Speaker 1: 0:50

Oregon Media. Anything traumatic in your life can trigger this stuff, whether you're going to war in Vietnam, you're losing a spouse or a loved one, or you start this thing that is beautiful with your friends, you put everything into it and then it's gone. And then you have a constant reminder, seeing it everywhere, everything to this day everyone talks about to me grenade. What happened there? It was so cool. I remember grenade. I'm just like me too, trust me, I see it everywhere. Still, it should have been great. It was great and uh, but what I I it? It really affected me emotionally, mentally.

Speaker 2: 1:27

I didn't deal with the feelings I had and make amends with my best friends, you know every brand you love, every product you admire, started as just an idea, sparked by a moment shaped by a person, nurtured by a community. The Circling Podcast is proud to introduce Birth of the Brands from Oregon Media and Bend Magazine. I'm Adam Short. Join me as I sit down with founders from across Central Oregon and beyond On this series. We follow seven brands that participated in the 10th Annual Bend Outdoor Works Startup Accelerator Program, commonly referred to as BOW. Bend Outdoor Works' primary mission is to help outdoor startups scale and achieve their wildest dreams.

Speaker 2: 2:22

On the second episode in the Birth of the Brand series, I'm joined by snowboard industry veteran Tim Karpinski, founder of Spiral Wax Company. Me. Prior to Spiral, tim was the creative director at Gnu Snowboards and once upon a time was the co-founder of Grenade Gloves, where he helped create one of the most iconic brands in snowboarding. Yet the real story begins after the rise and fall of Grenade A chapter of recovery, reinvention and building something entirely new. Through sobriety, tim reshaped his approach to both life and creativity. Moving to Bend became a turning point in the birthplace of Spiral Wax Company, a brand grounded in mindfulness, sustainability and self-care. This isn't just a story about a snowboard brand. It's about transformation, the courage to slow down, reinvent and create a life and business aligned with your true values. What's your typical morning routine?

Speaker 1: 3:30

I'm very, very routine-based now.

Speaker 2: 3:33

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:34

I mean it's baked into the bigger picture of recovery when you eliminate the unknowns you know it gets rid of the noise that causes cause that kind of uncomfortableness in life. You know, if you're always busy and you have everything lined up, you don't need to worry about anything. That's why, like Einstein, wore the same suit. Totally, I eat literally the same time. Wore the same suit every day. I eat literally the same time and the same meals every day.

Speaker 1: 3:59

I wake up at the same time, I go to bed at the same time. Within you know, a small uh variance, but as an average it's pretty militant, almost yeah. But within that after that it gets pretty loose with what I want to do for the day. But I'll get up early and just kind of start my routine of putting on music and making coffee.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Do you journal or meditate?

Speaker 1: 4:25

I used to journal and meditate and I was pretty good with it for years, especially when I first moved here. I journaled every day. When I had my steady job for work and when I bought my house on the river, I was like I'm going to go down to the river and meditate every single day. I started with the waking up app, which is Sam. Harris.

Speaker 1: 4:50

And that really did it for me. I found, like the voice that I needed in my head, the guided meditation. And it's not just breathing, it's like mental, it's like brain gymnastics, training your brain, how to think, controlling your brain. That's what meditation kind of is silencing your brain or the um I can't remember his term for it but the observer inside your head, observing reality, and when you could step back and be the observer, Anyways. But since I've started Spiral, everything is just all those luxuries have kind of been abandoned, unfortunately, because of demand, because of my time. I find moments, I take a bath every night and I read a lot, but the meditation and the journaling has suffered.

Speaker 2: 5:48

Yeah, dude, I can relate with that. There's like seasons where I dig in pretty heavy to that and you get in a rhythm. I find like my routine changes with the seasons. Like this time of year is my favorite because it gets light early and I'm up early and I get in the river early and like same thing. I can relate, which is kind of that structure, and by having that structure it kind of removes that opportunity for all the kind of angst that can otherwise fill it.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Yeah, yeah, I'm for sure Filled with that kind of stuff and when I fill my days, which they're full to the brim, there's no time to think yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Kind of time to think, yeah, kind of uh, but a lot of what's filling in the day, whether it be, um, a kind of non-thinking task like painting a house versus like sitting down and designing packaging or making wax. They're all different things, but I'm always like a butterfly, like going between them. And when I'm at home I'm working on a bunch of different stuff, like this past week. This past 10 days I've made 2000 bars of wax. Wow, it's the biggest push we've ever done. I was making 200 a day.

Speaker 1: 7:03

So I'd wake up at 6am, turn on the melter it was ready by eight. I'd pour at eight, then at 10, I'd go out to work and then I'd come home and have lunch and the molds would be ready. I'd pull them out of the molds. I'd have a new batch waiting. I'd put it in the melter. I'd go back out to work, I'd come home, I'd pull them and then Troy and Claire would come over, we'd box them and we'd have our business meetings and that was a full. And then I'd have dinner and I go to bed and then I'd wake up and I did that pretty much for two weeks straight. That was the days.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Insane.

Speaker 1: 7:36

And, uh, I painted a house during that time too, a whole house, and we, like you, know that's. We have jobs like that lined up all the time. Yeah, we're going to um demo. Uh, me and Blake who's a snowboarder. This week I'm going out to this homeowner's house and we're going to remove all their front lawn and redo rock and some minimal landscaping, and he provides one piece of machinery for it.

Speaker 1: 8:06

I drive a freaking backhoe and I'm listening to podcasts or I'm listening to an intellectual podcast driving a Backhoe, yeah, and it's so. I would have never guessed it in life. You know, I went to college. I took art and design very seriously and I wanted, I had this trajectory I wanted to get to and it was the top of the industry. And now I am driving a backhoe Of the industry. And now I am driving a backhoe and totally stoked and making good money Better hourly rate than I'm making as a designer with a lot of history. I might be able to find jobs, but these jobs are easy to get in this town. Okay, and I enjoy the balance between being outside and outside all day. Last summer I worked like literally seven days a week, 10 hours a day. That's not even a joke, really. I took days off. But last summer was a hustle, working outside and just coming home, exhausted, every day, sleeping like a baby, got in great shape, made great money, got to snowboard every day this winter.

Speaker 1: 9:41

And that helped. You know, last summer wasn't as busy with spiral. We were working a lot, but it helped me save a little nest egg. So not to not have to worry as much as I worry about money at um for this winter. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:54

But it's just um interesting life, life change all during like okay, um, this is not expected well, it's a good kind of yen to the yang of creativity, like when you're like being task oriented and doing something that doesn't necessarily require a lot of creative thought, but more like going, you know, like operating something. Yes, you know, is, is it?

Speaker 1: 10:21

I can relate with that as well, and there's a freedom there. That creative pressure is the hardest part of this job really, especially when you're in a professional environment that you were hired to do. Yeah, it's hard, it's it's. For me, it was the toughest thing yeah before. I could always deliver, but it was. I struggled sometimes and tried to mask it, but I'd have, you know, moments of just like fuck, I need to deliver tomorrow or I need to deliver this shit, where's it coming from? Totally if.

Speaker 1: 10:51

I was clouded, which maybe this is exactly why I'm not anymore, I'm totally like effortless spiral has been effortless.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Yeah, for the most part, it's acquired a lot of energy to execute, but the ideas and the concepts and everything just comes. And I think it might be because of that. Like, that balance has been found, when you're sitting inside all day just staring at Peter being looking at a deadline and you know a creative brief being like, okay, I'm in this room, I can't leave, I have to get this done. Like if I okay, I'm in this room, I can't leave, I have to get this done. Like if I now, if I have to leave, I just go. I'm just like I haven't hit that wall yet, but um, it's been very refreshing.

Speaker 2: 11:29

Yeah, yeah, dude, I'm I'm super excited for people to learn about Spiral because your brand and kind of this like philosophical kind of duality of it's a wax company that most wax companies you think about speed, right and going fast, and yet your whole motto is like slow down, be present, be here now. I mean, even the hat you're wearing is like be here now and that is, um, like I think about it, a ton, like a ton, because there's that kind of creative tension there, man, and having that you know like it communicates the message of behind Spiral really well, like you're using a wax company and building a, you know, shining a light on the importance of being present in the moment, because you know like it's brilliant man, yeah, I'm glad.

Speaker 1: 12:27

It's really good, you get it and I hope other people do, without so much explaining, and it doesn't matter if they don't. If they just like the visuals, that's fine. But it kind of my whole approach I've been. I've learned this over the years of taking stuff from, taking inspiration from outside of snowboarding and skateboarding and bringing it in, because a lot and that isn't a secret, but nobody does it I got super into self-care to meditation. You know I did meditate a lot and I got super into like philosophy and dudes like Ram Dass and these brilliant gurus that taught a lot of valuable lessons, and stoicism, like these ancient philosophers from Greek thousands of years ago, these simple tools that were unlocked a lot for me and I was just like huh, I wonder if I could bring some of that into snowboarding.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Like this messaging instead of like the normal stuff, like that you'd see from an ad campaign from a normal snowboard brand, from these marketing departments that are pushing these messages that are just so redundant and lame and uncreative um, that that was part of the concept. Like when I saw a liquid death, I was just like that was smart. Those guys like it wasn't philosophy, philosophical like I'm doing, but they're bringing some a fresh approach into a category like drinking water and people didn't. They did it so well that it just seemed so natural and um, but there's a lot of there isn't, and there is a lot of thought behind what we're doing. Um, and it was strategic.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Like when I started the brand, we did it differently. It was figuring out the brand first, building the whole. I knew we were going to make wax. I didn't even make wax before the brand first building the whole. I knew we were going to make wax. I didn't even make wax before the brand was pretty much realized and building all of the messaging and and thinking about how it would look before we even designed the product and yeah, man, it's the.

Speaker 1: 14:34

The product is the vessel for the message, right, exactly yeah yes, and that is like going back to liquid death, like murder your thirst. People don't even realize they're drinking water, and the idea is people want care of their gear and they're also pausing in life and and slowing down and taking that time to wax their board connecting with their snowboard. So if we could do this right, um, we're, you know, making people do this, yeah, um, through marketing, I guess, and it's all good, it's all good, it's all a good thing, and people were waxing their boards before, but it was more like I got to go fast, I got to beat my friend, I, you know, and this is the exact opposite of that.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Yeah, I mean the way I've been thinking about it and when you gave me a few bars this winter and kind of I started learning about this. You know, I don't even know how many snowboards I've waxed in my life. I mean I started working in a snowboard shop when I was 13 years old, waxing boards and grinding them on the grind right and the the act of waxing your snowboard, if you're aware and open the space it creates just to kind of be present, is there's not that many, it's it if you're a snowboarder it really kind of starts to um, resonate for me deeper than just the art, like the act of waxing.

Speaker 1: 16:17

So yeah, for as I find this a similar experience in carpentry, like sanding wood or like even being a homeowner, like painting my house, mowing my lawn, these and I think there's something that fires in your brain that's undefinable, that that experience of when you're done looking at your board or when you're done looking at your lawn, walking on your lawn. I don't know if you do this, but I do. I like mow my lawn.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Not a lot of people in Central are going to have lawns, but any little task that you do something and you're super proud of it and there's a tangible, visible difference and say you mow your lawn and then you freaking have a catch with your son I don't have a kid but or throw the ball to your dog on that lawn. It's like that similar thing, Like, oh, I did this, it equals that, Like it's a part of the experience. But there's that flow that you feel during it. It's hard to describe really and I gave up really trying to describe it and just trying to encourage people to find it on their own and people and trying to trick them really with this marketing, with this messaging to get there.

Speaker 3: 17:30

And then when?

Speaker 1: 17:30

they get there and experience it. I'm not going to say we got them, but we do. Really they're in the zen experience that. You know that unless you're have of this mindset of meditation and yoga and stuff, some people are turned off by that. But if we can, some young kids don't, might not think it's cool or they haven't had the, the opportunity yet and this might be their first entry into that lifestyle. And then like, oh're, like, oh, I really like that. I don't know why, but I did. And then they have a blast on the hill. That's the goal. And then maybe those kids are going to be being like I'm going to try yoga and meditation and then, man, I want to change my diet and.

Speaker 1: 18:53

I want to go to bed early, man. I want to change my diet and I want to go to bed early and what I did in life is these things that changed my life, because I was a young punk that ate fast food and I was just out all night and just didn't take care of my body and somehow I still had the creative spark. I was blessed by that I think gifted, and I didn't. I took it for granted a lot, but now I've really trying to hone it with the best lifestyle possible.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Yeah, I mean what I hear is kind of a very similar experience that a lot of people can relate with when you're young and especially coming up in the 90s and early 2000s and the snow and skate scene and all the influence that was there. It was very opposite of this right, and yet kind of these stepping stones that you've had in your life and your career have kind of brought you back to not brought you back, but just emphasize the importance of slowing down. Man, I don't know how else to say it. I mean I think people will just it just makes sense.

Speaker 1: 20:06

you know, yeah, when you hear that term, people get it Like I didn't invent it but shining, bringing it into snowboarding, something kind of new. And you know, there's been those brands that took a different approach in snow and skate, like when we were doing grenade, and in those times, like Baker, like it was like the piss drunks, it was like the lifestyle was different. Yeah, and we and we lean, we lived it, yeah, and that was part of our marketing.

