quik was at the top of their game. Quik anchored up to a big ship that was kind of sinking. Once they did that, they had to look for money everywhere to try to shore up their business. Suddenly, it became unhealthy for us because even though we were still profitable, they were desperate to find money to make up for this $600 million debt that they’d taken on. There was never a rift or a moment where we disappointed them. We always did what we said we were gonna do. But they decided that they were selling off a few brands and we were one of them. We met with a bunch of people and Altamont was the group that was the most excited about Mervin. They bought Huf, Lakai, Girl Skateboards, Dakine, Fox and a couple others. We all worked together through this central spine. There were some challenges with it, but their vision was a good vision. Still, it’s hard to chase growth. Altamont has sold most everybody but us and we’re still with them almost 10 years later because we’re doing what we say we’ll do—owe’re not surprising them financially, and we’ve been able to come up with some innovative products to move for-ward. That’s allowed our relationship with Altamont to be healthy, and they’ve been happy with us. We’ll probably end up with a new financial partner at some point here in the next few years. We’ve done well with Altamont and they’ve been great to us. They’re willing to invest in the factory, in tooling, and let Mike do his job, let me do my job, let Jesse [Burtner] and our CEO Anthony DeRocco and the whole crew do their jobs. When did you open your space in Sequim? 1996. Can you tell me about the conscious, environmentally aware design there? Mike and I grew up in the ’70s. There were gas shortages and environ-mental crises and there was the first push for solar and wind power. We both were influenced by our parents’ love of the outdoors. When we started the business, we didn’t have much money and materials were hard to source, so we had to be really efficient with materials. That cre-ated a culture of efficiencies from the start. As we grew, that stayed with us. Also, we’d built some surfboards, and I actually got so sick from the polyester [fumes] that I had to go to the hospital. As we built our first factory in Seattle, we didn’t want a toxic shop. Mike researched which resins were the least toxic and found the safest epoxies. When we started to bring in other employees—Paul Ferrel was employee number one, then we hired my brother [Chris] and a few oth-ers—we didn’t want to pollute anyone else’s lives. Even as we got better financially, we still were careful about not wasting anything. We started developing recycling and figured out non-toxic ways to print the graphics through in-house sublimation using water-based inks. We figured out how to build top sheets out of beans. All of this was driven by not only wanting to be environmentally nicer, but also wanting to source cheaper, more easily accessible materials and handle every step of the product in house. When we moved to Carlsborg, we figured out how to recycle all the sawdust from our cores. We bring that over to our neighbor Anjo Soils and they mix it with manure and compost it. I actually skied the sawdust pile this year—a first descent of the north side of Mt. Mervin as we call it. It was literally half-manure and it was the world’s shittiest run [laughs]. The first snowboard descent is still on the table. How is it running your own factory nowadays? How many employees are there? I think there are around 160 right now. Having the factory is like having a tiger by the tail and if you fail in any way, you hear it from the market. There are a lot of nuances to board building—making slippery plastic bond to other unlike material is challenging. You have to keep your eye on it constantly. Even though we’ve got tight tolerances on everything, wood varies, the amount of resin people use varies, so you have to set up consistent procedures. I check flexes almost every day. Mike still does a lot of troubleshooting. Quality control and trouble-shooting is constant. But the upside of all of this is working in a fun, healthy environment where we can continue to make great toys. This reverence we have for creation has attracted so many good people. A lot of the people that make it all work have been with us for 20, even 30 years. They bring their creative energy to this space, and we’ve made it, as much as we can, into a board-sports oasis where people can build toys. We try to employ people year-round, which can be challenging in a seasonal board-sports industry, and allow everyone involved to have some fun. At some point, maybe my retirement is just building fun boards that aren’t meant for market. We have a toy factory and a kitchen we get to cook in. Mike’s still working on new constructions—he came up with a brand-new construction this year that’s gonna be really exciting—we’re gonna put it on Travis’ board and Mike’s favorite board, the Cygnus BM. I call it the Cygnus Big Mike. Recently, we built a board that had a bunch of layers of carbon, and visually it came out amazing. It was fun to see Mike’s eyes light up, just like they did when we were kids. You want everybody to be happy the whole way along the process. The guy that’s making the wood core, the guy that’s edging, all the way down to the rider, and their experience. Once you get all that in place and they can share that with the world, then you have a magical story. 082 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 20.4: Page 82
