by Board Retailers Association | Apr 27, 2022 | Community, Industry, Retail Strategy, Skateboard, Snowboard
New Tactics CEO Dugan Baker – Photo courtesy of Tactics By Tiffany Montgomery | Published Apr 26, 2022 Important industry skate and snow retailer Tactics (BRA Distinguished Retail Member), which is a big online player in addition to operating three brick-and-mortar stores, has a new CEO. Please note that this article is a Shop Eat Surf Executive Edition article so you will need to sign up for access before viewing: Click here to login or click here to sign up for a free 30 day Executive Edition trial. We, at BRA, feel that the benefits of the SES Executive Edition Membership outweigh the cost. Be sure to visit the Shop Eat Surf website to view valuable Industry News and Resourceful Articles regularly via this link: Shop Eat Surf If you are not yet a BRA Retail Member, you can easily opt in to either Regular (no cost) or Distinguished ($100/yr.) Membership via this super simple join...
by Board Retailers Association | Mar 25, 2022 | Awards, Competitions, News, Skateboard, Snowboard, Surf
Kelly Slater will be at the Oscars. Pretty good for a surfer from Cocoa Beach, right? Photo: WSL/Heff/Wikimedia Commons There are a few people in sports who transcend the sport itself. They get famous for their talent, but stay famous for something else. Take, for example, Kelly Slater. If you were to mention his name in non-surfing company, most would know who he is. Take John John Florence, and I’ll bet far fewer non-surfers would be familiar. Mason Ho? Clay Marzo? Probably not. They’re big names in surfing, but that’s a big fish in a small pond. Kelly Slater, Shaun White, and Tony Hawk are three action sports stars who have gone bigger than their sport. Which is why the Oscars, airing on March 27 on ABC, enlisted them as presenters. Slater, White, and Hawk join a cast of immensely famous people including Kevin Costner, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Hopkins, Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Brolin, Jennifer Garner, Tiffany Haddish, Jason Momoa, Elliot Page, Bill Murray (Kelly’s golf pal), DJ Khaled, and more. Although Slater is certainly used to the public eye by now — he’s been in it for the majority of his life, after all — he’s aware of how incredible it is to be asked to present at the Oscars. “Well, I guess it’s remarkable that a surfer kid from Cocoa Beach is presenting on the big stage,” he told me. “Some things in my life have been unimaginable. I’m very honored.” As usual, though, the decision-makers at the Oscars are facing backlash for some of their choices. Scott Weinberg, a film producer and critic, is one of the people who...
![“We’re [Outdoor Retailer] Moving Back to Salt Lake City” by Marisa Nichols and Jeff Davis via OutdoorRetailer.com News plus opportunity to be considered for OR SLC Lodging Scholarships](https://www.boardretailers.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/OR-SLC_Salt_Palace-1920x700-1-1080x675.png)
by Board Retailers Association | Mar 24, 2022 | Community, Educational Opportunity, Industry, News, Outdoor, Resources, Snowboard, Trade Shows
Since 1982, Outdoor Retailer has brought the outdoor industry together for commerce, to share ideas, and to provide an experience that has grown into more than a trade show. Our community has become family, and for the past five years we’ve held our biannual gatherings in Denver. As our contract nears its natural end after 2022, we’ve been exploring our options and conferring with the industry to map our next steps. After much deliberation and input from all sides, we’ve decided the best move for Outdoor Retailer is to return to our basecamp. We’re heading back to Salt Lake City and County to the place we grew up and where our industry matured into the dynamic and powerful community it is today. Moving forward, Outdoor Retailer will bring the community together in January and June at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center. We have a strong relationship with Salt Lake City and a committed partner in Mayor Erin Mendenhall, whose values align with ours following tremendous investments in clean energy and a strong commitment to public lands. This proved to be a real turning point in our recent negotiations. A Commitment to Change Salt Lake City and County is our hometown, and we’re going back with a commitment to effecting meaningful change. It would be wrong for us to leave the way we did and simply go back as if nothing happened. In reality, leaving after 2017 has not brought the change we had hoped for, so we will push back, not pull back. We firmly believe that staying engaged and collectively contributing to the ongoing discussion,...
