Burton History

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 Jake's

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 it's 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 doesn't think it makes sense to have shareholders who don't snowboard. "How can they be better owners of a this company, I live it, I love it-this sport is my life." Jake isn't working 70 hour weeks anymore, instead he's 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