Hardgoods 24/25

[Kevington]

It look like
Powder Twin (in white)
Super DOA (gray in the back)

I'm seeing a lot of beige and grey in that picture. Finally my palette is back en vogue.

Teak Longo pants with a knee reinforcement will do me just fine for next season.

[YukonCornelius]

I don't drink Monster in a Nuggets 59FIFTY with the sticker still on it while driving a WRX to Breck and listening to Pretty Lights, therefore I cannot buy a Never Summer.

You are my spirit animal...

i will try and take a photo of this type of vehicle this weekend on i70.

we may even get lucky and have the eagle sticker, bass head, griz and PL fam all in one

[coleslawed]

A friend of mine, who is a legit rider, also has had a lot of NS boards. To me it's always seemed more like a personality type, rather than the product itself. I don't think he has any sort of CO connection - he's from the Midwest, and doesn't seem like the type. A bit strange to me, not that I actually care. I don't know if I've even given him shit about it, hah.

NS still has a pretty big presence in the midwest. pretty sure the shop Kyle came from in Chicago was a big pusher of them, too. so much so that when they got combo'd into The House, they were willing to overlook Cal Surf's exclusive selling rights in MN to let The House sell NS.

[jota]

If you want to buy from a board company that has a decent retail footprint and isn't part of someone's aggregated portfolio, the list is basically Burton, Capita, Nitro, Never Summer... maybe Weston makes the cut. Everyone else is either super small or owned by private equity, the Nidecker family, or Authentic Brands. Off that list, Nitro's the only other brand I'm particularly down with from shaping.

I have returned to this because the low number of brands that are independent caught my attention. So I dusted off my old magazines and now I understand why some, have big capital bussines behind them:
if we analyze wich is alive today in 2023/24 we have some examples

1/ independent brands or brands supported by large capital or that changed ownership, that were in the 90s and today exist: ONLY:
Burton
Lib tech & gnu (mervin)
Nitro
Nidecker
Ride
Santa cruz
Sims
Winterstick

2/ ski brands that were in the 90s and today exist:
K2
Rossignol

3/ legendary brands that unfortunately have not survived the market: A LOT!!!
A snowboards: (with legendary regis rolland)
Airwalk
Bargoot
Crazy banana
Duotone
F2
Hammer
Hooger
Killer loop
Morrow
Oxbow
Palmer and his mithical owner
Town & country

Seeing the number of brands that have fallen, (these are just a few) it’s understandable that many have had to go through external capital, changes in ownership and financial strategics to survive... . perhaps if not today they would’t be here…

[kimchi]

1/ independent brands or brands supported by large capital or that changed ownership, that were in the 90s and today exist: ONLY:
Burton
Lib tech & gnu (mervin)
Nitro
Nidecker
Ride
Santa cruz
Sims
Winterstick

This small list even overstates how many brands survived.

Santa Cruz is basically a cash grab by NHS distribution. Looking closely at the Decal 3 I have in my basement, that thing is crap. They’re not even distributed in the US this season.

Winterstick is basically a brand new company after Wescott revived the brand ~10 years ago. I think they were just a dead legacy brand up whose trademark got bought out, similar to the new Kemper.

And Sims spent 15 years in the wilderness getting sold next to discount youth baseball bats, and is now run out of Japan.

[jota]

1/ independent brands or brands supported by large capital or that changed ownership, that were in the 90s and today exist: ONLY:
Burton
Lib tech & gnu (mervin)
Nitro
Nidecker
Ride
Santa cruz
Sims
Winterstick

This small list even overstates how many brands survived.

Santa Cruz is basically a cash grab by NHS distribution. Looking closely at the Decal 3 I have in my basement, that thing is crap. They’re not even distributed in the US this season.

Winterstick is basically a brand new company after Wescott revived the brand ~10 years ago. I think they were just a dead legacy brand up whose trademark got bought out, similar to the new Kemper.

And Sims spent 15 years in the wilderness getting sold next to discount youth baseball bats, and is now run out of Japan.

Of course, @kimchi that's why I put brands with external capital or bought by other companies. You know the economic situation of many brands better than I do. But I was curious why list 1 is small, list 2 is very small and list 3 is huge?

Speculating I came to this simple but curious analysis: which may or may not be correct: the brands that only manufactured boards didn’t survive in the market:

List 3 are brands that only made boards. They disappeared.

List 2 are brands that make boards but supported by ski giants and currently Salomon, which also has outdoor products.
Those smaller brands who tried only with boards were left along the way... volk, elan...

List 1 is where the substance is: why have they survived? Sims, winterstick, santa cruz... they are where you say they are... nitro and ride I don't know... mervin with external capital behind...

And then there are the two big ones.
A/ The Great American o e: Burton
B/ the big European one: nidecker
Burton whose characteristic is that he offers everything. Clothes, backpacks, casual clothes, boards boots, bindings, waxes… everything
And Nidecker, who only makes boards, but surely his success is based on the brands they own or what he earns because other brands manufacture in his factory.

… and in the search for the most authentic or honest snowboard brand, to support it, perhaps this is the reality and we must understand that to survive, brands have to do more things than just sell boards, even if they are things that sometimes they must to do and we don’t like (Mervin making skis...)…

and perhaps that is the key to why there are so few authentic or honest brands that have survived on their own and why others need help or groups behind them to continue doing so,... it could be like this or maybe I just said nonsense

[spanyard]

No salomon on that list? Not under skis?

[jota]

No salomon on that list? Not under skis?

the list is from the mid 90's. I saw Salomon in the early 2000's but I don't remember them before. The list is made from European catalogs and they weren't there yet

The objective was not an absolute list of all brands but to create groups and see if they had circumstances in common and see if that helped analyze the reasons why some brands are still alive and others are not.

[spanyard]

They were definitely there in the mid '90s. Cap construction. Nidecker is basically a wide monoski brand. Change my mind.

[jota]

They were definitely there in the mid '90s. Cap construction. Nidecker is basically a wide monoski brand. Change my mind.

I assumed it would be on the market earlier than in the 2000s but it didn't appear in the catalogs I had... I saw Salomon boards in the late 90s or early 2000s, I don't remember

Nidecker It never caught my attention... not because of quality, not because of graphics, not because of anything...