Remembering Jake Burton Carpenter

The founder of Burton Snowboards, Jake Burton Carpenter, has died. He was 65 years old. We are grateful that Jake shared his story with us in 2017 and we are republishing it as a tribute to his life and career in which he elevated snowboarding into an international sport. In 1977, 23-year-old Jake Carpenter set out to design a better version of the Snurfer, a stand-up sled he loved to ride as a teenager. Working by himself in a barn in Londonderry, Vermont, he sanded and whittled stacks of wood, trying to create the perfect ride. He eventually helped launch an entirely new sport, while building the largest snowboard brand in the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. So by now, you might have heard that Jake Burton Carpenter, the founder of Burton Snowboards, died this past week. Jake was 65. And in his honor, we thought we would re-release this interview I did with him back in July of 2017. It was actually an incredible experience. Jake flew down from Vermont for this interview, and he brought me a bottle of Vermont maple syrup. But what he really brought was himself. And as you can hear in this interview, he was really vulnerable and really human. And this is a guy who helped to elevate snowboarding and turn it into an international sport. Anyway, all of us who got a chance to meet him feel really lucky that we did. And if you haven't

• 0:41Guy Raz?

  heard this interview, or even if you have, it's really worth hearing. So take a listen in honor of Jake.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I mean, I was like Willy Loman, and I was a traveling salesman. And I would load up my car. It was a Volvo wagon at the time. And I remember once going out with 38 snowboards, and I drove around New York State and visited dealers. And I went out with 38, and I came home with 40.

• 1:07Guy Raz?

  40 snowboards.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Because one guy had given me two back that he'd bought and said, "This is a joke."

• 1:17Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:31Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz. And on today's show, how Jake Carpenter turned a childhood novelty toy into one of the biggest winter sports in the world, and from it, built Burton Snowboards.

• 1:49Guy Raz?

  So imagine being on an airplane in 1977. You sit down, you strike up a conversation with the guy sitting next to you. You ask him what he does. And he says something like, "I make sleds for the snow, except you stand on them like a skateboard." You would have no idea what he was describing. You couldn't have imagined that- Within 20 years, snowboarding would become a multi-billion dollar industry. And if that person next to you were Jake Burton Carpenter, there's no way you'd have predicted that one day, one out of every three snowboards sold worldwide would be a Burton snowboard. And not because he invented the sport, he didn't.

• 2:31Guy Raz?

  But there's probably no one on Earth who did more to popularize it. And it didn't happen overnight. 10 years after Jake founded Burton Snowboards, fewer than 7% of ski resorts even allowed snowboarding. But today, it's hard to find one that doesn't. And the thing about Burton is, it didn't just build snowboards, it built a culture around snowboarding. It was a culture that was inspired in part by family ski trips to Vermont when Jake was a kid.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  My dad sort of figured it might be something fun for a family to do. When I was around, I guess, seven or eight, and he would take the whole family. I just always had this attachment to snow. I mean, I, to me, it meant no school. And still, my favorite thing to do in life is go up to my kids' rooms. And, I mean, those days are behind me, but tell them to get up for school, and then after they get up, tell them it's a snow day.

• 3:28Guy Raz?

  One winter in 1966, there was a brief craze across parts of America for a novelty toy called the Snurfer, as in "snow plus surf." It was basically a stand-up sled that you could ride down a hill. And Jake Carpenter was one of the thousands of kids who bought one for $10.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  It was a four-foot-long piece of wood that was about six or seven inches wide, and it had no edges. And you stood on it on these sort of staples that gave you traction, and you had a rope attached to the nose. It was a little bit like you were riding a fucking Bronco just getting down the hill. But it was fun. And Brunswick made them, and they sold 800,000 or something like that. But it developed this sort of cult in a positive sense of the word. I had friends, and we would do it together, and we would modify them. For me, a Snurfer was the opportunity to surf.

• 4:24Guy Raz?

  It was basically surfing on snow.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Surfing on snow.

• 4:28Guy Raz?

  Now, in a lot of ways, Jake's childhood was pretty great, even idyllic. But then, when he was about 13, things started to unravel. Jake's older brother, George, was killed in battle in Vietnam. And a few years later, his mother died as well. And for Jake, it was a pretty tough time. He even ended up getting expelled from his boarding school.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I was a wise ass when I was young, and to a fault. And when I got kicked out of Brooks was a school, and I went up to see the headmaster, who was the headmaster when my father was there and when my brother was there. It was brutal. I mean, my dad made me get in the car, go five hours, see this guy for a five-minute conversation, and then a long drive home. And that is when I decided to turn my life around and start applying myself to whatever the hell I did.

• 5:20Guy Raz?

  And the way he did apply himself was by figuring out how to take what he was good at and make money out of it. So Jake's first venture was a small landscaping business. And then, after college, he went to work for an investor in Manhattan. But in the back of his mind, he never forgot about the snurfer and about its potential to be something much, much bigger.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, really, from the very beginning of snurfing for me, I saw it as something that could be developed. And I was sure that Brunswick was going to do it, or somebody was going to do it, and nothing happened. But in the back of my mind, I always knew it could be a sport. And I didn't have a business plan, per se, but I did the math that if I could make 50 snowboards a day, I could make $100,000 a year, and that would be awesome.

• 6:12Guy Raz?

  You thought, I can do something, and the thing to do is make a much better snurfer.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, make money on it. So I started the company in 77.

• 6:20Guy Raz?

  And what did you do? Because you were living in Manhattan at the time, right?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yes, and I made my first... Prototypes in my apartment on the Upper East, you know, up on 86th Street.

• 6:31Guy Raz?

  Like, did you have like a shop in your apartment and like table saws and stuff?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  You know, I was as clueless then as you are now. I did not know how to do it. I was a loser in shop class in school. Like, my napkin holder was by far the ugliest or the worst. And so there I was with a saber saw and in my apartment, making them.

• 6:51Guy Raz?

  Like, out of what? You buy sheets of wood?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, out of wood. The very first, I was modifying some snurfers that were around. And then I said, I gotta move to Vermont to start this company. We're not gonna start a snowboard company in.

• 7:04Guy Raz?

  Manhattan.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I left my job in New York City in like early December. I thought, oh, winter's here. You know, I started landscaping business when it was spring. And you start raking your lawns. And I, I had a car, station wagon that I inherited from the family. I had a box of garbage bags and a couple of rakes. And that's what I started my landscaping business with. Manufacturing is a lot tougher than mowing lawns. But I thought, okay, it's winter. Now's the time to start the company. I almost missed the next winter, literally. It took so long to develop a product.

• 7:34Guy Raz?

  And by the way, how did you finance it? Where did you get the money?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Well, my, because my mother died at a young age. When my grandmother died, she had some dough. And instead of it going to my mother, it came to me and my two sisters. And so I inherited almost $200,000. And I spent 150 of it developing Burton.

• 7:55Guy Raz?

  So your middle name was Burton?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:58Guy Raz?

  But your last name's Carpenter. So why did you call the, the snowboards or the company Burton?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  I just always had this interest in the guy I was named after, John House Burton. And I thought that Burton was a cooler name. And I wanted to name it Boards. I mean, Boards was part of the name. It was Burton Boards. And then I drove down to Montpelier, Vermont and incorporated, went to the, it was so cool. Did all the paperwork and everything. It was a big moment for me. And I started as a Burton Corporation or maybe Burton Boards. I sort of did some form of crude trademark or put TM next to it, even though I didn't have anything official.

• 8:39Guy Raz?

  So you, okay, so you moved to Vermont and then to start this thing and then what was your next step?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I went to this company called Shushin Bent Wood Company and they made curved wood for people that made furniture out of solid ash.