Speaker 1: 20:35

And we didn't really realize what we were doing what we were encouraging kids to do, and we were being encouraged by Reynolds and Dolan and Greco, these skaters. They were inspiring me and then I was able to. I had an outlet to the world through this other brand where, like, we're going to do this in snowboarding and everyone around us was doing it or we were definitely encouraging it.

Speaker 2: 21:01

Yeah, I'm excited to get in. You know, touch on the grenade days. I mean you could do a whole podcast series on grenade, but it definitely is a big part of your kind of journey to where you are now. But I mean, you mentioned a teenager. You grew up in New Jersey. Yeah, tell me about that. What was life like in New Jersey growing up?

Speaker 1: 21:23

Yeah, very idyllic and I didn't realize it until later in life how good we had it. Like I grew up in Vernon, new Jersey, which is a lot like bend. It's a little town in the woods Like you think in New Jersey, think of the Sopranos. We lived in a very rural area, like right on the border of Pennsylvania and New York. Like there was a river that ran behind my house, we're all. There was lakes everywhere. They built this little community between farms.

Speaker 1: 21:55

Like I lived 45 minutes from my high school on a bus through rural back roads and I leave for school on the school bus and it'd be dark and I come home and it'd be dark. It was just so far away and it was just rolling hills and farms and gorgeous. And like when you grew up in that you don't know anything else. And I was a rebellious kid and I was, like you know, didn't realize, like how my dad worked in New York City and commuted to New York every day. What did he do in New York? He worked as an accountant for Motorola Wow. He worked on Wall Street for a while like Don Draper style, yeah, and drove a BMW to the city every day. He was gone before I woke up and I was in bed a lot. When he got home he provided for the family. He grew up in Jersey City, which is very poor Both my mom and dad.

Speaker 1: 22:52

They were high school sweethearts. They got married at 18. My dad went to the Navy it city, which is very poor Both my mom and dad. They were high school sweethearts. They got married at 18. My dad went to the Navy. It was like that. It was like a storybook a movie Um and uh.

Speaker 1: 23:03

You know that my dad like, like family lore is like three of his. There was three siblings and they all slept in the same bed, head to toe, yeah, and you know they literally like ate cabbage soup. It's like he would say we walked to school barefoot uphills both ways, uphill, both ways. You can't do that.

Speaker 2: 23:24

But no, it's just like he.

Speaker 1: 23:25

He wanted a different life for his children. He was the first in his family to go to college. He went to night school and got a MFA, mba sorry, master in Business and worked his way up and got to the top of Motorola, made really good money and, like I didn't realize, we lived in an upper middle class like nice house in the country and my mom was a stay-at-home mom and I got everything I ever wanted. I was a little spoiled brat but I got given. You know. I was, you know, a soccer player. I was a ski racer. Okay, this is the beginning. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Right. So I lived five minutes from the mountain Vernon Valley, great Gorge was called at the time. My dad was a big skier so that's how he found out about the resort. They would come up, they would come up there from where they grew up.

Speaker 1: 24:17

That was like a big pilgrimage go up to Vernon Valley for the weekend in the 80s, you know and he found he saw this town similar to how I remember seeing Ben for the first time. He's like I want to live here, I don't care how I get here, I'm getting raise a family here and uh, respect to that um, but he, him and his buddies would go there skiing because it was open at night so you can go there anytime and they were legendary for blowing snow. They were early innovators in snow blowing. So even in the no like in those days, jersey got a lot of and they still do in that area even. Um, but uh, it was actually a big resort. Um had three peaks. The whole place is lit up, um, and they dumped. They had a great racing program so I got into.

Speaker 1: 25:04

I started skiing when I was four with my dad like pizza slice between his legs four years old and I didn't stop. We got into it and it was a go time. And then I was a little young freestyler, you know, hitting every side hit. And then I started ski racing early, five years old probably. And then we're in it and we are a ski race family and I was there was like similar to MBSCF here.

Speaker 1: 25:30

I was in that program at the at that Hill, all the old like looked up to all the older kids at the at that Hill, all the old like looked up to all the older kids. The goal was like going to the Olympics and uh, I trained every single day after school. I had, uh, you know, and this went on for eight years like hardcore traveling all over the country, went to the, went to like nationals and all it got to that level of like badass slalom, skier bashing gates, downhill speed suit, tuning my skis oh yeah, big time this is like there was the tune room in the training center and, like all the old, we had lockers.

Speaker 1: 26:04

I had my name on a locker, stickers on the locker, skis in there like spider gear, head to toe. I mean I lived it. Glenn plague poster. My wall, like my whole room, was like skiers Alberta Tomba man, alberta Tomba exactly Johnny Mosley.

Speaker 1: 26:19

But I started like looking at the freestylers early but I was still racing. I was just like what's going on in the mogul scene and who's Glenn Plake's doing these 360s? The movie Aspen Extreme comes out. I was like whoa, okay, these guys are freaking gangsters up there living this lifestyle and I really romanticized that. I was like I want to move to Aspen, I'm going to be a ski instructor, I'm going to ski moguls. I started getting into freestyle at that age. I bent my tips back on my skis so we would train a lot and we would travel a lot. But I was always like early on freestyle so I could. But before I started snowboarding I could do 360s and 720s like big like. If I would have kept going I probably would have been a pretty badass freestyle skier but circling back, I got super in depth in tuning.

Speaker 1: 27:14

We would bring our tuning benches traveling, my dad would tune my skis and we would tune together. And I didn't really realize this until later, like, holy shit, this has been a thread, isn't that interesting? It's very interesting, whatever I try not to look too deep into it, because it is what it is, but it's beautiful that it's there.

Speaker 2: 27:34

Well, I think and I've said this on a couple of episodes, but I read or heard something earlier this year around young people have this moment in their life, typically in their early teens, where they find like they have this first pass with the experience of kind of self-empowerment what am I good at? And it kind of imprints on you and there's some sort of some subconscious process that I think the longer you, the longer you live, the more your kind of subconscious tries to find its way back to those feelings where you felt that empowerment Totally. And I see that in your life.

Speaker 1: 28:15

Yeah, you can see it, I do too, if I step back yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:18

I'm like isn't?

Speaker 1: 28:19

that cute and maybe it's true, but and it was, I mean it's there because I don't have, like I have vivid memories of doing it Exactly the room, yeah, where the lockers were, who was in there, like it was were, who was in there, like there was lower down there was a window. I could see the people walking and like there's not many memories of I was probably like eight years old at that time when I got started like really tuning my skis for myself and the smell, the smell of the wax room and like this whole ritual that it was of like getting ready for the race.

Speaker 1: 28:49

We would wax our racing skis and we had bags for them. We had our speed suits. We had our shells that would go over our speed suits. We'd ski up to the race shack with our extra skis. We would keep them cold in the snow, right, you wouldn't even touch the skis until you took your run. This was serious and they probably definitely still do this. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:15

And you see some dudes at the Dirks and Derby or the Banks Long doing this.

Speaker 1: 29:17

You'll see, I see it because I know I'm like he's got his extra board this guy's not effing around like respect on that for sure.

Speaker 1: 29:23

But we did that and, like my first, the only run of the day would be my run on those perfectly tuned skis and there were fluorocarbons in those waxes like we were getting I don't know. There was wax in the room and, like the old, there was. These older dudes I totally looked up to that were ridiculously good racers. Um but um, yeah, that just went on, you know, for years of racing, racing. The goal was like to become an olympian and I was on that path of like going to nationals, doing well I was, my nickname was dnf, did not finish because I either won the race or I didn't crash out.

Speaker 1: 30:05

I crashed out 80 of the time, 20. I won because if I made it to the bottom it was like I've won the race because I was just it. Just slalom skiing is a crazy different kind of battle with the snow, because you're attacking these gates and the closer you get and the more of a straight line you go, reading ahead, it's like a chess game almost. But I was bashing gates. I'd wear like shin guards and pole guards and just like have like welts on me. Cause I was like bashing gates. You'd wear these speed suits too. There was like nothing there. Um, it was cold and it was icy and we had like razor sharp ski edges. But uh, and in the summers I would play traveling team soccer. I was in such good shape, I was doing something all the time, but it was like nerdy stuff. And then I was playing like Nintendo. What's funny is my favorite game in Nintendo was like Skate or Die and like TNC Surf.

Speaker 1: 31:04

TNC Surf you and.

Speaker 2: 31:06

I have such a similar story. I mean I ski, raced, I played soccer. I vividly remember TNC Surf, yeah, I played soccer. I vividly remember TNC Surf, yeah, and that you know, like Skate or Die. I mean those games were legendary when they first came out Legendary.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Yeah, I played the hell out of them. That was my life. Like go skiing, play video games, play soccer. I wasn't much of a student. I went to school. I wasn't even much of an artist back then, like I would draw, but it wasn't as much of a story as I'd like it to have been. Like he was an artist from a young age, like that's not really part of my story, even though in high school I started to blossom in that department.

Speaker 1: 31:52

But one day when I was 10 in my neighborhood I lived in this little neighborhood, much like the one I live in now. It was a nice neighborhood. We had space between the houses, there was like a river, it was gorgeous, we had land. And a new moving truck came into the freaking neighborhood and it was Danny Cass moving in. He was nine years old, he was moving in from Florida, like that happened, and he was like got out and like was hanging out and he had a skateboard and he had like big freaking clothes, dickies and like oversized everything and long hair with a skunk yellow, skunk dyed stripe down the middle and I was like that he looked like an alien coming out of a spaceship. Is this like early?

Speaker 2: 32:29

90s. This was probably late 80s, late 80s. Early 90s.

Speaker 1: 32:32

This was probably late 80s, late 80s, early 90s, maybe it was 1990.

Speaker 1: 32:36

Yeah, because three years later we were like ripping snowboarders which was like 93, 94 is a joke in our crew, which is like the best years of our life. The best year of our life was 93, 94. So like we become fast, I was like playing sock street hockey. We were playing street hockey when we first met, like running around with hockey sticks and not skating, you know, like classic Wayne's World, like in the cul-de-sac where we would build our skate park eventually. But he moved in and we became best friends, me and all my other friends, kevin Casillo being one of them. He was my best friend and Kevin and I were playing street hockey. You know, kevin.

Speaker 2: 33:18

Yeah, I mean I met. It's been a long time. Okay, Well, he was a songwriter, but I know who Kevin is.

Speaker 1: 33:23

Yeah, totally Legend now a legend in this industry, but at the time we were just Doesn't he work?

Speaker 2: 33:30

does he work for Vxton? Okay, he's like the marketing.

Speaker 1: 33:33

Yeah, vice president there what that's trippy dude and like a little cul-de-sac of you guys and how you kind of just like went out into the world and yeah, yeah, we had no idea, and matt cass was his brother and he was the cooler older brother um and uh, yeah, you know, like a week later, literally, I had convinced my mom to buy me a skateboard.

Speaker 1: 33:55

We would like go up on his board. We're like whoa this? Like there was a dead time after the 80s of skating, for sure. And this was the dead time. I remember, like when I was younger, seeing some of my neighbors with a launch ramp and some you know old power Peralta and doing like you know, air walks off of it.

Speaker 1: 34:12

And I was just like, oh, that looks cool. And I remember, like some skaters, christian Usoi and stuff, but it wasn't on my radar. We were towed deep into the country and it wasn't on TV. Really, there was no social media. I didn't know about skating. Like I didn't see it, it wasn't around, we were too rural, but that changed. Danny had a CCS California Cheapskates, which was a mailer catalog where you could buy skateboards completes, and I convinced my mom to buy me a deck A week later. Basically, I was a skateboarder.

Speaker 2: 34:49

Do you remember what your first deck was? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:52

It was an Invisible and I also got um. I don't remember what trucks maybe ventures uh-huh um and I got. I also bought a alien workshop t-shirt which was like a large at the time, maybe an xl, but it was huge with the alien on it I was attracted to that brand. I was like I don't know why, but I like that shirt um which, through line again like alien, is like my favorite skate brand and it informs, even like my design aesthetic, um, but um, so sick.

Speaker 1: 35:26

Yeah that. Uh. That's that year we went back to school and I went from being like a ski racer, soccer player and then walking in day one I was a skater. This is eighth grade, right, seventh grade maybe, something like that.

Speaker 1: 35:42

You know, I can't remember, but when I went back to school, like we went as a crew of skaters and like there weren't skaters there, there was no skaters, so Matt was a skater. There was like six or seven skater dudes and uh, and that winter much to my parents, but they were bummed like we've done all this work, you're gonna now start snowboarding. Like what the heck? We've invested all this time and energy into ski racing. I was just like, yeah, I'm a snowboarder yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2: 36:13

So, like you, I started snowboarding because of my first love was skateboarding and you know you might see, like ski, there was, I remember like that movie ski patrol with all the guys snowboarding. You know that guy that, do you remember?

Speaker 2: 36:30

that movie with the guy with two heads and he would look both ways and he was like this, like who is this guy? But it was like instant. And then all the older guys that I would skate with on like the basketball courts with the fly ramps. I would see him up at the mountain the next year like on avalanche kicks and you know, and I was just like, ok, you know, know, so, like was that? How you got into snowboarding was through skateboarding 100% yeah, you couldn't.