by Board Retailers Association | Mar 11, 2022 | Industry, Olympics, Snowboard
Mike Schultz riding in the adaptive banked slalom final during the 2017 Dew Tour Ezra Shaw / Getty Images After a horrific accident took his leg, Mike Schultz invented a high-tech artificial limb that action sport athletes quickly adopted. And now, to win gold at the Beijing Paralympics, he’ll have to beat them. They called him Monster Mike. For the way he threw his sled around on the professional snowmobile circuit and muscled his dirt bike over motocross courses. Arms of steel, gut on fire. Unstoppable. Until that day in December 2008. He was in Ironwood, Michigan, the second stop on the International Series of Champions tour, what they called the NASCAR of snowmobile racing. On a downhill stretch of the course, Schultz charged from the back of the field, gunning his machine to 40 miles per hour. Then he caught a hole. His snowmobile shimmied from side to side, kicked, and bucked him into the air. He slammed feet first, full force, into the packed snow, flipped, and landed on his back. The impact so mangled his left knee that he stared down at the sole of his boot. When the EMT arrived and slit open his pant leg, a gallon of blood gushed out. That’s what his wife, a registered nurse, saw when she arrived with a race official: her husband lying in snow stained red. She dropped to her knees by his side. “He was in agony,” Sara Schultz recalls, “making a low, moaning sound.” Mike was going into shock. She tried to help him focus on his breathing. They loaded him onto a toboggan and transferred...
by Board Retailers Association | Feb 10, 2022 | Competitions, Industry, News, Olympics, Snowboard, Women's Market
Chloe Kim’s score from her first halfpipe run delivered her second consecutive gold medal in the event.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times Kim was awarded with an untouchable score of 94. Queralt Castellet, of Spain, earned the silver medal, and Sena Tomita, of Japan, won bronze, neither seriously threatening Kim’s performance. Kim tried to ratchet the degree of difficulty in her final two runs, the way she had four years ago. She fell both times. It didn’t matter. The contest was over nearly as quickly as it had started. “Not to discount any of these riders, but she has a bag of tricks that not anyone else does,” Kim’s longtime coach, Rick Bower, said. “And she showcased that in her first run.”The victory felt less like a coronation for Kim, now 21, but a personal comeback of sorts. The lingering question as she scooted away was what happens next. Four years ago, Kim arrived to the 2018 Olympics and landed into the embrace of a warm South Korean crowd, a loving family and instant stardom. She was 17. It all seemed so easy. The 2022 Olympic halfpipe final had none of that, except in the pipe itself. There was no crowd because of the pandemic. Her family did not attend. And Kim is now 21. This is a different time and a different Kim. Chloe Kim fell on her second and third runs but still remained in first place with a 94.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times The attention from the last Olympic victory, and some of the nastiness, even within snowboarding circles, nearly chased her from the sport. She didn’t strap...
by Board Retailers Association | Jan 17, 2022 | Competitions, Industry, Olympics, Retail History, Snowboard
Snowboarder Shannon Dunn competes for Team USA in the 1998 Winter Olympics, where she won the bronze medal in half-pipe. Alexander Hassenstein / Bongarts via Getty Images Long before the term “snowboarding” existed—and at least 80 years before it was an Olympic phenomenon—people were zipping like surfers down snow-covered hills. The first known instance came in 1917, when 13-year-old Vern Wicklund stood on a modified sled that he rode down his parents’ backyard in Cloquet, Minnesota. Wicklund patented the idea nearly two decades later but produced only a handful of models. The sport picked up speed in 1965, when Michigan’s Sherman Poppen created the Snurfer by cross-bracing two skis and adding a string at the front for steering. Poppen sold close to one million units by 1970. Sherman Poppen created the Snurfer, immediate forerunner to the modern snowboard, in 1965. Courtesy Snurfer LLC But the real breakthrough happened when Dimitrije Milovich, a Cornell University dropout, founded Winterstick, the first modern snowboard company, in 1972. With steel edges, laminated fiberglass and, most crucially, nylon straps for one’s feet, Winterstick’s boards allowed riders to fly through more treacherous topography than its predecessors had. Snowboarding went mainstream soon thereafter amid a fierce rivalry between Jake Burton Carpenter and Tom Sims. Sims, a New Jersey-raised professional skateboarder more interested in aerial stunts than in speed, founded SIMS Snowboarding in 1976. Carpenter, a race enthusiast from Long Island credited with coining “snowboarding,” created Burton Boards one year later. “They’re endangering the public and possibly themselves!” As snowboarding grew in popularity, so did its reputation as a pastime for screwballs—a counterculture to skiing’s establishment vibe. In the 1980s, most North American ski...
