As our CEO Adam Ellis emphasised, with the Founder's Day we want to create an event that will take place regularly in the future in order to establish relaxed connections between brands and also with our departments and employees. Our first Founder's Day was attended by personalities such as as Henry and Cedric Nidecker and Tom Wilson-North from the Nidecker Group, Jürgen and Julian Wolf from Homeboy, Hermann Kapferer from Burton Europe, Christian Bisgaard from Fat Moose, Ben Klaassen from REELL, Joe Windemuth from Coal, Mike West from 686, Tommy Delago from Nitro and many more. Of course, our own founder Gerfried Schuller couldn't miss out on a day like this and was also there.
After a get-together at the Blue Tomato Shop in Schladming, we went to a trendy restaurant in Schladming for dinner. The next day, most of our guests joined our employees on the Planai, the local ski resort, partly to make the most of the fresh snow, but at least to savour the Austrian gastronomy. That evening, an awards show was also held to honor our most successfull shop employees. Many of the participating brands had sponsored prizes and were therefore able to congratulate the winners in person. An after-party at the Congress in Schladming was the perfect way to round off the Founders Day.
We sat down with a few of the founders, had a chat and asked the important questions, such as how they came up with their brand name, what their favorite product of this year is or whether they would like to sponsor our interviewer Jonsen or not.
Beyond Medals: Kevin Backstrom and Tor Lundstrom
Kevin Backstrom and Tor Lundstrom founded Beyond Medals in 2012 and have been in business for over 10 years. In the beginning, filming and traveling were the most important things for them. They wanted to show their journey to the Olympic Games. After Kevin was kicked off the Swedish national team, Tor followed him, and although they didn't end up making it to the Olympics, they naturally carried on and took the more creative route. About 5 years ago they started making streetwear merchandise. The duo always talked about starting an outerwear brand and today here they are with a street and outerwear brand and of course still making high quality and creative snowboard videos. Their creativity was evident when we asked them what they would invent if anything was possible. Their answer: a Beyond Medals backpack with a propeller.
The most exciting question was which product from the 23/24 season they love the most: For Kevin and Tor, it's clearly the cargo kits. The snowpants are even baggier and the jackets have big pockets.
Horsefeathers: Hanus Salz
Unlike Beyond Medals, Horsefeathers has been in business for over 30 years and Blue Tomato has been part of their journey for over 15 years. Hanus Salz, founder of Horsefeathers, explained to us where the name "Horsefeathers" actually comes from and how Hanus and Pavel they came up with it. Basically, it means "nonsense" and is a kind of punk word that comes from Canada, where Hanus partially grew up. A friend's grandma always used it when someone was being silly, and then the guys started using "Horsefeathers" as a crew name and printing it on T-shirts. When they founded the brand in the early 90s, the name just stayed the same. Since Horsefeathers' mission is to make products of the highest possible quality, the focus is not necessarily on the design or the color. The most important thing for them is that the products are functional, so that they can be used in the backcountry or for splitboarding, for example.
Nidecker: Cedric and Henry Nidecker
155 years and 5 generations: That's how long the Nidecker company has been around. The Nidecker brothers Cedric and Henry, who have been part of the management team for around 15 years, were of course also present at our Founders' Day. Would they like to bring back anything from the "good old days"? "Nah, everything is cool the way it is today!" They are excited to see what the future holds. But in their position as three brothers running the company, they could bring it all back if they wanted to. For example, they would invent bindings that fit on any board, that are automatic and that you can just step on. (Or have they already done that with the Nidecker Supermatic?).
Some of their favorites from the new season are:
Nitro: Tommy Delago
Nitro’s founder Tommy Delago told us about their new film "Layers", "an homage to the people who work with and behind the scenes of snowboarding, the people you don't normally see". The biggest challenge in the industry for Tommy is to get people excited about snowboarding. "As a sport and as an industry, snowboarding is under-established or under-represented at all sorts of levels." To that end, he has a vision of a facility that gets more kids to get on a board.
Slash: Gigi Rüf
Our last interview guest was, last but not least, none other than Gigi Rüf, living snowboard legend, Pirates crew member and, of course, founder of Slash Snowboards. Where does the name of the brand actually come from? For Gigi, it's "the simplest expression of style". With the world-famous work-life balance, which Gigi also likes to call "work-shred" or "work-slash-balance", he manages to create new things every year and still film all winter long, like this year with Clemens Millauer's video project “Schnitzel Time”.
We also asked him about his favourites from his collection for this season:
