Burton Snowboards: Jake Carpenter (2017)

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. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," we check back in with Jane Och, who solved the problem of guacamole turning brown by designing a container that removes air pockets: the Guac-Lock. (Original broadcast date: October 23, 2017) 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, and we've got a great episode for you today from our archives. It's on Burton snowboards. But before we start the show, just a quick reminder that throughout the month of December, we're going to be asking you to make an end of the year gift to your local public radio station, because your support helps your local station keep bringing you the news and stories you depend on. So please, take a moment to give back to your public radio community. Just go to donate.npr.org/built. And thanks. And now, here's our episode on Burton snowboards.

• 0:36Speaker 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.

• 0:52Guy Raz?

  40 snowboards?

• 0:54Speaker 01

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

• 1:02Guy Raz?

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

• 1:16Guy 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.

• 1:35Guy 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.

• 2:17Guy 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.

• 2:48Speaker 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.

• 3:14Guy 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.

• 3:35Speaker 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 bucking bronco just getting down the hill. But it was fun. And Brunswick made them. 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.

• 4:10Guy Raz?

  It was basically surfing on snow.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Surfing on snow.

• 4:13Guy 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.

• 4:37Speaker 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.

• 5:06Guy 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.

• 5:30Speaker 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.

• 5:57Guy Raz?

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

• 6:02Speaker 01

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

• 6:06Guy Raz?

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

• 6:10Speaker 01

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

• 6:17Guy Raz?

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

• 6:21Speaker 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.

• 6:37Guy Raz?

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

• 6:39Speaker 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.

• 6:50Guy Raz?

  Manhattan.

• 6:50Speaker 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.

• 7:20Guy Raz?

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

• 7:23Speaker 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.

• 7:41Guy Raz?

  So your middle name was Burton?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:44Guy Raz?

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

• 7:49Speaker 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 the name at 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, it 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.

• 8:24Guy Raz?

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

• 8:31Speaker 01

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

• 8:40Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 8:41Speaker 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 the Montilles and I'd literally made 100.

• 8:51Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 8:52Speaker 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.

• 9:22Guy 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?"

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I mean, a surfer, 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.

• 9:45Guy Raz?

  But nobody cared?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Nobody cared.

• 9:47Guy Raz?

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

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Dude, I was so alone, yeah.

• 9:54Guy Raz?

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

• 9:58Speaker 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.

• 10:06Guy 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."

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 10:18Guy Raz?

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

• 10:27Speaker 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-

• 10:36Guy Raz?

  Since June of-

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Would have been June of 78.

• 10:38Guy Raz?

  78, okay.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  And I'm hiking up there, and Hillman's Highway was the trail, and I had the board, or what 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.

• 11:23Speaker 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.

• 11:29Guy Raz?

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

• 11:33Speaker 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.

• 11:44Guy Raz?

  Did you have a shop?

• 11:45Speaker 01

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

• 11:50Guy Raz?

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

• 11:57Speaker 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 people, we would advertise in the skateboard magazines and a little bit in the ski magazines, spent 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.

• 12:30Guy 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"?

• 12:37Speaker 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.

• 12:56Guy Raz?

  40 snowboards?

• 12:57Speaker 01

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

• 13:01Guy Raz?

  You would visit ski shops, basically?

• 13:03Speaker 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.

• 13:15Guy 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"?

• 13:21Speaker 01

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

• 13:27Guy Raz?

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

• 13:30Speaker 01

  All day long.

• 13:33Guy Raz?

  And you were all by yourself?

• 13:34Speaker 01

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

• 13:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 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 did we make? A thousand or 15? We made enough for three years.

• 14:02Guy Raz?

  So they're just sitting in your shop?

• 14:04Speaker 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.

• 14:12Guy Raz?

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

• 14:14Speaker 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...

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Wow, that's, you know, that's over doubling.

• 14:28Guy 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?

• 14:37Speaker 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.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I can remember it so clearly.

• 15:25Guy 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?

• 15:32Speaker 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 at and do with friends. And it was a cheap way to have a lot of fun when there's snow on the ground.

• 15:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 01

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

• 15:56Guy Raz?

  You didn't care?

• 15:57Speaker 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.

• 16:07Guy Raz?