• 8:54Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  So my first prototype was a piece of solid ash that was just put in this thing to curve the nose and then I just started riding them on hills and I'd literally made 100.

• 9:06Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  But of those 100 prototypes, they weren't all solid wood. I got onto laminated wood, vertically laminated and horizontally laminated, like plywood. I went to a friend who lived in California who had a surfboard company and they would let me make boards in their factory at night and I would take a surfboard blank, which is six or seven feet long and maybe three or four inches thick and by the morning I'd have whittled the thing down to a snowboard and they would just, these guys were so cool, but they laughed at me.

• 9:36Guy Raz?

  When you went to these factories and you said, "I need you to give me this curved piece of wood or this piece of material," and they would say, "Well, what is it for? What would you tell them?"

• 9:45Speaker 01

  I mean, a snurfer, there was some awareness of it. It had been around. So I was telling them that I was making a modern rendition of that and I always feared that like the minute ski companies caught wind of this, that they would just jump on it and I'd be out of business in no time.

• 10:00Guy Raz?

  But nobody cared?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Nobody cared.

• 10:02Guy Raz?

  And was it just you, like, with this thing, like messing around on hills?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Dude, I was so alone, yeah.

• 10:08Guy Raz?

  Wow. Did you ever come across people like, "What is that? What are you doing?"

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yes, it was to the point, literally, if I was on a plane and somebody would ask me what I did, I would make something up because it was just too embarrassing.

• 10:20Guy Raz?

  Because you couldn't explain what it was. The concept of snowboarding wasn't something that, it would be like saying today, "Yeah, I ride clouds. Like, that's my job. I make skateboards for cloud skateboarding."

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 10:32Guy Raz?

  Right. It was so weird. So at what point were you able to say, "I got it. I've got, this is the one I'm gonna make."

• 10:41Speaker 01

  I hadn't thought about this in a long time, but I remember that specific moment on Mount Washington in June, and you could hike up Mount, you know, they have-

• 10:50Guy Raz?

  Since June of-

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Would have been June of 78.

• 10:53Guy Raz?

  78, okay.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  And I'm hiking up there, and Hillman's Highway was the trail, and I had the board, or I was testing, the final test, and it was horizontally laminated rock maple, very much like a skateboard, but thinner and more flexible. And I rode down, you know, just hiking up a little bit and riding, it's like, okay, this is it. And then I've decided on the construction now, so I go out and I rent this place that's gonna be this little, um, sort of factory. And I hired two relatives and a friend to help me take these pieces of curved wood and shape them, drill them, paint them, put fins on them, put mat on them, put bindings on them.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  It was a long process, and we, as I said, my original plan was to make 50 boards a day, that was always sort of my goal.

• 11:44Guy Raz?

  Because you thought that they were just gonna, this was gonna blow up, it was, you were gonna need to-

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I didn't, I majored in economics at college, I had classes with Nobel Prize winners, but I don't know if I really understood supply and demand.

• 11:58Guy Raz?

  Did you have a shop?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yes, in Londonderry, Vermont, with Burton Boards written on the front of it in big letters.

• 12:04Guy Raz?

  Like, who were the kinds of people who were coming into your shop in Londonderry, Vermont, and saying, "Yeah, I'll buy one"?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't people out for a walk and buying a snowboard, and we didn't sell any, maybe a few t-shirts, but it was people that found out about us that would come there, and, uh, people, we would advertise in the skateboard magazines and a little bit in the ski magazines, spend some money there, I mean, I, because there were these pockets around the country, in Michigan, in Arizona, there were these places where people had snurfed and liked me, and they'd sort of stuck with it, and they got it, they understood it.

• 12:44Guy Raz?

  That first year, what kind of feedback were you getting from people who bought them? Did they love it? Were they like, "This is gonna change the world"?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, um, I mean, I was like Willy Loman, and I was a traveling salesman. And I would load up my car. It was a Volvo wagon at the time. And I remember once going out with 38 snowboards, and I drove around New York State and visited dealers. And I went out with 38, and I came home with 40.