Speaker 1: 36:59

There was like an unwritten rule like you can't ski, if you snowboard, like it doesn't work all right and like it just was the thing like we just knew, like, okay, I'm skipping kind of a transition year. So Danny started snowboarding the first year got really good. I was still ski racing and I was still like that was like early skateboarding. The next winter, after that summer of skating, even more, danny, by the end of the first winter, got sponsored by GNU. No way, yes, his first. He was so good, danny, and that at the time there weren't many young good snowboarders. Matt was really good.

Speaker 2: 37:41

Was that his first time when he moved to New Jersey?

Speaker 1: 37:44

Never set up on a snowboard. Those kids were skaters. They grew up in Kona in Florida, which is Kona Skate Park is a legendary one of the first, if not the first, concrete skate park in the US, and they just so happened to live in that town. So there was a big scene at Kona. It's still there. So when he stepped he was a really good skater at a young age, 10 years old, and like could skate for wore knee pads all the time like bonelesses, like was like a transition skater, was like a transition skater and, um, by the end of that year uh had been already rep sponsored by this east coast rep and he he got his first box of gnu snowboards and gave me one. No way gnu skitter.

Speaker 2: 38:27

and uh, I knew, I know exactly what it looked like and I got those were like solid cover top sheets, black top with a pinstripe.

Speaker 1: 38:35

It was a it was a kelly green pinstripe and had a big g on the base. I loved this board and like then it was just on. Basically it was just like okay and um, pre-season, we went up and like I for like learning how to turn, I got good really fast and uh, because I had, because I knew how to be on the snow.

Speaker 2: 38:56

Yeah, if you can turn skis at the level you were turning skis, getting on a snowboard doesn't take too long to figure out and by the end of that year Danny had been already traveling to contests and getting more sponsors.

Speaker 1: 39:09

He rode for Black Flies, he rode for Ezekiel Clothing, he rode for Vans.

Speaker 5: 39:13

Back then, yes, dragon Gogg, dragon goggles. He kept a lot of the same sponsors through.

Speaker 1: 39:19

But it was so cool seeing, like my 12 year old buddy getting boxes of just like now I think it's so crazy. But when I saw you're getting all this stuff for free, like he was so freaking cool, he was the coolest and remained that in my life like he was my best friend, but I thought he was the coolest. So, um, but yeah, vernon valley snowboarding and the scene there was. What was rad about live growing up there was we got to go snowboarding every day after school. You know the resort closed at 10 o'clock. It was open from like thanksgiving to may, even like, and they blew tons of snow. So there was, there was snow mounds. We called them whale backs. They would blow these huge snowboard snow mounds and we'd carve jumps out of them and we'd try to find two that we could gap over and and like, the snow was like forgiving. So we were like trying early, you know early inverts, you know, like the first rodeos and this.

Speaker 2: 40:24

Yeah, you're invincible. Yeah, and there was so much opportunity to create, kind of. That was such a cool time in snowboarding, you know, like there was so much opportunity to push tricks and and just the style influence at the time was skating because yeah, I mean yeah it's.

Speaker 1: 40:42

It's so fun. Early 90s, all the good snowboarders were skateboarders yeah and, like their video parts, had skating in them. They were all like skate style, like early board slides, and it was the beginning of freestyle snowboarding really Like that generation was.

Speaker 2: 41:00

Yeah, man, I love it. I love, I'm really interested in, like the role that different musicians and songs play in people's lives and the memories. And when I asked you, like what's a song that like resonated with you, you you chose that, uh, or you told me that Fugazi waiting room song, um, like talk about that because, uh, you know, like, I guess, in an effort to like put it in context, like we can listen to it here, listen to it here.

Speaker 2: 41:36

Oh, like what comes to mind when you hear this man, because this is that time frame.

Speaker 1: 41:45

Yeah, yeah, I mean same course of like. You talked about this imprint like dramatic change, like going from a ski racing soccer player to like the next year like a punk snowboarder, skater and like the culture, really like the culture inside skiing not really there, the culture within soccer was there, but it was much different. Yeah, the culture and skate and snow is huge. Oh man, like man and it still is. And when you latch on to that lifestyle, a lot of rad shit comes along with it, including the music and all the punk you know DIY bands, like that energy. It's hard to describe how it made me feel like I went from listening to mc hammer right like nuclids on the block. The closest I got to like something cool was like nine inch nails I was like what my sister was listening to.

Speaker 1: 42:50

I was like what's that? That's kind of cool, but, like you know, it was like culture, it was like a shock to my system of like hearing this feeling this. It's like un, I can't put it into words. It was a life-changing experience and it was just through that. The music really did it for me.

Speaker 1: 43:11

I don't know as a but like, but like. So Fugazi in general, like when Matt and Danny moved into the neighborhood, Matt was the coolest older brother and had like the music. He came with the music and that's where I heard it. He had the tape, the cassette tape, and like, wouldn't tell it was like a mixtape. He wouldn't tell us what was on it. We'd be listening. We'd hear it in the house, We'd hear it at the ramp because they built a ramp. We'd be like what is it? He'd be like you guys can't know what this is. And it was like Fugazi, it was Operation Ivy, it was.

Speaker 1: 43:44

Minor Threat. It was Pennywise. It was no Effects and slowly we stuff was especially when we were watching the skate videos and the snowboard videos like we'd watch to the end credits and be like writing it down for sure, penny wise, uh, no effects. Okay, sick, let's try to find this stuff. You couldn't.

Speaker 1: 44:01

You'd have to buy it, or you'd have to borrow it and make mixtapes, or you'd have to steal it from his older brother which we did you know, like and that's where we stole fugazi from him, made our own tapes and then we passed them around like, but I only had like six or seven tapes, but they were like my, it was religion to me, and like I had headphones.

Speaker 1: 44:23

My school bus rides right 45 minutes yeah I wore out those tapes I put my headphones on, I'd sit on the school bus and just listen to that music and and I didn't. I feel like I got it, but I really I could. I can't imagine that 11 year old me understood what they were talking about. But the, the, the, the feeling. I got the vibe like it's that.

Speaker 2: 44:46

The rhythm, the beat, like the, it's creative, like I I've thought about this too because, again, I can relate a lot with that uh, including all those artists you just said. But, um, I bet you it maybe I don't know if you've thought about this, but I bet you there was some that was like the beginning of the root system taking shape of your creative personality, because skating's creative, right, it's self-expression, music obviously creative self-expression, and you start to get that kind of momentum with that stuff and you want to keep it going, you know. And then snow is another outlet of that same torpid, you know, kind of creativity. Yeah, um, yeah, 100 i%.

Speaker 1: 45:33

I've definitely reflected on this because I've had to figure out how I landed here, but it was definitely through the skating and snowboarding. I started paying attention to the graphics and what attracted me to Alien Workshop. When I bought a skateboard it was specifically for the graphic and the snowboard. When I started looking at these the snowboard magazines and the snowboard brands and how they're advertising and what the graphics were, burton was pretty, the Holy grail back in those days where we grew up and the the art that was coming out in the nineties at Burton was the best and, uh, I was.

Speaker 1: 46:14

I paid attention and I just assumed everyone else was, but I don't think they were as much as I was. And then the album covers of all these, like the Operation Ivy album covers, all the album art, the hand-drawn stuff, the inserts on the CD covers spoke to me. The flyers I would see. You know we would take trips to New York City and stuff like that and I started just noticing things like that and it definitely started to inform my style as a designer. When I got into design, you know then, like the beginnings of the, of me acting on, it was drawing on my grip tape.

Speaker 2: 47:05

Sure man, and I drew on it with the paint pins and like cutting the tape, and like patterns and like.

Speaker 1: 47:11

I would spend more time doing that and like people would ask me to do their grip tape.

Speaker 2: 47:16

That was god I haven't thought about that in so long. Dude like so much time sitting there with a razor blade and like oh yeah, it was art. Yeah, there's a meditation there.

Speaker 1: 47:26

Yeah, you know a hundred percent, I'd say waxing your board and gripping your deck is pretty close or setting up a lot of similar setting up your, your, your skateboard and you'll you feel that, if I hope people do, when you set up your snowboard for set up your split board, you're definitely going to find that zen or the frustration, uh, but it is there within, gripping your deck, and I've actually never connected those two until right now.

Speaker 1: 47:52

But that was the beginning, the origins of creativity on something Paint, pens, and you know. Then I started drawing. I was in high school and I got into the art Like. I went to a really rad high school that had like focuses, so I got to be an art focus. I got to take more art classes. The art folk had art focus. I got to take more art classes and, uh, there was like three, a ceramics lab where I got to throw clay, and there was a 3d design club. There was a photography club. We had a dark room in my high school. It was like I had so much that my senior year, high school, we got the first Mac in the photo lab. It was in the cabinet.

Speaker 1: 48:38

I designed the cover to my yearbook in Photoshop one. It was like this crazy, like perfect timing of like I didn't. It was like Whoa, this computer's out. It was like the Apple, like the iMac or whatever. It was the colorful one and like my school got it and like my photo teacher was younger and he was like, hey, I'm going to have this little side thing in photo class.

Speaker 1: 49:05

For anyone who's interested in learning graphic design for the first time, it's like new. There's like these design programs. I was just like well, that sounds cool. And like I stayed after class and I stayed late doing it. And like when the yearbook committee happened, there was like a girl I thought was cute on the yearbook committee and I wanted to like get take part of it, and my mom at that time I was trying to get into a good school and like extracurricular stuff was part of it and like being on the yearbook committee or something, I did it and I designed the yearbook and there's a lot between that happened in high school. But that was like the beginnings of the design, like drawing on the grip tape going through high school and all these amazing art classes. All my sketchbooks in high school which I still have some of them are all Burton graphics I was redrawing everything I saw. I would draw pictures of Thierry doing methods I have some of these still and then I would draw Volcom art.

Speaker 1: 50:03

All of it is Volcom stones Volcom stones, every page and I wanted to work there. I wanted to work at Volcom or Burton, yeah, but that just was it for me, I just knew it. And, um, when the time came to like be a mom, when my parents wanted me to go to college, um, you know, danny was on a trajectory at that time already to be a professional snowboarder. He was when he was a year younger than me, so when I went off to college he went off to Vermont the same time to Okemo Mountain School. So we were still together, close enough, and when he went there he skyrocketed. He went by the end of that winter he was winning the X Games. Yeah, I remember that. And I was a freshman in college and going to school for design and art and living near Killington and living in New England in the mountains. It was rad.

Speaker 2: 51:00

But what was, what was kind of your first? I mean, obviously you went on to do a lot in the industry, but like, what do you remember? Or talk a little bit about kind of your first? I created this and it and it showed up here or like I mean, I guess, like was there like maybe like a, a magazine, or like like I think you know, like it's pretty significant first, yeah, let's, because it all goes back to like Danny, like I, I got to give him credit and uh, you know I was given these opportunities.

Speaker 1: 51:37

It was like winning the lottery, really, like, uh, people ask you how'd you get? How do you get in? Like, and, as sad as it is, it's who you know a lot of the time, most of the time, and if you're not good, it's probably going to work out too. But Danny, in that time between freshman year and junior year of college won the X Games, won the US Open and got given a pro model on GNU. And I was a junior, I think I had my own art studio. So I went to this beautiful old college in in Vermont called Castleton, part of the university of Vermont super old turn of the century buildings.

Speaker 1: 52:21

They had this Victorian house that they had purchased on the campus off the like, right behind the art building, three story like painted lady it's called super ornate trim everywhere, picture windows unreal. And that was the artist studio space. Artists, when you're a senior got to get a room in the building to be your studio. I had convinced the art department to give me one by my sophomore year and by the senior year I had the whole top floor. It was was insane. I slept there, I lived there, I got super into studio practice but I took school very seriously and excelled.

Speaker 1: 53:04

But when Danny eventually got given the pro model, we found out he called me and this was like getting an answering machine message. I would get these ones from him being like hey, dude, I need you to draw some stuff. And I filled up a sketchbook. I sat in my studio in Vermont like probably listening to Fugazi, yeah, and all night long. And I was a stoner back then and I'd just stay up all night drawing and like I had stuff around that I'd look at and uh, but I found this like style early on, like characters based really, um, intuitive drawing style that I still use, but at the time, time I was. It became my signature thing and Danny knew about it. He loved it, my sketchbooks. He would come and visit and he would be like you're, you're doing cool stuff.

Speaker 1: 54:01

I was like selling stuff to people or giving it away and people would put it up. And it was cool. I would make stickers and put them up at the skate park Super DIY style at the time, like early graffiti-esque. But in vermont you can't do graffiti, um, but uh, yeah. So I sent my sketchbook to mervin gnu snowboards. He's like here's, here's the address. They gave me a fedex number even to put in a fedex envelope. I just sent it and didn't hear back for like six months. And uh, this is a it, almost it's emotional thinking about this. I was like, oh, I guess nothing's gonna happen there, right, am I ever gonna get that stuff back? Which in through history of at Mervin, I've never gotten stuff back and it's lost. But uh, I went. We would go to High Cascade every summer and this was. I sent it in the fall, probably like, and then was in school and didn't hear about anything but um.

Speaker 2: 54:57

And for listeners, high cascade is mount hood. Uh, snowboard camp in mount hood. That was like just if you were into snowboarding you would spend. Yeah, I skipped over the whole mount hood thing.