  To do what? To just?

• 16:08Speaker 01

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

• 16:11Guy Raz?

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

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:15Guy Raz?

  By hand?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 16:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 16:18Speaker 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...

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Bribe snowcat drivers with a six pack or something.

• 16:45Guy Raz?

  And they would drive you up to a point.

• 16:47Speaker 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.

• 17:14Guy Raz?

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

• 17:20Speaker 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.

• 17:44Guy Raz?

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

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, that would have been early eighties.

• 17:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 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.

• 18:23Guy Raz?

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

• 18:27Speaker 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-

• 18:34Guy Raz?

  Where's Stratton?

• 18:35Speaker 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 a half a million and he got a million dollars. So there was this liability. There's this just paranoia about getting sued.

• 18:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 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.

• 19:13Guy Raz?

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

• 19:21Speaker 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.

• 20:01Guy Raz?

  And he always used Burton snowboards?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  He was Burton, head to toe.

• 20:04Guy Raz?

  So Burton was all over his body?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:07Guy Raz?

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

• 20:11Speaker 01

  It was beyond transformational.

• 20:13Guy 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?

• 20:28Speaker 01

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

• 20:34Guy 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?

• 20:46Speaker 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?

• 20:57Guy Raz?

  Because they could have crushed you early on, right?

• 21:00Speaker 01

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

• 21:14Guy 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.

• 21:42Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So in the early days, for Jake Harpenter, 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?

• 22:16Speaker 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.

• 22:58Guy 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?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Well, it was always, like, in the early days, it was a rivalry between Burton and Sims. But we were, 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...

• 23:30Speaker 01

  We've been the number one manufacturer of snowboards since the day I, you know.

• 23:36Guy Raz?

  Did you, you know, I mean, even though you had this market share and you had this loyal customer base, I mean, a lot of these companies had a lot more money to work with. And you were, your money was coming from sales.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and ultimately, we were borrowing money from banks, but it was very secured. And then we would get bigger and bigger. And obviously, we're doubling our sales, so we're doubling the money that we need from the bank.

• 23:59Guy Raz?

  And you needed the money, you needed the money for marketing and for what?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  We needed the money to make the snowboards because in this industry, in skiing, we didn't start this, but you, you ship them the stuff in whatever, August, September, and then you'll get paid until December or January. So it was always working capital. We've never needed long-term debt, but we've always had this need for working capital. And so we would work with these Vermont banks and we'd get up to a certain level. This happened like three times. And then we'd get to a certain level and they'd say, you know, this, this may be a fad, we're going to bail. And never because we were late on a payment or.

• 24:33Guy Raz?

  They just got nervous.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  We were religious about paying people money that we owed them. But they just sort of figured, you know, this has been a good ride, we're going to bail. And then we go to a bigger bank, and then a bigger bank, and then we borrow, we still borrow some working capital, but it has become less and less.

• 24:49Guy Raz?

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

• 24:59Speaker 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.

• 25:10Guy Raz?

  Was it, was it a competing snowboarding company?

• 25:11Speaker 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. It was up to 70 on a non-split basis.

• 25:24Guy Raz?

  So their valuation was huge.

• 25:25Speaker 01

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

• 25:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I bet.

• 25:34Speaker 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.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Just couldn't deal the vibe. It just was like, this isn't us. And then, all of a sudden, Ride 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.

• 26:13Guy 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 is became an Olympic sport. How, what did you think when that happened? Like, that must have been a pretty amazing moment.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  It was not a cool moment at all.

• 26:45Guy Raz?

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

• 26:51Speaker 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 it in the newspaper. And then I go to the Olympics, we've got our team there, and I get to the venue, and they've got snowboarding misspelled at the venue.

• 27:36Guy Raz?

  How do they spell it?

• 27:37Speaker 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 annual, 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.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 28:34Guy 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. For example, where do you have your meetings with your top team and stuff? How do you?

• 28:54Speaker 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. We sort of keep track of the number and it 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.

• 29:31Guy Raz?

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

• 29:37Speaker 01

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

• 29:44Guy Raz?

  Nice.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  And last year, there were three of those days, which is almost too nice. I mean, I like people to work too. I'm not, 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.