• 13:10Guy Raz?

  40 snowboards?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Because one guy had given me two back that he'd bought and said, "This is a joke."

• 13:16Guy Raz?

  You would visit ski shops, basically?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Ski shops, yeah. That was my first. And then ultimately, you know, some surf shops. And it was, in the beginning, skateboard shops, surf shops, ski shops. Nobody wanted any part of it.

• 13:29Guy Raz?

  I mean, were you discouraged at all after that first year? Did you think, "Maybe this is not gonna work, and maybe I should just cut bait"?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had some, I had a few days. It was tough getting out of bed, just motivating myself.

• 13:42Guy Raz?

  Right. I mean, you were getting rejected all the time.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  All day long.

• 13:47Guy Raz?

  And you were all by yourself?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I am, like, I'm an emotional guy, you know, having lost people. And it always happened.

• 13:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  So I had to let go of my two relatives and my friend very quickly. And it became back to me in year two, because we made enough boards in that first winter. I don't know, what have we made? A thousand or 15? We made enough for three years.

• 14:16Guy Raz?

  So they're just sitting in your shop?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're not fully, fully assembled or boxed. But yeah, they're pretty much done. And so I had one high school kid helping me out part-time, and that was it.

• 14:26Guy Raz?

  And how many boards did you guys sell that first year?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  First year was 300 or 350. Second year was 700. I remember one day in that second winter of selling and packing up the 700th board and thinking... Wow, that's, you know, that's over doubling.

• 14:42Guy Raz?

  So what happens between that first year and that second year when you go from 300 to 700? Why? Why did you double the number of boards? Was it just luck?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Exposure. It was just getting out there, word of mouth. I mean, marketing, our, you know, advertising, placing ads in these ski, surf or skateboard mags. I mean, I remember going to check the mailbox because dealers really weren't that interested in, you know, stores. And so we would send out these brochures, right from year one, we had brochures. And we would send them out with a little mail order form in it. And I would go to get the mail every day. And I remember looking in the mailbox and it would be like either nothing or a couple of envelopes. Or some days there'd be five or six envelopes. And then you'd open up the thing and it had this crude little order form. And you could get it, you'd open up the envelope and it would be, you know, two T-shirts or something. And then you'd open up an envelope and it would be like four snowboards for a family in Connecticut.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  I mean, I can remember it so clearly.

• 15:39Guy Raz?

  And where could you actually use them? I'm assuming you couldn't take it to a ski resort and just go down a mountain?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  No, but it was presented, I mean, skiing at the time was 20 bucks a day. And it was a lot of money. So this was an opportunity to express yourself and have fun out and do with friends. And it was a cheap way to have a lot of fun when there's snow on the ground.

• 16:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  You could not go in a resort. And to be honest, I didn't start it as a resort thing.

• 16:11Guy Raz?

  You didn't care?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't, that wasn't the intent. It was like a low cost alternative to skiing. But then these kids who, then I started hiring more kids. This is maybe year three.

• 16:22Guy Raz?

  To do what? To just?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Help assemble these boards, put them in boxes and get them out the door.

• 16:26Guy Raz?

  Because you were still doing all the assembly in that place in Vermont?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:30Guy Raz?

  By hand?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 16:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would just help me get the boards out the door. This one resort, Bromley, you could drive up to this village that was a quarter of the way up the mountain. So we would pile into the car, drive up to the village. Everybody would, if there were four of us, one guy would stay in the car. The other three would snowboard down the hill. And then we'd meet at the bottom and do it again and again. And then ultimately, snowcat drivers would give us rides and we'd...

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Bribe snowcat drivers with six pack or something.

• 17:00Guy Raz?