Speaker 1: 55:07

because we, this first year we started snowboarding. We went to high cascade 13 years old, danny was 12, kevin was 12 or 13 to or my parents, I were. I started working at action park, the water park, and saved up money and they, they matched my thing. We went and flew out of Trenton airport unsupervised to Portland. They picked us up and drove us up to hood and, uh, athena and Todd Richards were my coach, but then we went back every summer. Mount Hood changed my life and what's bought, what bought me to Oregon and here to this day.

Speaker 1: 55:40

It was a life-changing experience going up, you know, Palmer, or whatever it is the magic mile through the clouds and seeing Mount Hood for the first time.

Speaker 2: 55:49

I remember that I same thing Like I. I was a camper at a high cascade when I was 13. My roommate was Chris Hotel. Do you know? Chris, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 55:59

Yeah, and we like we became really good friends that session and I really haven't spent that much time with him since then, but every once in a while I'll bump into him over the years and it's just like that bond that we formed over that 10 day session. Like that bond that we formed over that 10 day session. Yeah yeah, joe Curtis was my coach, nice, and I remember, uh, and I I ended up working at high cascade and I remember picking up those campers from from the airport and just getting to like watch these kids that have never been to Oregon, have that experience of driving from the city up into the mountains and then just showing up in Govey with like, just like skate everywhere and kids cruising, and yeah so yeah, it was a religious experience, another life changer, which is just like again when I listened to the music or I saw the graphics.

Speaker 1: 56:45

when I came to Oregon for the first time. It was like Lewis and Clark arriving at the Pacific ocean for the first time. You know, like I was like there was no question where I was going to move. I was like I'm going to live here and here we are.

Speaker 1: 57:02

But that summer when I was like we would go back every summer. So I was like, okay, I'll meet you guys out there. I was riding for Quicksilver at the time. I eventually got sponsored for snowboarding and when I was like 18, 19, 20, I was a pretty good snowboarder Not Danny's level, but I got free boards and I got free outerwear and there was a Quicksilver house in Govey government camp and Danny rode for Quicksilver. So I was like meeting everyone out there and they picked me up from the airport and we rolled up to the house and I walk up the stairs and sitting on the porch is Danny's board with my graphics on it and he didn't tell me he's just like.

Speaker 1: 57:40

I was just like what the fuck? Yeah, it was insane, it was life changing. It was that first spark of like. I was just speechless really. And that was his first pro model and it did really. It did well and it looked fucking and like that was his first pro model and it did really, it did well and it looked and like that year he went crazy on it his coverage, his ads, he was the biggest snowboarder on that board and, like you know, it did really well with that retail not that I knew or cared and understood that side of things. But people loved it.

Speaker 1: 58:12

It was very unbranded, it was very cool and different at the time and that's where we started getting into some of the themes of his graphics and, uh, the guy that laid it out. I eventually took over his job, which is crazy, but uh, he did a really good job putting everything together from my sketchbook, took things from different places which I was just like, oh, I wouldn't have done that. Like, really cool, like it was fun to see what someone would do with my art and then add typography to it and color and it was so freaking cool. And that summer, so this is even crazier.

Speaker 1: 58:47

We went up to Mervin that summer and they paid me at the factory For the art you had done. Yeah, cut me a check in person, 500 bucks. And I met Pete for the first time Pete, sorry, who became my boss, yeah, and like, toward the factory, saw the boards being made. You didn't get a board because it was too early to get a board at that in the production. It was like Danny had the only one. But we were in Seattle too for the first time. I remember that day was like the coolest fricking day we went downtown Seattle. I went to the record shop and I bought the pixies CD with where's my mind on it, right?

Speaker 1: 59:30

So this is another another transition into indie rock. Right, I was like I started hearing like Modest Mouse and Nirvana kind of helped transition me from punk rock to this more indie, better played music, maybe like dudes that knew how to play their instruments and write songs and emotional writing, and like I started like really loving that music. Like the Pixies and Modest Mouse were my bands. I was just like I don't know why, but I love this storytelling that's happening in this music. It's less aggressive and I started really finding myself. I'm not that much of a punk, I'm more of a sensitive artist dude and this is my music. But I remember buying that CD. Like I have 500 bucks Now I'm going to go buy a new CD and it's going to be this new chapter, even.

Speaker 1: 1:00:25

Um, but uh, that was my first design job, a big one, big one, big one. And then that, and then they were like what's next? What's the next one? And you were still still, you were a junior in college, junior in college. And uh, I was just like oh, because I. I was like, oh, yeah, he's got another boy, he's like the other graphics, like due tomorrow. I was like, oh crap, it wasn't really. It was due in like a few months, but I had an assignment which was like I was high as a freaking kite on life, right there I I was just like this, is it?

Speaker 2: 1:00:56

I peaked really Dreams are coming true.

Speaker 1: 1:00:58

I peaked at that time, which is funny and true. But I went back to college, senior year, and was like I'm getting to work on the studio, like got all my supplies and like figured out, like I got this graphic has to freaking hit and yeah that I ended up doing the graphic and it was like the board of that year. It was such a good one.

Speaker 1: 1:01:21

Yeah, I remember Danny's first pro model graphic, but I don't remember his second one, the first one you probably remember is the casket, yes, which was the one I went back to do. The first one was not that, oh, it was like these I went back to do. The first one was not that, oh, it was like these faces not many people, it was like this real artsy one. It had a base on it with these reapers too. It didn't really make sense.

Speaker 2: 1:01:44

the two they had no connective tissue.

Speaker 1: 1:01:47

I can visualize aspects of it it was black and had this white kind of drawing painting of these faces.

Speaker 1: 1:01:53

These characters I used to build and like this little reaper that was holding like this G and it didn't say Gnu, but that was the first one he hadn't really. But when the casket came out, I went home and I drew the casket and that was my first like really time thinking a lot. I have this assignment and not just like filling a sketchbook and sending it. I was just like I get to make this start to finish. I have this assignment, not just filling a sketchbook and sending it. I was just like I get to make this Start to finish. I'm going to draw it with all the graphics on it. I drew it full size. I got paper that was snowboard shaped. I worked on the floor. My studio was full of these snowboard shaped canvases of paper. I was just so jazzed to do this had probably the pixies CD on in the background is like thinking about it. It doesn't seem like the same life I'm living right now, but it actually was. But, um, yeah, I drew that cat. I knew I wanted it to have a theme and, like it was the first time, I started thinking that deep Okay, a casket, danny Cass, the casket board. It's got a casket on it. It's called the casket, danny cass, the casket board. It's got a casket on it. It's called the casket. It's got a whole story behind it. It's deep. I got to name the series. It wasn't called the casket before that, but that it was the danny casket.

Speaker 1: 1:03:06

Um, and the. You know I did all the typography that like shaped in a that looked like you know grave rubbings and like I got books from the library and looking at this stuff, looking at typography from like grave rubbings, and like there was a library down the street from my studio and I'd go there and like look at stuff and I take images from the Evil Dead movie, the cross from the Evil Dead movie. Remember that movie Is the cross on the board. And Remember that movie is the cross on the board, wow and uh, it was just like pulling reference material, which I still do to this day, but then twisting it, um, but that board came out so sick I rolled it up and shipped it to the Seattle and then it came out and they didn't do much altering to it None really. And I still own one of the drawings, but the other two are missing because at the time there was two different top sheets and one base. It was so such a good graphic.

Speaker 2: 1:04:03

I'm so proud of that one, and do you feel like knowing Danny from being nine years old gave you, like, like you knew his personality, like kind of his influences was that? Did you take that into consideration a lot? And yeah, we were.

Speaker 1: 1:04:21

Danny was just like me, like less so turning sensitive emo kid. He was a punk totally and still is, and uh so he we would draw skulls on everything. It was just like skulls are cool. Morbid stuff is cool, like what's on the NoFX album cover it has to feel like that vibe, you know, like the Misfits Dead Kennedys.

Speaker 2: 1:04:47

The Misfits became very. I mean, that was our band.

Speaker 1: 1:04:51

The Misfits, the Crimson Skull, like the Misfits songs, it was all like horror. So that's why we started watching horror movies, like the Evil Dead, like it all like had this theme to it. We started building it. You know at that early age, without really knowing it wasn't as planned as it might be today in a marketing department, that how I would plan something as I plan Spiral. But it was the beginnings of that.

Speaker 2: 1:05:21

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:05:21

The beginnings of thinking that way of like, okay, it's got legs, there's a beginning, there's an end, there's an arc to this story. And when I say something has legs, I mean it's got a lot going on, a lot of stuff I could pull. Okay, this, I could go for a long time on this theme. Okay, danny's theme is horror. What can we do? Lots, there's a lot we could do here. So every year the boards had that vibe to it for like four or five seasons. By the third season they I got hired by them, but grenade happened between and uh, there's that whole chapter. But eventually I got offered the job as the art director right for gnu snowboards and it all happened from that initial meeting at the factory and doing those graphics improving to the staff there.

Speaker 1: 1:06:17

But the, the marketing department, art department, I could deliver, I knew how to do it and, uh, you know that was a big deal to them like he's reliable and delivers the goods, and like mervin, that goes a long way, because then you'd be getting the state I call the art the stable. Like a horse in the stable, you're in. And once you're in, you're in Because, like Lib Tech has like a dozen artists that have been doing graphics for decades, dude, decades and you know, once you're in, like, unless you stop sending art, you're going to be in. So it was cool, yeah. But yeah, that was the introduction to graphic design professionally In the snow space In the snow space.

Speaker 1: 1:07:03

And it was but that first sighting of that board on the deck. I remember exactly the house, the time of day. You know it was like, okay, I found my calling. It's like Danny was a professional snowboarder. I wanted to be one. I wanted to be a professional ski racer, a professional soccer player when I was younger. At that point I knew I'm going to be a professional designer, artist, whatever that meant. This is my calling. Like I don't need to try to be that anymore.

Speaker 2: 1:07:27

Well, you became one dude. Yes, like on that day, definitely.

Speaker 1: 1:07:40

I mean, that's the definition. Again, when I got that check handed to me, it's just like, okay, I guess, yeah, it's real now.

Speaker 2: 1:07:43

I was definitely going to school for it, but that was made it real. Let's talk a little bit about grenade man. I mean I don't know how many people that will listen to this will really understand kind of the impact that that brand made on the sport of snowboarding in the early 2000s. But what I mean, how did it all begin? What was the spark behind it? I have a I have a rough understanding just because I was living in that world. But a lot you know you'll still see like an old Subaru driving around with the grenade sticker on every once in a while. You know, but that was I mean, tell me about that.

Speaker 1: 1:08:14

Yeah, same time as Danny started blowing up winning everything, he was sponsored head to toe and I was in school, going to school for design. Matt was living in Mammoth being a pro snowboarder for Ignition and Mission 6.

Speaker 1: 1:08:31

Mission 6. Danny was living in Vermont and graduating OMS, okemo Mountain School, and at the same time like that winter that the casket came out. I was a senior. He won the US Open, which in those days was like bigger than winning the Olympics. It was the Olympics. It was, yeah, it was bigger than the Olympics and I mean it. Just it was unreal Watching him on the board I designed sitting on the half pipe. I was riding the pipe that day, I was trying to qualify and stuff like that. And I remember, specifically because I would wear this bondage, I was still punk, we were all punk still and I wore interesting gear. I was the creative weirdo on the snow. Still Like, my gear always was a little bit different. So I'd wear trench coats, military trench coats, and I'd wear bondage belts and bracelets, and none of us would wear gloves. It was like an East Coast thing Totally. We would wear gloves, but I wore motocross gloves a lot, fox motocross gloves. We called them pipe gloves.

Speaker 2: 1:09:37

That's just what we called them, because they were thin. I mean, think about all the companies after Grenade that went on to make pipe gloves. Right, they didn't exist.

Speaker 1: 1:09:44

but anyways, danny just got so big so fast that I don't know. Matt was writing and working for Mission 6 and started designing outerwear for them. And I was in college doing graphic design and Danny was working in the US Open and one day we were hanging out and it was just like what can we do? Danny was like Matt was the one who wanted to start the brand. He's like I think we need to act now, like I know how to do this. I'm watching how this is done. You guys you're going to school for design. Danny's the biggest snowboarder in the world Like let's start a company. What could we do? Nobody has a glove sponsor Danny.

Speaker 1: 1:10:27

The only thing he could do for Danny was gloves, because he had outerwear boots, bindings, boards, goggles. It was the only little category and we didn't. It was like dumb luck. It was like we didn't. Really I'd like to say we noticed that gloves were pretty boring. We didn't. It just so happens to be they were, and when we started, when I started designing gloves, I made them cool looking but, uh, we just had light struck, gold when we were like, okay, let's start a glove company and what are we going to call it? You know there was a lot of names getting thrown around, but, um, it came back to like growing up in new jersey where we grew up. We grew up near a military surplus store, if you remember those.

Speaker 1: 1:11:13

Oh yeah, and on the East coast they're kind of in every town there's one of them and they're all like a dingy like garage full of like ammo boxes and parachutes and military jackets. Everything's cheap, it smells weird, it's freaking awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:11:29

There's weird. There used to be a rad one off third street here that went out of business a while, I think. But yeah, no, I mean military surplus, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:11:37

There was one in my hometown. We'd go there like every now and again. My dad would stop by and I'd always think it was so cool I'd dig through the patches. I didn't really know, I didn't really understand like military history. My dad was in the Navy and would talk about Vietnam and stuff like that. But I now really understand military design and respect the hell out of it.

