Burton History
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Twenty-five years have gone by since Jake Burton, Carpenter, started making
snowboards. His company today is the most successful and largest manufacturer in the
world for snowboarding. A key success to Burton Snowboards was pushing to make
snowboarding a sport.
The idea came from building a better Snurfer, “the first snowboard, originally
made by Sherman Poppen in 1965, where he nailed two skis together for his children to
slide downhill sideways on” (Snowboard). Sport, not the Burton company was Jakes
main focus when he first started out in the 70s. He worked with ski areas to get the new
sport going and onto the mountains. He succeeded in the early 80s by convincing
Stratton Mountain to give it a shot.
“I was talking to all these successful entrepreneurs and realized that its not impossible to get a business going,” recalls Jake (Morrison). Friends were turning friends into snowboarding and sales doubled every season. Skaters, surfers, and skiers everywhere were discovering the new sensation. The temptation was there to get all the money and have stock to go out and build factories and such, but Burton was more focused on a developing high quality snowboarding gear.
A big step for Jake was creating a group of senior managers. These would be the key people and to divide the tasks of the company. With good decisions, Jake created a great senior management group, they all ride and are dedicated to the sport. A majority of them have been at Burton for ten years.
Burton, the company does not have any stocks because Jake doesnt think it makes sense to have shareholders who dont snowboard. “How can they be better owners of a this company, I live it, I love it-this sport is my life.” Jake isnt working 70 hour weeks anymore, instead hes out riding and taken his success as an opportunity to get more involved in the sport than ever before.
In 1995, Burton started CHILL, a learn to snowboard