  And they would drive you up to a point.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  The top of the mountain. But it was so challenging to ride those boards. People now, they have these vintage races and they get on old snowboards and I for the life of me don't get it. I mean, it's, you know, hard. But it was just these young rebellious, I mean, what snowboarding and Burton did is we revolutionized winter life and this was the beginning of it.

• 17:29Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, do you remember a moment when, like in those early years, when this thing like really started to take off?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, in terms of the sport or my company, I mean, it was nothing, I think in the now, in the context of starting a business, people think of internet companies that just explode in day one. And there just was not a defining moment in the context of this sport blowing up. I mean, there were big milestones along the way and I think Time was calling it the worst new sport.

• 17:59Guy Raz?

  Do you remember when that was? It was in the eighties?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, that would have been early eighties.

• 18:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  And part of that time thing, the worst new sport was, they said, it was more about raging hormones and this was these rebellious, young men that were making it happen. And then some cool girls, very courageous women got into it and started doing it. And I realized, okay, we're not going to lose any more money. We might not make money, but I can, you know, manage, manage this financially. So it just grew and grew and grew, but at a manageable pace.

• 18:37Guy Raz?

  Why didn't ski resorts allow snowboarders in the beginning?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Well, it was, um, there was actually a famous case at Stratton, which was a resort, one of the first resorts that led us on where this guy had.

• 18:49Guy Raz?

  Where's Stratton?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  It's in southern Vermont and this guy had broken his leg because of some sign or something, skiing, and he sued the mountain and I think he tried to get half a million and he got a million dollars. So there was this liability. There's this just paranoia about getting sued.

• 19:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And so that was their fear, but they ultimately would give us a chance and we would lobby with them and their kids sometimes helped and we would lobby resorts. And then if a big resort like we got on Stratton, then Bromley had to come along and Magic Mountain and it took years, but it was, um, there was no stopping it.

• 19:28Guy Raz?

  Did you at that point also, I guess, start to identify people who are really good snowboarders and sponsor them?

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, for a minute there, these kids that had worked for me just happened to be the best. And then there was a rider, Craig Kelly, who actually rode for this company, Sims, who started making snowboards after we did. But they were a pretty well-known skateboard company. And this guy, Craig Kelly, rode for them. But we were good friends. And I'd always told Craig, if he ever had the opportunity, we would love for him to ride for us. And then Sims ultimately sold his company to a bigger skateboard company. And so we cut a deal, and he rode for me. And I paid him 17,000 bucks a year. And this guy was, Craig Kelly, was a godsend.

• 20:16Guy Raz?

  And he always used Burton snowboards?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  He was Burton, head to toe.

• 20:19Guy Raz?

  So Burton was all over his body?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:21Guy Raz?

  So having him represent Burton, that must have been pretty transformational.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  It was beyond transformational.

• 20:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah, because you're all of a sudden, not only do you have this advertisement, but you've got the coolest and the best guy who can do all this cool stuff. And you've got kids seeing this, and they're like, well, I want to try this. And I guess Burton's the way to go because this guy uses Burton?

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yes. You know what? That's pretty much it. Craig made the sport cool and the brand cool.

• 20:49Guy Raz?

  When did, I mean, as snowboarding started to get bigger, the ski companies must have thought, well, there's money to be made here, right? Like, K2 and Rossignolli, didn't they start to make snowboards?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  It's just so funny that the ski companies were so oblivious to what was going on in front of their eyes. I mean, talk about close-minded, you know?

• 21:12Guy Raz?

  Because they could have crushed you early on, right?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  They could have destroyed us. And there were all these rumors that some ski company's going to start making them. And we went from being, you know, flying the windshield of the ski industry, to all of a sudden, we became a threat.

• 21:29Guy Raz?