• 30:07Guy Raz?

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

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:16Guy Raz?

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

• 30:18Speaker 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.

• 30:33Guy Raz?

  Which one?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  The big one.

• 30:35Guy Raz?

  The 07, 08?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Lehman Brothers, all that crap.

• 30:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah, how did that hit you guys?

• 30:40Speaker 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.

• 31:13Guy Raz?

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

• 31:16Speaker 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%.

• 31:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 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.

• 31:49Guy Raz?

  What happened?

• 31:50Speaker 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 that just felt wrong to me. So I got in there and Donna came along with me. And at that level, we were running the company and I brought her in sort of specifically to help with the culture and get more women in leadership positions at Burton.

• 32:25Guy Raz?

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

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you're not happy when you're being managed by fear 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.

• 32:59Guy Raz?

  Were you responsible for any of that?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  For any of that fear-based stuff? Well, I think I hired many of the people that were in and around it. And I think that 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.

• 33:21Guy 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.

• 33:35Speaker 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,

• 34:19Speaker 01

  to learn to let go like that.

• 34:21Guy Raz?

  You have to trust people.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Beyond trusting, you have to let them screw up.

• 34:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 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.

• 34:37Guy Raz?

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

• 34:43Speaker 01

  I just didn't take those phone calls.

• 34:44Guy 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.

• 34:56Speaker 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.

• 35:30Guy Raz?

  How important is money to you? Like, how important is being rich to you?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Well, to be brutally honest, I mean, I enjoy having, you know, the ability financially to, we're going surfing for a week in the Maldives next week, my whole family.

• 35:48Guy Raz?

  Oh, cool.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  And we're gonna have a speedboat that's gonna take us to the lineup and it's gonna be epic. And this stuff's not cheap. So I love that. And I would be a liar if I told you I didn't. But it's not the most important thing in life.

• 36:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Guy 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?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Guy Raz?

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

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:20Guy Raz?

  And then you battled cancer, testicular cancer.

• 36:22Speaker 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 that Miller-Fisher, that form of Gamberay.

• 36:40Guy Raz?

  Let me ask you about the Miller-Fisher because, probably not a lot of people know about this, but it's, I guess it's an autoimmune disease that can make you temporarily paralyzed. So, like, what was that, what was going on? Like, how did you even discover what was going on?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Well, I'd gotten the knee replacement and then I got home and I was with the doctor the next day and I started seeing double and, and I told him about it, he's like, well, check it out, see if it's, it might just go away. And the next day I was seeing double and I felt really lousy. And I waited until Donna went to work. I didn't, she'd been through so much with me and I was just like, and so I went to Dartmouth Hitchcock and they very quickly analyzed what was going on and within 24 hours of me being, being there, they said, if you have what we think you have tomorrow, you won't be able to swallow. The next day you won't be able to open your eyes and the next day you won't be able to breathe.

• 37:43Guy Raz?

  And were they right?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how it went down.

• 37:46Guy Raz?

  That's it, you get to the hospital and you are confined to the bed?

• 37:52Speaker 01

  I'm in an ICU for six weeks.

• 37:55Guy Raz?

  Wow, you couldn't move your body?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then people, you know, ICU people go for hours or days and I was there for over six weeks.

• 38:05Guy Raz?

  You're like a prisoner in your own body.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much so. I think it's like ALS, just condensed into a couple of weeks.

• 38:14Guy Raz?

  So, first of all, how did you breathe?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Through a ventilator and the ventilator was behind me. I could hear it, but I couldn't see it.

• 38:26Guy Raz?

  Did you have feeling in your body?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, my wife would stretch me every night and I could certainly feel that.

• 38:34Guy Raz?

  And how did you eat?

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Through a feeding tube.

• 38:38Guy Raz?

  Did you think you were gonna die?

• 38:41Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 38:43Guy Raz?

  Oh.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  For a minute and then, um,

• 38:52Speaker 01

  you know, my wife did.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  You know, she told me I was getting better and eventually I would see these little like hints of improvement.

• 39:04Guy Raz?

  What'd you start to notice?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  You know, that I could open my eyes and that I could, um, I was so into physical therapy right from the get go and then I could do something a little better than the day before. And, um, and once you get to that point, then it's game on, then it's up to you.