Speaker 1: 1:12:00

I don't really agree with war or military, but at the time I was wearing those jackets it was kind of punk rock. You'd wear an army jacket you know the fatigues For sure, and you put patches on it and you draw on it. So it was just like that was a style I was running and we had grenades, like we had Dummy grenades, dummy grenades, and it was just like we had some other names I know a few of them and they were not military names and it was just like what if we did something like with the military and it was not done before? It was like we have all, we are all wearing this stuff. I remember like we, it was just it kind of just came out of. I'd like to think the universe provided Like we were open at that time, there was no outside influence of, like a board of directors and investors, someone telling us what we could and couldn't do or what would be smart or stupid. We were just like. This would be fucking cool. Jamie Thomas, also like, wore military jackets.

Speaker 1: 1:13:03

He was my guy. He was like the goat for me, of like style. I was like it has to be, in that it has to feel a little punk, little diy, military style. What if we went that route and like names got tossed around in that zone and grenade was the one? We went like I wasn't there but matt and danny wrote down a bunch of names and this is like folklore but it's true and like threw a cat, a cat on the names and the cat landed on a grenade. So there was like Whose cat? It was Matt and Nicole's at the time, I think. Like Ammo was one of the other names, like Barracks was going to be one of the names. It was all like military related related.

Speaker 2: 1:13:52

That was a different time in the world too, you know, like the. I mean, I guess before we, like the 90s, early 2000s, before september 11th, there was like the military kind of presence wasn't as global as it is right now. Yeah, and there was like there was kind of like it's kind of paying homage almost to like the Vietnam era, you know, and just that kind of like post yeah, like it, I get it.

Speaker 1: 1:14:21

It resonated and there was something like post Vietnam era, like John Lennon and like counterculture and hippies still wore fatigues. Yeah, it was cool. It was like it was like a style and like I started really when we decided that I started really diving into like military uniform history Again like when I get the, when I we found a thread and I kept pulling on it and I am a researcher, researcher and bought books, went to Powell's when we were in Portland, went to the Strand in New York, went to obscure bookstores and hunting down military uniform books, military badge books, and that helped inform a lot of design. Then half of Grenade was military, half of it was like punk rock horror. If you looked at the early stuff and people and you could have talked about both of those things Totally. Danny's gloves were very horror style. Then there was the stock stuff that was very military. I was taking badges out of military badge design and applying it to glove panels yeah, it was camo and skeletons man, exactly I remember.

Speaker 2: 1:15:37

But what's funny, really rad names which also didn't exist at the time yes, what's um?

Speaker 1: 1:15:43

we didn't know what we were doing, but the glove industry was all black goreTex gloves. They were great gloves. They were boring. No one put any energy into the category. There wasn't any competition.

Speaker 1: 1:15:58

It was just we had no idea what we were doing. And the retailers, because of this magical ratio of Danny rad, design something new, run by snowboarders people were just we're like, we need it, we want it, give it to us. How much? Send it, we'll take double. And uh, you know, we went and not know like design the catalog. I had these design skills where I was just like, yeah, I could design a catalog and drew these line drawings and I know the basic graphic design, how to illustrate this stuff. We were like drawing on our hand, Like I would draw my hand on a piece of paper and draw out glove designs.

Speaker 1: 1:16:37

And Matt had found through Mission 6, a factory. He kind of knew this process. It was so foreign to me. I was like I don't know how stuff gets made. I had no clue or had put no thought into it. Matt had. So it's like like mission six, this is how they design from start to finish. This is where they get it made. There's there's some folklore about matt stealing that, finding the factory in china where to get it made by dumpster diving mission six, finding the factory name from their dumpster. Because people in this industry hold on to sourcing. I'm one of them. I'm not going to tell you where I get stuff made. That's intellectual property, um, and if you know that you're just going to get your stuff made there, it's kind of silly but it's true. And uh, we found out where mission six stuff was getting made. We called Matt, called the factory. I guess Somehow convinced them to help us make stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:17:34

We became very close to these agents in Taipei, taiwan. I actually ended up going over there dozens of times to China, learning how to become an apparel designer. But it started with drawing with a pencil on a piece of paper, with a pencil on a piece of paper and then eventually becoming a really in-depth apparel designer. Tech packs like insane illustrations of apparel, like thousand-page tech pack books with gigantic lines of gloves and outerwear. And we got into outerwear and designing this stuff is not easy. It's all in the details and patterns and colors and themes. And it was. I got burned out real young on this stuff, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:18:21

I was just wondering about that. It's weird when, like being aware of that line, that's the tipping point between your passion becoming a job. Yeah, it starts feeling it. It has a different kind of emotional resonance to it. You know you have to really be conscious of um passion that got you to where you're at, where you're at with it, you know yes, yeah and uh.

Speaker 1: 1:18:44

Then there becomes some stakes, start happening like the pressure, pressure, the creative pressure, getting back to that. Okay, Like we have this initial success, it's like the sophomore slump Are you guys going to be able to deliver again this magic? Then we start getting sales reps, distributors, going to trade shows, understanding the game. We're getting Matt got really into the game of okay, we're doing this company, we're really doing it. And me and Matt and his wife Nicole started running the business.

Speaker 1: 1:19:17

I had just graduated college. I moved to Mammoth. I basically the day I graduated college my car was packed and I moved to Mammoth and I was also working for GNU. I had been doing freelance for GNU On the road trip across the country. I was designing Danny's ad for GNU. I had been doing freelance for GNU On the road trip across the country. I was designing Danny's ad for GNU in hotels on my G5 computer that I would set up in the hotel room, the tower I totally knew.

Speaker 1: 1:19:42

And then I arrived in Mammoth and we had an office already and I would be flying back and forth for the last part of my senior year to design the catalog or go to the Vegas trade show. I was already working halfway through my senior year I was like a full-time designer and uh, so I just hit the ground running. When we got, when I got to Mammoth, it was go time with designing. I don't know where how that circles back. It was insane because the stakes got high fast. We went from zero to 60 very fast and I was addicted to it. This is the early addict brain for me.

Speaker 1: 1:20:19

It's just like the success I was just like. It became my personality, my essence. I'm a successful graphic designer. My ego right. We all got big egos. Danny always had the earned his, but I found mine through being a successful designer, owning Grenade. Being part of this business, part of this crew, I needed to protect it and make it bigger and bigger and bigger. Getting back to the goal of I graduated college as a graphic designer. I'm going to be the best graphic designer in the world or the Olympics of like. I graduated college as a graphic designer.

Speaker 1: 1:20:54

I'm going to be the best graphic designer in the world or the Olympics of graphic design, whatever that is, uh, uh. I need to have something to prove and when we got our our megaphone, our voice within the snowboard industry, I wanted to prove something to everyone like me, danny and Matt, these kids from Jersey, we're going all the way, we're taking over, we're gonna win and, burton, you guys are done. That was our mission. It was militant in a way, we were going to war.

Speaker 2: 1:21:20

Yeah, but I mean you also like it wasn't just like the the opportunity because of the kind of void in the space that you stumbled upon in the category but and and then like putting all the pieces together. But I mean I was living in Bend at the time. I had been living here for a while, snowboarding a fair amount, and I just remember the army of dudes. I mean you guys created it, that was it, wasn't it called the grenade army? Like you guys, I would look at your, your team list and there was like 40 dudes on it and like it just like that momentum as well. Yeah, you know, like it was incredible.

Speaker 1: 1:21:56

There's something special about the East Coast. Yeah, it's hard to explain when you're not from there, but we all stick together. Yeah, and at that time we're all like half of the grenade crew were from the East Coast.

Speaker 1: 1:22:09

We all came down together. Danny was like the ringleader. There was a special time in the 90s there when a lot of good riders birthed on the East Coast. I could go for a long time on naming all of them, but they were all in our crew. There was this big pilgrimage, like Lewis and Clark coming west, two of East Coast snowboarders coming to mammoth. Yeah, it was this magical time. We all, they all, went out. Matt went out first, we all, danny followed, then everyone else followed, me being one of them, and Matt set up our office in mammoth. Grenade and grenade started becoming a thing Like our whole crew was down. They were like, okay, we have something now that's ours. We want to wear it Like we. They were part. It's hard, it's like being in a band together.

Speaker 2: 1:22:57

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:22:57

We were all doing it together. Yes, there were people at the top, but there was no one was making money yet. Yeah, everyone wanted to support Danny. We all loved Danny. We all loved having this thing we're a part of, and they were like soldiers yeah, soldiers of the frozen battlefield and we all like it was tough again. I've I've applied this in life all the time. I just recently did it with spiral. No one was given some of these riders a chance. Fuck it, we're gonna do it ourselves. You're not gonna make these guys team riders. You give them a chance. We're starting our own brand. We're giving them a chance. No, I couldn't.

Speaker 1: 1:23:33

After I got fired from blackstrap in this in bend, I was just like shit, where am I going to work? I tried to find a job. I couldn't find work. I was like already had been marinating on spiral in the background, working on the ideas. I was like I gotta do. I guess I gotta start my own company to be my own employer. Uh, it all went back to that. Fuck it, I'm doing it, we're doing it ourselves. Yeah, and no one's gonna tell us what we can or can't do. There's no outside influence, with people, sales people saying, uh, make the logo bigger? Uh, can you put that on? Can you change the color? Can? This is selling over here. Can you do it like that? There was none of that, and to almost a degree where it was unproductive. Sometimes we were making a lot of stuff that didn't work, but we were trying all the time seeing what stuck. People bought anything with a grenade on it, but the army of the crew. We just took over Mammoth.

Speaker 1: 1:24:32

Oh yeah, and then the stencils happened with the grenade logo. Like there's something magic about that logo. There's something magic about the Volcom stone. There's these logo, the Nike swoosh. It's hard to the Apple Apple. It's hard to put into words, define why McDonald's, the Golden Arches People have tried to study this stuff. Just it's hard to put into words, define why McDonald's, the Golden Arches People have tried to study this stuff, just it's not worth trying.

Speaker 2: 1:24:54

It just is good. It almost like it creates itself, like it comes out of the ether. And if you're paying attention, you can be the vessel that it uses to go from this kind of and it sounds corny maybe, but it's so true. I agree with you Someone paying attention, inspiration for multiple different reasons, and boom, and then it just grows.

Speaker 1: 1:25:19

Right, and that's exactly what happened. People just loved all that. Our crew was so down that we, just, like magnets, attracted more people, people, everyone. Then it was just like this void in snowboarding at the time, like everyone wanted to be part of it. And then we were. Danny was winning everything and traveling a lot, and everyone was traveling too, like, uh, doing contests, and our crew would just show up, yeah, like we would. So I don't know how, but we're at the X Games, we're at the Open, we're at the and we're bringing stencils. Danny was winning, we're partying, we're fucking shit up, we're spray painting our logos everywhere and stenciling happened like from early on. Again back to the skateboard grip tape stuff. I would make stencils and we would make stencils for our skateboard ramps. I would make these human-shaped stencils. Yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 1: 1:26:16

You know, like the dead body, corner shape, whatever chalk outlines. Yeah, we would make these chalk outline stencils and then spray paint them all over our ramp. And then we would make stencils for our grip tape. And then we were like, I didn't make the first stencil for grenade, just my buddy, mark riley, did. But when he did it it was like a. It was like a fire. Yeah, the spark. Yeah, I was just like, oh shit, we could just put this thing everywhere. Yeah, it's like no one had done it. Yeah, it was just like graffiti. Kids in the punk rock scene yes, it was going on, they were spray painting their logo on their gear and stuff like that. But again, we just dipped over from another place and bought it into snowboarding.

Speaker 1: 1:27:02

And like any other brand, burton, if their marketing department went around spray painting things, they would have gotten fired. You guys are. You can't do that. No one was telling us what we can do. We got into trouble sometimes we just got out the fuck out of town.

Speaker 2: 1:27:14

Well, it's just so authentic to the brand, like the brand. Yeah, that's why it worked the military creates, we would buy.

Speaker 1: 1:27:24

I would go. We bought stencil kits from military surplus stores. All the ammo, all military, was stenciled. Yeah, it was all military issued fonts, the stencil font, it was called, and that was early on typography. We bought into the brand. It was all just stenciled stuff, yeah, uh, and it just looked so cool.

Speaker 1: 1:27:46

Even though if you just with, if any other, some old Vietnam vet would look at and be like this is looks just like the military stuff I would be wearing and like, but for a 13 year old snowboarder from michigan he was just like whoa.

Speaker 2: 1:28:03

I've never seen anything like this and uh god, I remember that summer they started popping all over the place in Govie and yeah, I snowboarded a little bit with Mark Riley that guy's great man.

Speaker 1: 1:28:15

Yeah, he was from Vernon. Yeah, what's he doing now? He lives in SoCal.

Speaker 2: 1:28:20

Yeah, he was strong snowboarding Gosh the best, yeah, the best.

Speaker 1: 1:28:27

Mark and his brother, brian Riley. Okay. Okay, this is a little sidebar. Mark was the coolest kid in high school. Okay. Brian was his older brother. Even cooler, he was gone by the time I left. Brian was the first dude we ever heard of moving to Tahoe. Uh-huh yeah, and he became a legend in Tahoe. He rode for Kemper.