  In just a minute, how Jake dealt with the competitors who now wanted a piece of the action. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 21:47Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So in the early days for Jake Carpenter, building Burton and at the same time trying to build the whole sport of snowboarding was sometimes lonely. But because he stuck with it and because the sport caught on, the big ski companies, as you can imagine, started to notice. And all of a sudden, the market for snowboards wasn't so lonely anymore. Okay, so when the big ski companies started to make snowboards, what happened to you guys?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Well, by the time they started making them, we were maybe on a third of the resorts. And they didn't want the sport to happen, right? I mean, these ski companies did not want snowboarding to succeed. So snowboarders didn't like ski companies. I mean, people did perceive them as not being the real deal. And we didn't keep that a secret. I mean, we made it pretty damn clear that we were the real deal. But they did have manufacturing ability. And some of those French and Austrian companies were subsidized by their governments to keep their factories going. So from a cost perspective, they were lower cost producers for a minute there. But it was just, they were too late. They missed the boat.

• 23:03Guy Raz?

  Did you ever have, as snowboarding really began to take off in the early 90s, did you ever face serious threats from competitors, either big or small?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Well, it was always, like, in the early days, it was a rivalry between Burton and Sims. But we've doubled the number of snowboards sold for the first 20 years, I think, of the company. So Sims was a threat at one point. K2 was somewhat of a threat. They got more aggressive earlier on. But no, we've been... We've been the number one manufacturer of snowboards since the day I, you know.

• 23:42Guy Raz?

  At any point, did you think about going public, doing an IPO, seeking venture capital, outside investors, anything like that?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, interestingly, there was this one company called Ride, and they started out, and then a guy that worked for us went to work for them, and he was sort of a mid-level manager for us.

• 24:03Guy Raz?

  It was a competing snowboarding company?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Competing snowboarding company, and he went to work for them, and then they went public, and they had a very low price, and the stock went up to, it split, and then went up to 35 bucks, so it was up to 70 on a non-split basis.

• 24:18Guy Raz?

  So their valuation was huge.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  It was huge, and this kid was a millionaire all of a sudden, and I felt this enormous amount of pressure, like I'm taking care of my people.

• 24:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I bet.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  And like, just, am I doing the right thing here? And so I went and I met with a couple of big New York investment banking firms, and I just couldn't deal, the vibe, it just was like, this isn't us. And then, all of a sudden, Ride's stock, which was at 35 bucks at the time, went down to 2 bucks, because they had these expectations that, like Wall Street, just they take things and they project unrealistic expectations. So ultimately, people have realized, working for a privately-held company has many, many advantages.

• 25:07Guy Raz?

  I guess it was in like, 98, that snowboarding became an Olympic sport. That must have been crazy. I mean, you, I know that you don't like to say this, and you deny it, but you are widely credited as the guy who really made snowboarding what it is, and this became an Olympic sport. How, what did you think when that happened? Like, that must have been a pretty amazing moment.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  It was not a cool moment at all.

• 25:38Guy Raz?

  Wow, I was not expecting that answer at all. That was not the answer I was expecting. What happened?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Well, FIS, which is an international ski federation, it's a Swiss, you know, whatever governmental body, and they controlled the scene and then they started having snowboard competitions. When they just had, aside from their ski races, and we were wondering what they were up to. And then they just arbitrarily decided, okay, snowboard is going to be in the Olympics. I mean, they didn't even give me a phone call. They never told us anything. I will take credit for pioneering the sport and you would think that you might pick up the phone and tell that person what you're up to, or how do you think we should do this? None of that. They just arbitrarily, it's like the baseball player that finds out he's traded when he reads in the newspaper. And then I go to the Olympics, we've got our

• 26:25Speaker 01

  team there and I get to the venue and they've got snowboarding misspelled at the venue.

• 26:30Guy Raz?

  How do they spell it?

