don't forget the snowboard academies

"Cutting out the middle man" (i.e. the local shop) is a fundamental problem in all economies. Some people complain about this happening, yet we forget to take a step back and see that snowboarding and skateboarding sold out when it took most of the U.S. manufacturing and outsourced it overseas. This opened the gate for mass storage and redistribution of snowboards and skateboards, thus allowing for deals like free shipping and warehouse prices. If you want to help out local shops, buy U.S. made snowboards and just try to convince them to hop on the "only sell to their local shops" bandwagon.

See what I mean? Sadly very few are going to do that, most if not all people who start a business, want to make money and just like many of the products we buy, are outsourced to somebody else.

Yet, all of this cheaper mass distribution produced an amazing catch 22 affect, because mountains all around the world removed their prejudices towards snowboarding from the power in numbers and made the sky as the limit.

Very hard to get the best of both worlds.

Just my 2 cents.

Time to be Devils Advocate..... When your a brand and have been supporting the little guys, building your brand in their zone, hooking up local kids and doing everything in your power to make sure sales are happening in your area.... Then that shop doesn't pay their bill.... or that shop cuts their order back even though they sold through your stuff because they say its the economy (When they are still sitting on other shit and not yours). What are your choices then? You have to make money to start production of the following seasons stuff... You have to be able to pay your sales reps or team riders...

Its easy for the shops or the shop customer to be quick and judge a brand, but do they understand what it takes to run a profitable brand? They keep talking about their business but keep over buying these huge brands and never paying their bills with the smaller guys who give them that much more support.

At the end of the day it should be a circle of support and everyone grows.... If that circle is broken than you have to look towards other Dist. circles.

so after all of this discussion, who wants to be my backer for a repair/rental/specialty shop?
im willing to relocate, so wherever you want to put it up, im down to run it.