Speaker 2: 1:28:48

Okay, and he rode for K2.

Speaker 1: 1:28:51

Okay, and he rode for K2. Okay, and it had some success. Yeah, mark rode for Nitro. Yeah, it was like the best pipe rider Totally. No one could ride as good as him. Yeah, but Mark's mom was my school bus driver. No way, mrs Riley, and she had Nitro stickers on the mirror of the school bus.

Speaker 2: 1:29:08

Of course she did man and had nitro stickers on the mirror of the school bus and she'd pick us up and I was like that's mark's mom.

Speaker 4: 1:29:12

That's freaking cool and I it was just. He was just a legend.

Speaker 1: 1:29:16

He moved to vermont and was a pro snowboarder in killington where I where I went to school uh-huh and uh, he rode for dark side yeah, he was a homie, yeah, and he and he moved to Mammoth too, yeah, and he rode for Grenade yeah, and he cut the original stencil, yeah, and he was. Nowadays he lives in SoCal. I think he's like doing construction. He's sober as well. I've heard we all like went through that party phase For sure man. He got taken in by it, similar to me, and luckily he found his way out and I think he's doing great yeah, he's a really good example of like the quality guy, quality type, quality character that that whole crew.

Speaker 2: 1:29:59

Yeah, the east coast salt of the earth like, yeah, we had nothing.

Speaker 1: 1:30:03

Mark also like we grew up in these shitty resorts on snowboarding on ice. We saw the in the magazines Tahoe and Mammoth and Bachelor and Mount Hood and we were just like get me there, dude.

Speaker 1: 1:30:15

I'm going to go freaking nuts and we can land on ice. We were freaking soldiers back then, like trudging through the ice storms, like riding cold, riding ice, riding rain, any, any weather. And then when you get this grit, like just like the pioneers did, crossing to the west, like you come here into the freaking holy land and you just excel yeah and when you grow up here and you have perfect conditions.

Speaker 1: 1:30:44

Yes, there are the benfigs and jareds that grew up at bachelor, and that is a thing, that's a way to do it too, but these kids, when they come from these coasts, there's like nothing stopping us, and we had that mentality.

Speaker 2: 1:30:58

I would notice that different level of hunger man. Hungry yeah, Hungry yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:31:02

And I had that hunger for business, like the snowboard business.

Speaker 3: 1:31:06

I was like I business.

Speaker 1: 1:31:06

I was like I'm not going to be the number one snowboarder, I'm going to be the number one designer. We're going to make the number one brand. And I got.

Speaker 1: 1:31:14

I was a workaholic. I worked seven days a week. I worked nonstop. I wanted Grenade to work and I just knew if I work, the harder I work, the more successful we're going to get, the cooler it is. You know, that was my formula and that's what I did and it worked. We got really big really fast for a lot of reasons, but the burnout came and the craziness came and the substances were out there the whole time. Like Danny winning the X Games Okay, we're partying that night. The 10% rules in. Like Danny winning the X games Okay, we're partying that night. The 10% rules. In effect, danny just won 20 grand. We're spending $2,000 at the bar, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:31:57

And we did, and everyone partied and we're all on Danny's coattails for years and it was fricking. We were rock stars. Danny was a rock star and still is, and uh, we lived that rock star lifestyle. We were a party all night. We were invincible, we weren't really doing drugs at all, but we were drinking a lot and it was just part of it. It was just like get the let's. Where's the keg? Let's do keg stands, let's smash bottles over our heads. It was a fricking celebration and like when I talk about, like my recovery, like the beginnings. I've said I talked, I've gone through recovery, we can get to this. But, um, like, I hear some horror stories like oh, I was abused as a kid or whatever. That is a thread to get you to um addiction. We were just freaking, celebrating life, dude. It was a fucking good time yeah and uh.

Speaker 1: 1:32:44

then getting into the business, it was we were traveling. I had like an expense account. I was making a lot of money. We were just on the road, with unlimited budgets. I was spending $1,000 at the bar, I didn't care, I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars in my 20s. There was only more coming. That was the idea. This is never going to end. Somehow we pulled it off.

Speaker 1: 1:33:08

I would wake up, I would dust myself off, or you know like, and get to work again. And it was just. That was the. And then there'd be another milestone achieved, another celebration. You know, it was like okay, I just finished the catalog, let's celebrate. And same happened in skateboarding. I just got a trick, let's freaking go Like we're partying tonight. I got my work done, uh. So there was always the work getting done, a lot of it. And then we'd celebrate, uh, and then that kind of uh, it's a cycle. It's a cycle and, and it's progressive. And you get your body, your mind, your brain Like I've, I've reverse engineered it to your brain, like I've I've reverse engineered it to to establish a health, a healthy cycle.

Speaker 1: 1:33:56

getting back to my routine, the routine we created for ourselves, back, then was unhealthy and unmanageable, but we managed to do it for about 10 years, yeah, until, like, everything happened with grenade. Yeah, when, um, you know, success is a double-ed sword with you know, like, money, friends, egos, alcohol, partying, women, relationships, marriages, weirdos coming into the business and outside, money and pressure and stress, and pressure and stress. It's a grenade and the pin gets pulled and everything blows up. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened and, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there.

Speaker 2: 1:34:38

Yeah, that was like 2010-ish, is that when? When did you guys start?

Speaker 1: 1:34:43

We started Grenade in 2000.

Speaker 2: 1:34:45

No, I know, but kind of. When it started to wind, I was already gone.

Speaker 1: 1:34:48

So I was there in the beginning. I was there for a good four years full time, and from year one to year four we went from zero to 10 million in sales.

Speaker 1: 1:35:00

That is fast. And it was like doubling every year Zero to. We did $100,000 real goofing around and then it was a million dollars and then it was 5 million, and then it was 10 million dollars, and then it was 5 million and then it was 10 million. That fast we went to. And then we had distributors in every country. We launched the outerwear. Um, danny was winning everything. Still, the Olympics happened. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:35:21

And uh, when we, when we started going international, our sales doubled. We were in every country, and then when we bought in outerwear, our sales doubled again.

Speaker 3: 1:35:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:35:30

And the line was huge and we were responsible for a lot of financing. Yeah. And a lot inside went south. Yeah, between the owners me, matt, danny, nicole Matt basically had a nervous breakdown and I was close to it. And Matt basically had a nervous breakdown and I was close to it and it's just a long story short.

Speaker 2: 1:35:55

It's layered with complexity.

Speaker 1: 1:35:56

It's layered with complexity, but basically like friendship, money, egos, stress. It blew up and I saw it coming and I was like I'm done, I quit, and I sold my shares of the business. I was able to make a little bit of money not as much as that could have been a billion dollar brand and I bought a house At the same time. I was always working for GNU, I was sending graphics, I was doing Danny stuff, I was helping out whenever they called and establishing the relationships there. And Pete, who became one of my best friends and mentors, he and I were very close. He was close with Danny, he, he, mervin, quicksilver almost bought Grenade. So we were very close to those guys.

Speaker 1: 1:36:45

It was very close and I wish it would have happened. I wish I'm glad it didn't. But Quicksilver almost they put an offer on the table to buy us when I was still there and, uh, we all said no again. It was like fuck you, we're doing this, you can't, you suits can't buy us. And because quicksilver owns gnu and libtech at that for the, for that time they'd done it for like 25 years and actually it would have been great because they would put a lot of structure to our brand brand and done all the stuff that ruined the brand, the financing, the management, the structure. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:37:17

So the accountability, yeah, all the things we learned about and bow. Correct, yeah. And so at the time Pete was like what's going on down there? We were in Portland, they were in Seattle. He's like I heard shit's going down. He's like, hey, we're looking. I want to make a change. Would you be interested in being the art director? I was just like yes, of course. He's like we need you to be full time. I'm like dude, I'm thinking about do something. It was like my first, like big boy decision, like I'm out. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:37:52

Like this is not good. And uh, I went to everyone and made that happen and uh, it wasn't easy. There was lawyers and death threats and like, um, what's it like? When you get the cops, you can't be in a certain distance, like a restraining order. When you get the cops, you can't be in a certain distance.

Speaker 2: 1:38:09

Like a restraining order.

Speaker 1: 1:38:10

Restraining orders happened between people. That's a bummer, like all, and it was bad. It was just like it was gnarly and I was just like I'm done, I'm gone, I'm out of here. And were you drinking a lot?

Speaker 2: 1:38:24

Oh, yeah, big time.

Speaker 1: 1:38:25

Yeah, but it was, it was. It was the beginnings of me drinking.

Speaker 2: 1:38:29

to forget that's what I was going to get to Like. I've thought a lot about this because I quit drinking about I don't even know how long it's been now four years. I'm 45. I quit drinking when I was 41. So it's been four years and I didn't really drink that much back in the day but I started thinking about and going through medical school, you take this class called epidemiology, which is like disease and population, right, and there's genetic predisposition to stuff and I think and maybe you can relate with this. But when you kind of get into that cycle and it's kind of fueled by celebration, I think your biology starts to develop a tolerance and a need I mean it's addiction, right and then it becomes like the real question is the why behind the substance abuse, you know, and that can be a really kind of scary, dark place, to be honest with yourself you know, I've had to be very honest with myself and figure that out.

Speaker 1: 1:39:34

I've done a lot of work because I'm now coming up on nine years. No way. Eight nine. I've relapsed a few times in the beginning, but a solid eight-year stretch. That's good, congrats it was a life changer, but it's progressive. It goes from we're partying, we're having fun to again. That could last forever for some people and but when I right by the bar I'd be like I'm going to the bar to have a drink and then forget. I'd be like, oh God, it was a relief.

Speaker 1: 1:40:17

The sweet relief Feels great. And then it started happening where I was just like I'm just going to stay home and drink, or you know, that was like a 10 year stretch of like celebrating, and then there was like a 10 year stretch of like, uh, celebrating, and then there was like a five year stretch of like relieving stress and then there was a. Then there was like a 10 year stretch of I just want to drink alone and uh. But after grenade, which I've gone through therapy and I've really dug into the wise cause, I had a really great childhood. My dad was an alcoholic, drank himself to death. His dad, alcoholic, drank himself to death.

Speaker 1: 1:40:52

My mom's dad drank himself to death. I never met any of my grandparents, they were already dead. They drank themselves to death. I'm an Irish, whatever you know like it might be.

Speaker 1: 1:41:03

It's a through line in my family and you know I was known as a partier, even within the partiers. I would go longer, I couldn't stop, I would black out, I could not stop drinking. So there is a genetic predisposition there with everything in my life, with addiction, because now I'm addicted to other things and I have replaced addictions with healthier addictions. So after Grenade I didn't realize this was a traumatic experience Losing my business, losing my friends, watching all this go down At like 24, you're a millionaire. Then everything's gone. All of your friends won't talk to you or they don't want to talk to each other. No one will look each other in the face. There's cops and lawyers involved. It was not good. The industry it got out. All the team left, they all scattered. Some people stayed around. Grenade went on for like eight more years when I was gone.

Speaker 2: 1:41:59

I didn't realize it went that long after you left.

Speaker 1: 1:42:02

Yes, they had a couple different chapters and Danny was there pretty much the whole time. And then there was other people that came in. They started making a bunch of other stuff shoes, jeans, MMA gloves. It got dicey and uh, it got super. Uh, big box store style.

Speaker 2: 1:42:21

Um, and I was gone, long gone, yeah, and really, how did that feel to you when you saw that stuff like that?

Speaker 1: 1:42:28

Exactly this gets back to like the trauma it caused me. I didn't realize it. I was like you can't be, you can't get PTSD from like starting a company with your friends and then losing it. You damn sure, right, you can Sure Anything traumatic in your life can trigger this stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:42:43

Whether you're going to war in Vietnam, you're losing a spouse or a loved one, or you start this thing that is beautiful, your friends, you put everything into it and then it's gone. And then you have a constant reminder, seeing it everywhere, everything to this day, everyone talks about to me grenade. What happened there, or it could have. It was so cool. I remember grenade. I'm just like me too. Yeah, trust me, I see it everywhere. Still, it should have been great. It was great and but what I?

Speaker 1: 1:43:11

It really affected me emotionally, mentally. I didn't deal with the feelings I had and make amends with my best friends. You know it was gnarly. I moved on. I was just like fuck it, I'm not dealing with this, I'm not thinking about it, I'm going to like, do something else and that's not healthy. But I was 25 and I just drank myself to sleep every night and kept on partying and like this didn't affect me, I didn't let it show like that. I cared, I had cared deeply. I couldn't. I didn't talk to Danny for years, I didn't talk to Matt for 15 years. All of us were hated each other kind of Um, and it's really sad because we're all best friends, so that really affected me and, uh, I didn't be reconciled with those guys.

Speaker 1: 1:44:03

Yeah, I've made them like. When I went through recovery, I went through you know the 12 step program. Some other people in grenade crew did as well, some didn't, some didn't change their lifestyles. Um, I went and made amends with everyone in my life cause I did a lot of stupid shit. I never hurt anyone or did anything violent, but there was emotional stuff that I needed to clear up. My ego was massive back in the day and I knew I was good and I talked about it and no one was my idea was the best idea. It wasn't like the best idea in the room is the best idea. It was like no, mine's the best and that's the end of it.