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Well, you spell it with a W, snowboarding, but they had S N O hyphen boarding. This is in Nagano, Japan. I was like, not a good sign, right? So, and then they proceeded to have the, the racing thing was hard conditions and they decide, it was a driving rainstorm and they say, okay, we can't have the men's national, we would never have this prestigious ski event in a rainstorm. But no, the snowboarders, they can go. They can get, risk life and limb and not be wearing goggles, it's raining so hard. And so, but nonetheless, they've gotten better and they're doing a better and better job. And the American arm, it's a form of national associations. They care about the sport and they've got some people

• 27:14Speaker 01

  that care about the sport and they're trying to do better. But the last two Olympics, the venues, for the freestyle stuff, which is what people care about, for the half-pipe and slope style, the venues have been really sketchy.

• 27:28Guy Raz?

  As your company grew, describe the culture of the company. Was it, I mean, I'm looking at you right now and I cannot imagine you ever wearing a suit and tie and being like a boardroom boss. Like, for example, like where do you have your meetings with your top team and stuff? Like, how do you?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Well, our meetings, you know, you look at my office, it's three sofas and two chairs and a coffee table and there's no desk. And our senior conference room where we have our board meetings, it's sofas. You can throw your feet up and bring your dog to work. And we've got 132 registered dogs or people, you know, we sort of keep track of the number and it's resembles snowboarding's lifestyle. And we're a tribe and we are so focused on the sport. Everybody in that company, you know, damn near everybody in that company snowboards. And because that's our source of energy, that's where you recharge your batteries.

• 28:25Guy Raz?

  And what if somebody was like, Jake, I'm going to be in late today because I'm going snowboarding?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  It's pretty much the, I mean, if it snows over two feet, it's an automatic day off for the whole company.

• 28:38Guy Raz?

  Nice.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  And last year, there were three of those days, which is almost too nice. I mean, I like people to work too. It's, but people come in late and work late. You know, people work hard there. So that's, as long as people are giving us a solid effort, I get it if they want to get up there and catch a few runs on a great day.

• 29:00Guy Raz?

  So your, your wife, Donna, she, she actually at some point became, took over as the company's CEO, right?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:10Guy Raz?

  And how did that happen? What's, what's the story there?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Well, she came and went and then she was even CFO for a while, this is in the early days. And then when we had kids, she backed off some. She wasn't working as much then. And then when the financial crisis hit, which was really rugged.

• 29:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah, how did that hit you guys?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Well, the bank charged us $4 million to change one paragraph in our loan agreement, which was called a covenant. When you're borrowing money, your earnings had to represent a certain ratio compared to how much money you were borrowing. And we slipped on that one because it was a very tough year. And we weren't losing money, we were making money. But literally, they said, oh, well, you broke this covenant, so you're going to pay a $4 million fee. And that, boy, I mean, we had to lay people off. We weren't making the money that we had been.

• 30:02Guy Raz?

  Because people weren't buying snowboards because of the recession?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. You know, it's always been a youth-driven market. It's kids. I mean, people would buy two or three snowboards a year. And you look at Italy or Spain, two very big markets for us, and the unemployment rate amongst people under 20 was 50%.

• 30:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  It was a very tough, tough time. And through this process of this crisis, and I think it's not unique to Burton, our company culture kind of got destroyed.

• 30:37Guy Raz?

  What happened?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Well, I think a lot of people would blame other people for things, negative things that were happening. And there would be finger pointing. And the culture at our company was messed up. And at the same time, I felt there were no women in our top management. And, and that just felt wrong to me. So I got in there and I, and Donna came along with me. And at that level, we were running the company and I brought her and sort of specifically to help with the culture and get more women in leadership positions at Burton.

• 31:14Guy Raz?

  When you say the culture, I mean, I'm just trying to get in through the innuendo. Was it, was it like bro-ish? Was it like male sort of macho? Was it like, I mean, what, what was the thing you wanted to change?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you're not happy when you're being managed by fear or, or you instill fear in yourself that you're going to lose your job. Or it's just you need to make people, people have to understand when and why stuff happens.

• 31:48Guy Raz?

  Were you responsible for any of that?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  For any of that fear-based stuff? Uh, well, I think I hired many of the people that were in and around it. And I think that, um, We were all responsible to a certain extent. I mean, I don't think that's ever been a tactic that I've used, hopefully. But I certainly let it happen under my nose.