• 39:24Guy Raz?

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

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Well, I sure as hell don't take my family for granted anymore and, um, I do live life for the moment. I mean, much more than ever. I mean, I think

• 39:46Speaker 01

  it happens to do something like that. I don't know why or how, but it does, or it did to me.

• 39:51Guy 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.

• 40:04Speaker 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.

• 40:11Guy Raz?

  Really?

• 40:11Speaker 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.

• 40:20Guy Raz?

  Because of the life you've had?

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:23Guy 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?

• 40:34Speaker 01

  I had no idea that what would happen with snowboarding. I mean, I saw sport, but I did not see Shaun White on the cover of Rolling Stone twice, or snowboarding being 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.

• 41:04Guy Raz?

  Jake Burton Carpenter. By the way, Burton just celebrated 40 years in business since Jake built that first snowboard in a barn in Londonderry, Vermont, back in 1977. And despite his health issues, Jake still snowboards 100 days a year, and always when there's fresh powder.

• 41:33Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for sticking around, because it's time now for How You Built That. And today, we're updating a story we ran about a year ago.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  So my name is Jane Och. I'm from Scarsdale, New York. And one day, I was just so sick of opening my refrigerator and seeing brown guacamole.

• 41:50Guy Raz?

  Brown guacamole. We've all been there, right? You scoop out the soft avocado flesh, you mash in some onions, salt, lime, maybe some cilantro, you stick it in the fridge, and then a couple of hours later, that bright green dip looks kind of gross.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  This is absolutely a problem that people have. And I say to them, would you like a container that prevents your guacamole from turning brown? And they're like, oh, my god.

• 42:16Guy Raz?

  So anyway, about four years ago, Jane started to experiment in her kitchen. She made a lot of guacamole, and she just started to observe that guacamole change color.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  If I make some and put it in a bowl with Saran Wrap, it turns brown. But if there was some way that I could eliminate that air and that space, then maybe I could solve that age-old problem.

• 42:40Guy Raz?

  So Jane recruited her stepsister to help out. They found a designer and together they came up with a plastic container with kind of a little elevator underneath it that pushes the guacamole to the very top. So there is no space between your guac and the lid.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  And then you simply close the tab to cover the air hole, put it in the refrigerator, forget about it, literally forget about it. I mean, a week, however long you're going to eat your guacamole, it will not turn brown.

• 43:11Guy Raz?

  OK, so they had the right design, but for two years, they ran into one problem after another. They were using the wrong materials, or the little elevator thing wasn't fitting properly. But finally, a couple of years ago, they got it out of the factory and into the market, and they called it the Guac Lock.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  You can lock anything up. So tuna fish, egg salad, chopped vegetables, pesto, hummus. And the more you can smush it and remove the air holes, the better it's going to save.

• 43:43Guy Raz?

  So Jane, this is not my main problem with guacamole, because

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:47Guy Raz?

  when I first heard the name Guac Lock, I thought it was to lock your kids out of the guacamole, so they don't eat it all before your guests come.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  No, it is not. But you're right. That's a good idea.

• 43:58Guy Raz?

  That is a problem in my house. That's our problem. I get into the kitchen and I just see like green guacamole around the mouths of my children.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  I feel your pain.

• 44:07Guy Raz?

  It could be the next iteration of the Guac Lock. You could add a combination lock.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Like a child lock or something.

• 44:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Well, actually, it's very funny that you said that, because a lot of people say, I never have left over guacamole, so why would I need this? And what I always say to them is, now you can make it in advance.

• 44:23Guy Raz?

  That's Jane Och, co-founder of the Guac Lock. Last year, she and her stepsister Sharon did close to $1 million in sales. They're in most of the major stores now, and they're on track to do even better this year, after partnering with Bradshaw Industries, which is one of the biggest suppliers of kitchen gadgets in the world. And if you want to learn more about the Guac Lock or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org.

• 44:56Guy Raz?

  And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. And please be sure to check your podcast feed because we have two more new episodes from the How I Built This summit coming up. My live interviews with Lisa Price of Carol's Daughter and Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to J.C. Howard, Noor Kudsi, Niva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is me of NCAD. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.