Jake Burton and the History of Snowboarding
Uploaded by spootyhead on Mar 08, 2007
Jake Burton and the History of Snowboarding
Twenty five years have gone by since Jake Burton Carpenter started making snowboards. His company today is the most successful and largest manufacturer in the world for snowboarding. A key success to Burton Boards was pushing to make snowboarding a sport.
The idea came from building a better Snurfer, a sled toy that was shaped like a small water ski with rope tied to the nose and used to stand on. Purely sport, not the Burton company was Jake’s main focus when he first started out in the 70s. He worked with ski areas to get the new sport moving and onto the mountains. He succeeded in the early 80s by convincing Stratton Mountain to give it a shot.
"I was talking to all these successful entrepreneurs and realized that it’s not impossible to get a business going," recalls Jake (Morrison). Friends were turning friends into snowboarding and sales doubled every season. Skaters, surfers, and skiers everywhere were discovering the new sensation. The temptation was there to get all the money and have stock to go out and build factories and such, but Burton was more focused on a developing high quality snowboarding gear.
A big step for Jake was creating a group of senior managers. These would be the key people and to divide the tasks of the company. With good decisions, Jake created a great senior management group, they all ride and are dedicated to the sport. A majority of them have been at Burton for ten years.
Burton, the company does not have any stocks because Jake doesn’t think it makes sense to have shareholders who don’t snowboard. "How can they be better owners of a this company, I live it, I love it-this sport is my life." Jake isn’t working 70 hour weeks anymore, instead he’s out riding and taken his success as an opportunity to get more involved in the sport than ever before.
In 1995, Burton started CHILL, a learn to snowboard program for needy kids in the Burlington, Vermont area. The company focused on kids who didn’t have the money to get to a mountain and snowboard. The...