• 32:10Guy Raz?

  Do you think that you have a hard time with criticism? And I ask that because, you know, it can be really problematic, right? If you're unwilling to listen to somebody that says, listen, I know you built this thing, but I'm trying to make it better, listen to me.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  You know, that's couldn't be more true, but less and less and less every year. I mean, I did every job in that company. I mean, I made the first board. And for a while there, I mean, we might have had 50 employees. And I was convinced, not in a bragging way, but I could do anybody's job better than they could. But that's not the case anymore. You know, we've got engineers now that I don't even have a hard time having a conversation with them. But I got better at it. And I had the sense to surround myself with people that were better at things than I am that I'm not good at. That's been good. And I've learned to delegate. That's not an easy thing to learn how to do, especially when you're detail oriented, to learn to let go like that.

• 33:09Guy Raz?

  You have to trust people.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Beyond trusting, you have to let them screw up.

• 33:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  And live with it and live through mistakes. And if they repeat the mistakes, then that's not a good sign. Burton's made every mistake in the book, but I don't think we've made too many twice.

• 33:23Guy Raz?

  Why didn't, I mean, I'm sure at certain points you were offered money to buy your company.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  I just didn't take those phone calls.

• 33:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but I mean, you could, I mean, you could have sold this company, you know, been like a philanthropist and, I don't know, I'm not saying this is a better life, but it sounds pretty cool. It sounds like a pretty great life.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Well, I, for a long time, if people were asking me that question, I would say, well, I think I'd become a couch potato and just eat chips and watch SportsCenter, you know? And so, you know, and snowboard plenty. But, I mean, it's the best job in the world. Why would I ever walk away from it? That's selfishly, admittedly, that's always been part of it. And I think that we're doing a great job and we're humming along. If we were really struggling, it might be more appropriate for me to look at that more seriously.

• 34:20Guy Raz?

  You had a really tough couple of years and you're just now experiencing the recovery of it. You had knee surgery, I guess in 2015, right?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:32Guy Raz?

  And then before that, you had to have heart surgery.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:36Guy Raz?

  And then you battled cancer, testicular cancer.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I dealt with the whole process of chemotherapy, which is dreadful. And in the tail end of that, I was in a plane and I had a pulmonary embolism, which really still affects me. And then I came down with Miller Fisher, that form of Gamberay.

• 34:56Guy Raz?

  How does that experience change the way you live your life and you interact with the people you love?

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Well, I sure as hell don't take my family for granted anymore. And I do live life for the moment. I mean, much more than ever. I mean, I think it happens through something like that. I don't know why or how, but it does. Or it did to me.

• 35:24Guy Raz?

  It must put into perspective all your success and wealth and the thing that you built. Like, obviously, that stuff matters, but like, in the context of your life, nothing else really matters.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that stuff couldn't have been further from my mind. I think it is now, though. Now I'm like, prepared to die.

• 35:44Guy Raz?

  Really?

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am much more so. I could die, get hit by a bus, walking out of your studio, and I still think I'm luckiest guy in the world.

• 35:54Guy Raz?

  Because of the life you've had?

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:56Guy Raz?

  Could you ever have imagined, when you were in that first year and you had to fire your employees and, I don't know, that you would have built something this big?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  I had no idea that what would happen with snowboarding. I mean, I saw a sport, but I did not see Shaun White on the cover of Rolling Stone twice, or snowboarding me in the Olympics, or the stuff that's happened. And it's been the athletes that have made it happen, and we've facilitated it. But it's been exceeded. I wouldn't even say dreams, because I never dreamt anything on the level that we're on now.

• 36:38Guy Raz?

  That's Jake Burton Carpenter, founder of Burton Snowboards. I spoke with Jake in July of 2017. He died on November 20th, 2019, at the age of 65.