Speaker 2: 1:44:41

Um, so was that, uh, looking back on that kind of season of kind of uh, you know, self-forgiveness and reconciliation with buddies, like, how did that change you like, how, like has that? Because I, I can relate to some degree, not that deep and complex, but just there's a weight, that kind of, you know, like the whole reconciliation, forgiveness process. I, I always encourage people to really like lean into, you know, like.

Speaker 1: 1:45:14

Yes, it's something you learn.

Speaker 1: 1:45:16

I learned in recovery in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous like talking group, the fellowship, what they teach you about forgiveness and amends and the power of it. I was embarrassed by all this stuff. I didn't want to confront it. I didn't want to see these people or be vulnerable around them or admit all this stuff. It was the same as like I don't want to deal with my emotions, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to deal with this.

Speaker 1: 1:45:51

I'm going to drink and forget about it and then I'm going to wake up tomorrow and have a bunch of shame and regret and the only thing that's going to cure that is starting to drink again. It's a shame cycle, it's a regret cycle, and this cycle is again progressive because then, oh, I'm going to need to drink a little bit more tomorrow night, I'm going to feel a little bit more hungover tomorrow morning. And then that went on from my early 20s to my late 30s and I drank every single day into excess. Towards the end it got really bad, becoming dependent on this, and what I learned, what drove me to those meetings, was a near death, near death, getting close to death. I was either going to be go to jail because I killed someone driving my car drunk. I was going to die because I drank myself to death or I was going to get sober those were my options.

Speaker 1: 1:46:46

I'm proud of you man, I'm proud of me too, straight up. Yeah, a lot of what's rad is I started listening to podcasts. Oddly enough, mark Maron WTF podcast he normalized addiction to me. And I heard it through someone else that I respected and him talk, I was like whoa you're talking about? This stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:47:08

What are you doing, dude? And like I was like it was it changed something in me. But there was a uh. One of the loves of my life I was living at the time found me like pretty much dead in my yard. Oh, it was winter and I passed out outside cause I drank so much at the bar I could barely walk home and they had to like drag me into the house and like I could have gotten hypothermia. I could have died outside. It was like deep winter and I drank like a whole bottle of whiskey. I couldn't, it was bad. And then a couple days later I fell down the stairs of my house and cracked my head open. And then I went to the doctors and I had my only physical I had in like 15 years and I had like signs of a fatty liver.

Speaker 1: 1:47:52

I had a fatty liver, meaning like I was on the road to organ failure. My, my, I drank so much. My side hurt. I wake up in. My liver was swollen. My, it was like I couldn't stop. It was like I can't live with it. I can't live without it. Yeah, I could not function, I couldn't eat, I couldn't. My hands were shaking. Yeah, it got that bad. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:48:18

I would drink. The first moment I woke up I'd make sure there was something next to my bed where I was waking up to, and then it was a constant drinking all day, throughout the day, and then it was drinking myself to sleep until this woman who was my and like what I did I've learned this in recovery too is I surrounded myself with people that this was normal activity Nowadays.

Speaker 1: 1:48:40

If I was in our circle acting like this, someone would have been like dude, what the fuck? In order to be around me, you would have had to party as much as me. So I surrounded myself with these people and did it, calculated it. I didn't realize how I was doing it. I probably did now like any prerequisite of a partner. Then she needed to party, she needed to not judge me and and I had to be in these rooms where no one judged what I was doing but celebrated it. Um. So the minute she said something, it was like dude, you're going to die, I love you. Like, wake up. My dad had just died because of alcohol. I was like this is it dude?

Speaker 2: 1:49:25

Sorry, don't be brother. I really appreciate your vulnerability with this because the same way that, uh, I think mark maron resonated with you, like this will resonate with so many people and and just like grenade had its timing and snowboarding and I was talking with troy a little bit about this I think there's this really like really amazing space right now that I'm very thankful for that. Young people hopefully have the opportunity to kind of learn from those that went before them.

Speaker 2: 1:50:02

Yeah, now and if they're paying attention like you, can really save yourself a lot of hard life lessons. I love it.

Speaker 1: 1:50:09

I see people like Jared and like these younger kids. Jared is a bad example, actually Other kids that are athletes these young snowboarders are athletes and they're into mindfulness and nutrition and they go to bed early and they stretch and they take it seriously Like non-alcoholic beers and sauna. It goes back to what I'm trying to tap into with Spiral, but yeah, this woman, meredith, dragged me to AA. I was kicking and screaming. I was like I still got six beers in the fridge. What are you kidding me? Like, let me at least drink those before we go. I was drinking in the car on the way to aa and like went in to this basement church classic and and like it just. The first meeting was like there's a moment of clarity you have. I had my first one there. Yeah, it was like a religious experience, like something happened where I was just like I don't know what but I listening to other people talk. I thought I was the only one Right. I was like oh, mark is. I was just hearing it from one other person.

Speaker 1: 1:51:19

I was like, oh, it's like I guess it's just me and Mark Mark got sober, so like I'm the only one drinking, like I knew that wasn't true, but I'm just, you know, getting at that level. I was drinking and hearing a group of people together talking about their story and a lot of it, when I got deeply into, is how you, how you got there and where you are now. And even mark inspired me like I want what you have, like I want what these. These people talk about their recovery process and and like their habits and how gnarly they were and people they hurt going to jail.

Speaker 1: 1:51:56

Like you'd be sitting next to like a successful lawyer and hear a horrible story and like hear that they were worse than you were somehow like I didn't know it was possible, but this business guy who has a family was worse than me and now he's got his life together, he's made amends with everyone, he's successful, he's got a great family, he's happy, he's like my life is so much better now. I'm like, holy shit, I was. Like I can't imagine that.

Speaker 1: 1:52:21

And like he's like just do the work, Keep coming back. And I did, I kept on going. I kept on going Like I made some mistakes. It was not easy. It was not easy.

Speaker 2: 1:52:33

Most things worth doing aren't.

Speaker 1: 1:52:35

Yeah, it was the most difficult thing I've ever done and just living my life in my own skin, in my own body like was uncomfortable for a few years.

Speaker 1: 1:52:45

I didn't know how to exist without it. I became more of a hermit, but I just wasn't drinking at home. I started fixing my life up. I hadn't done taxes in like seven years. I trashed my house, I was out of shape. I hadn't like done anything to my to clean my act up physically and like financially. I had a lot of work to do and I started doing it.

Speaker 1: 1:53:12

I started like getting that routine. I was like I go to a meeting every day, I have my meetings, I have my, my schedule set up, so, um, we go out after I. I start volunteering at the a meetings. I start cleaning coffee cups, I start setting up chairs, I start uh shaking people's hands. I start finding these friends, these old dudes that are uh recovered and uh, hearing these stories. Every time it lifts me up. I'm like okay, same as like a victory, and like or like uh, progressing in design or art. I was progressing in the recovery process, finding these gems of lessons and tools and inspiration to be like, okay, I could do this like and being like uh feeling good at night, going to bed and like waking up, not being ashamed, not feeling that thing that I felt for years, working the steps, taking a moral inventory and talking about it to my friends, admitting it to myself and others. What's going on? Not easy, yikes.

Speaker 2: 1:54:22

No man.

Speaker 1: 1:54:23

But I should be emotional because it was like a new person was born. But what's rad is I kept the creativity working for mervin yeah, I kept where I.

Speaker 1: 1:54:37

I was a workaholic I was a high functioning alcoholic until, like the whole time, basically, I was somehow pulled it off. What was what was uh difficult is they they celebrated my party personality. It was like part of my shtick, but I always delivered. But, yeah, the recovery process was long and hard and lots of beautiful things happened because of it, like making amends with everyone at Grenade, everyone around me, my getting financially back on in order, uh, deciding I wanted to move to bend. Yeah, like it was just like I want something new. Yeah, and that was the trigger. That was the, the seed that got planted. I was like I gotta get out of here, portland, all these uh reminders everywhere, all the dive bars, all the places. Our old warehouse was still there with grenades on it. I was like I want to go somewhere new.

Speaker 1: 1:55:39

I stopped snowboarding for a long time. I stopped skateboarding for a bit. I definitely stopped snowboarding for years and just started living in the Portland lifestyle for years. And just started living in the Portland lifestyle and I was just like I had been to Bend a few times to go snowboarding for Super Park and the big wave and we'd come out here and I got a few powder days over the course of the 20 years I lived in Portland. I just remembered like what the hell is going on out there. It seemed like a fairy land over over here. I was like who's over there? I knew adam haynes.

Speaker 1: 1:56:13

I've been living here and like everything was like drawing me to bend. Yeah, this is like. Wouldn't that be cool to live there? Oh yeah and I started, like during the recovery process, like had time on my hands, was like started getting into carpentry, fixing up my house, and like there's something about carpentry that you know even lends to the spiral story. Cause, working with my hands, building tools, building stuff, learning I love that Uh, tangible thing, like not just sitting on a computer. I was like I like making stuff, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:56:46

Um but uh, like making stuff, yeah, Um, but uh, I started looking for jobs in Bend. I was just like is? There any work out there. Cause I was. I always knew I can't just move there without a job. Yeah, like I owned a house in Portland. I still had a mortgage. I just needed a job. Um, I was like maybe I'll just like I started looking outside of even design. Like I was like there was no jobs. Obviously you know this. Like there's no design jobs in Bend.

Speaker 2: 1:57:11

Totally, man. I mean that that I remember transitioning out of snowboarding, having lived here while I was snowboarding a lot and thinking to myself man if I want to live here.

Speaker 2: 1:57:21

Like the industries at that time were kind of like healthcare, education, construction, those were kind of the staples, you know. And yeah, there was always entrepreneurial opportunity. But in a lot of ways I kind of viewed my time in snowboarding as like my first pass with entrepreneurship, because that's kind of what it is, dude, you're like as a writer, you're kind of your own brand, you know. But yeah, dude, before we get too far down into kind of your time, and Ben, I wanted to play some audio. Can I go pee really quick, please do? Yeah, let me pause this.

Speaker 1: 1:57:57

There is a story and it is real. Oh it's 100% and it has all led into what birthed this new thing. And, like all of those, I wouldn't change a thing. Get that mic closer. Addiction, um, that that period of time made me who I am today. So I'm I'm grateful for it, it. May it changed my life. If I'd ever had done it, I've never been through all of that I wouldn't be the same person. So, no, just glad it happened, glad I'm through it, but, um, okay, no, I just uh.

Speaker 2: 1:58:35

No, I appreciate you sharing and I know others are gonna. You know whether, whether they have the history that you and I have with and and the kind of the emotional kind of identity and connection with the sport of snowboarding, or not. Before we took a break, I was, I wanted to talk, or not even talk, but just play this audio from your buddy, sean Bishop, Because, yeah, I mean, it speaks for itself.

Speaker 3: 1:59:03

So when I first started working at Mervin this was probably like 12 or 13 years ago I was working for a live in GNU. At the same time, you know, I'd been a lifelong Mervin fan. I mean, they're my favorite company and my first board since I was a teenager and I knew about Tim and I knew his background with Grenade and I knew that he lived in Portland at the time and he was satellite. So he had a bit of an enigma about him because he was so cool and he had so much he enigma about him because he was so cool and he had so much. He had this gallery in Portland and you know, whenever he came into town it clicked really well. He was into skating and we liked a lot of the same artwork and artists and designers and we just had a really easy bond. At one point after spending time with him, I talked to Pete and I was like I just want to work with Tim full time and he was like, well, I'll ask Tim. And Tim was like, yeah, it's a go with Tim full-time. And he was like, well, I'll ask Tim. And Tim was like, yeah, it's a go. So Tim and I have been close ever since. He has such a great spirit. I mean he has this contagious energy to create and make Mervin's a really supportive company. Mike and Pete and the rest of the crew love creativity and love the DIY spirit and Tim just really drove that home and his creative energy is out of control. And he's one of my best friends and Tim just really drove that home and his creative energy is out of control. And you know he's one of my best friends and I just really appreciate him. Everything he's done and all the artists he's worked with in the past and his spirit for Grenade and when Danny was part of the program and all the other legendary people and Forrest Bailey who's still involved. It's just been a really creative spirit. I will say with Sp Spiral, I mean I love that.

Speaker 3: 2:00:32

Just for instance, when he started doing it, he wanted to make waxing, you know, not just a chore but a way of making yourself feel in tune with your board, in a way of, I'd say, like coming together and making it more of like a Zen feeling. And his whole approach with the natural products, again not using chemicals. He can make it in his house, he can make it in his garage. He's not respirating it up. He's really feeling the need to move forward with that and doing it himself. I see on his packaging he has, you know, handmade by tim, handmade by whoever signed emil. Say it straight up, they definitely took a nod from you know our factory where people signed the boards, who made it, and you know it's inspiring. I think he's doing the right production for a project. And I will say that's one thing about Tim His drive is inspiring and also driven by the need to create.

Speaker 3: 2:01:31

He told me a long time ago that he really wanted to like have a project because he loves making. He's a total maker. He's, I'd say, more of a maker than even an artist. He likes to like create a story, and when he transitioned from his former company, I think it really kicked him into gear of like not just go in there and doing something that someone else is asking him to do, to create his own world, create his own product, to be able to like tell a story, get people involved and do it his way.

Speaker 3: 2:02:02

And I think that's probably the way that Grenade absolutely started and the success of Grenade with him, you know, being involved in the other partners and making it so special, especially during those few infant years we used to have the saying, or he probably still says it, but it's never show the blood. And I love that because he's just basically persevering through yes or no and just going forward with a smile on his face. And at the end it's kind to turn out rad, because what else can you do besides? Just create it and you know if your vision's right, you're going to go in the right direction. Uh, my name is sean bishop. I live in seattle, washington. I am currently the art director for ghanoush snowboards. I'd say to tim straight up that man, I love you, you're one of my best friends and I'm so proud of the work you've done for Spiral. You've inspired myself and so many other people.

Speaker 1: 2:02:59

Yeah, Sean, that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 2:03:01

He kind of told a good Well, it's always validating when your buddy just gives a really good summary of what?

Speaker 3: 2:03:10

we just spent an hour and a half talking about it speaks to the authenticity of it.

Speaker 1: 2:03:16

You know I want to. Before I forget me and Sean we're, so we still are very close. I spent more time with him than maybe anyone in a really intimate level of creating and getting weird. We would get very weird. That was like we changed. I changed the slogan of GNU to get weird. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:03:38

I remember it was, I don't I I got a lot of. I had, I got given to, earned a lot of creative control there and I took it and I ran Like when I started at GNU, like GNU and LipTech were pretty on the same, they were not different, like the goal, like the goal was given to me, like make it different, like GNU has to have its own thing, like it's too much right now. But they were sharing artists, they were sharing slogans, they were sharing boards. You know it was just the same brand, um, but me and sean, I had this uh saying he said it wrong but he was close, never let the blood show. And this is a um pt barnum. You know who this is yeah, I do the circus the circus yeah

Speaker 1: 2:04:30

that was their, that was the circus had this anthem Never Let the Blood Show, meaning. I love the circus for many reasons, but they had the curtain right. Everything out front was the performance, the product, just like the snowboards or whatever were selling to the audience. Everything behind the scenes is the gory details of getting it made and PT Barnum was behind the curtain. It was a bloody mess. No one knew Literally a bloody mess. And in front it was a polished product coming out. He would just say never let the blood show. And I would always say that to Sean let's fucking go, dude, behind the scenes, get our hands dirty and cry and sweat and you know, and then we're going to pump out this polished thing. Nobody knows. It was just, I'd say all the time, yeah, a lot of sayings from the circus.

Speaker 2: 2:05:29

We were. A little side note, my son had a swim meet in Sarasota, florida, like a month and a half ago and they have the Ringling Brothers Museum there. Have you been to that?

Speaker 1: 2:05:41

No, but I'd love to go it is next level man.

Speaker 2: 2:05:43

They have this model that this guy started when he was a kid and worked on it till he was 90 years old and it's like I bet you it's a size, an airplane hanger and it is a scale model of a train like, not a train like seven trains that would come into town with the circus. And they have. They have the tent, but then they also have everything behind the, the town that they would build and all the different people. I mean everything. It's insane. The posters.

Speaker 1: 2:06:17

So I have a couple books on the circus. But what I loved about it, too, is everyone had multiple jobs. So one of the performers was also driving stakes to build a tent. It was like a well-oiled machine. It was production line performance, the art, the posters. It was like going into a fantasy land. They set up shop outside of town. It was like such a magical experience. They were inviting you into and you never could tell like behind the scenes it was a bunch of chaos going on. But I've adapted that too. It's like, and even the way I run the business with troy and claire and max is everyone needs to be able to do everything, yeah, and everyone has their specific uh, gift gift superpower, exactly.

Speaker 1: 2:07:07

But everyone should be able to do what I do too to a degree, or understand what I do, and if you don't, it doesn't work at the circus. You know that's how it worked. Like that the dude that everyone worked together as a team and and they were all bloody and sweaty at the end of the night and made something rad happen and the audience got to enjoy it. And then they packed up like precision onto the next one and like that's just like the kind of uh um, analogy to a season of of a brand. It's like, okay, now we're starting again. Uh, let's roll up our sleeves and uh, it's never ending, but also let's have fun. Like let's make something rad and beautiful to be proud of this time around too. I've been to the circus at a young age Bringing the players came through our town and stuff, and I have memories of that and just like the fantasy that they create the fantasy, yeah, of that they create. Yeah, there's mystery there.

Speaker 2: 2:08:14

Mystery.

Speaker 1: 2:08:14

And I like the occult and like freaks, and there was. You know, I've tapped into that stuff too. It's like the imagery and the magic, and there is a lot of magic in Spiral like with our wizards and witches and.

Speaker 1: 2:08:32

I like bringing, like that. When we're talking about how I build the identity of a brand, thinking the storytelling, the story, creating characters, creating themes, I've built this kind of freak show. In the corner, spiral is a very natural, hippie like brand with our natural products, but in the corner is the wizard stuff and the witches and the reapers and it's still there. Totally I can't and don't want to get away from it.

Speaker 2: 2:09:02

Nor should you, nor should I.

Speaker 1: 2:09:03

And like it's not the main theme, it's not what shows up public facing right away, but when you start digging in, it's there.

Speaker 2: 2:09:12

Yeah, deep, yeah, they're not mutually exclusive and you almost can't really have that not present somewhere in Spiral because it is so much part of the history of how it came to be. You know, and I love that you worked at Mervin for so long, dude, what a, what a? I mean I've been lucky enough to know several people and still do that work there and have made careers working up there and I've always just, I mean, my first snowboard dude was a like a 145 good new chaos with pink and white elfkin bindings. Man, you know, like it was neon yellow with the. I think it had like a pink paint line down the middle or something and it's just. Yeah, I mean it's, it's so fun, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:09:55

That time like I feel like it's everything's been a buildup to where I'm at. Yeah, but working there, they taught me a lot about how to run a business that we weren't doing. At Grenade they had the people in place running the finance. There was a nerd accountant lady who would write our checks and she made me jump through a lot of hoops all the time with expense reports. I was like, oh, leslie, she's dogging me on my expenses. She was there to do her job. Man, they were date, they were doing. They had all those people behind the scenes making sure the supply showed up, the shipments went out. Then there was the creative team like me on it and they.

Speaker 1: 2:10:32

Let me run wild over in the corner, but at Grenade there was just a bunch of people running wild. And then when I walked into the factory again, like going up to Mount Hood for the first time, walking into the canoe factory was another pivotal moment, being like what is this you guys actually are building? There was dudes. Just their job was like building boards. What was cool? Like there was fucking Devo playing. There was posters on the walls Like all the dudes is stationed had, like you know, pictures of chicks on it, and like muscle cars or like skateboard stickers.

Speaker 1: 2:11:05

People were skating through the factory. There was a break room and like stickers on all the lockers. Like there was offices with people working and getting shit done. But there was people building amazing boards. But there were like snowboarder dudes and skateboarder dudes that like lived in seattle and like had dyed hair and tattoos and I was just like, huh, cool. And like everyone had a personality there. Like it was almost a prerequisite that you're a bit of a misfit. Like your resume mattered. You had to show up on time, there was leniency, but um, that was cool.

Speaker 1: 2:11:40

Like I was like you could run a business better than we did at Grenade, but you could still be cool. And like you can build your own products and do it right. And like the power of what they were doing. It took me a long time to really realize how powerful it was.

Speaker 1: 2:11:53

I was just like I didn't get it for a while. I was just like I would complain. I'm like why can't we screen print our boards Like I want to do the bases, like Ride and Burton are doing? And they're like we can't do that because we supplement. We have this certain simple DIY process of how we make our boards and we can't do that. A, it's toxic to screen print your bases and B, it's very expensive. I was just like man, it would be so much cooler, though I didn't get.

Speaker 1: 2:12:19

What they were doing was the coolest because they own this simple, effective process that they could build the boards in the factory and sublimate the bright colors. Yeah, build the boards in the factory and sublimate the bright colors. Yeah, and I was just like it took. When I started spiral the, the number one thing was gotta make the thing, gotta make whatever we're doing, gotta make it with my hands. So we have to do that. Yeah, it's like there's no question about it. Yeah, uh, and then we gotta create a structure behind the scenes with people who run the business right, and the business needs to be just as important as the creative creativity in the product if you had read it before or not.

Speaker 2: 2:12:58

Gary had turned me on to it during Opportunity. Yeah, but just in my mind I always think about the three buckets of a successful business, of kind of the creative marketing, the operations and the finance. And unless each one of those buckets is being kind of like ran appropriately, like it's not going to work.

Speaker 1: 2:13:24

Man you know, and yeah, truth, and to almost a painful degree, the past six months of spiral has been the other buckets yeah, really filling them and like we haven't like really done. We have make made some cool stuff, but a lot of what we're working on behind the scenes, day after day inside out, is the operations and the financing. And because I was waiting and hoping and praying literally I do pray every night and I'm grateful and give thanks for everything and I'm aware of what's going on and was hoping that we would get this momentum, so I I started making it look really cool, figuring out the story of the brand and hoping like, okay, when this gets going, we're going to jump into the financing and the operations, because we but I didn't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. So I really did everything, at first myself and, uh, um, it was just really small and tiny and just, you know, simple.

Speaker 1: 2:14:34

But the minute we started showing some traction, I approached, we approached Clara to come in to be a partner and she's a business major and she came in and she did things that I don't understand. She came in and she did things that I don't understand. I do grasp, and then we, then we eventually like. I got the opportunity to join um opportunity knocks and met Gary and again Gary turned me on to bow.

Speaker 1: 2:15:01

And then that's where we met. Yeah and uh. Grad just graduated from bow and that really changed the business.

Speaker 1: 2:15:09

Again, another lot of work on top of everything in life that I have going on. But I like learning. It's, you know, again like that addict's brain. I constantly need to be putting something in the tank, challenging myself, chipping away at things to see this progress, whether it be a tangible thing, or at least I could feel it. It gets me out of bed every morning like, um, and what great, what's great about the bow and the traction kind of things is like me being the creative dude.

Speaker 1: 2:15:46

I don't want to do that stuff. Yeah, it's just not fun, but it's necessary. And the stuff that I invested in doing that program made me do it. And I have money at stake here, Everything I've built that I had to do it, take it seriously and actually learn to enjoy it. And now I'm really because I cause I talked about it with in class. I was like there there's an art to business, there's an art to finance that if I could find my way of looking at it, it is the same, yeah, and so I'm leaning into that stuff and being like you know, I want to be a successful business person.

Speaker 1: 2:16:28

I want to be a successful business person, entrepreneur. I want to be able to walk into the bank and borrow money without a hassle or have the paperwork involved to do it, because I want to build cool stuff. I don't want anything to get in the way and I want to do the steps that have been laid out by corporate America to be able to jump through the hoops and the red tape and be like here you go, Give me the money and then take the money and and use it, and not just for going on vacation or like whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 2:16:56

But I want to, like, build some cool shit to make to, to to inspire the next generation of snowboarders, or keep people engaged, or keep people having more fun or, you know, keep myself engaged in the process and when there's. The biggest roadblock for some people is just the money, and they don't know how to get the money or they don't want to deal with it. So, if we can. That's what we're kind of learning is like. Okay, I want to make all this cool stuff. This cool stuff is going to change our business. How do we get the money to make it?

Speaker 2: 2:17:29

Yeah it. It emphasizes the importance of and a very good friend of mine taught me this early on when I started Storybooth because, like you, I think I don't think I, I, I like the idea that's where I get I, I, it's so fun to, like, you know, just sit down and think about how do you do this. But unless you view it through the lens of an operating budget, you're you're kind of hamstringing yourself, you know, in terms of, like, getting where you want to be, um, in a sustainable way, right, yeah, and we.

Speaker 1: 2:18:01

That's the biggest downfall. Grenade was that stuff. Sure, okay, you've sold all the stuff. Now what? Yeah, it's always fun to see oh wow, we're doing all this sales, but it takes a lot of money to make money. For sure, and in order to nowadays, especially to get money, you have to have the right reasoning, bulletproof documentation of why you're borrowing, what and what you're spending it on and how you're going to pay it back. Yeah, exactly, you're borrowing what and what?

Speaker 1: 2:18:31

you're spending it on and how you're going to pay it back. Yeah, exactly, and just knowing that is like you know. That's why the rich keep getting richer. The opportunities of being an entrepreneur are so great. If you could figure it out. Yeah, it's an art, it's a, it's a secret society, it's um, it's something you have to learn how to do 100%, and we're learning every day, yeah. And the last six months has been seriously dedicated to that stuff.

Speaker 2: 2:18:57

So Spiral is like your primary focus. You moved over to Bend how many years ago, five years ago. Five years ago we kind of were starting to share that transition over here before we took a break. But it sounds to me like it was just kind of kind of, this place drew you here for a lot of different reasons yeah, I needed that when I got.

Speaker 1: 2:19:26

I remember how it, sitting in these rooms and journaling like I was journeying a lot. That's part of the recovery process, like writing, reflecting on what made me happy, the roots of everything, what got me to that place of rock bottom, what led me there, what were the best of times, what did I love more than anything? It all comes back to snowboarding being in the mountains, being in nature, and I, you know, growing up there I wanted nothing else to do. I loved snowboarding but, like, once I got through college and started getting into the design world, I was just like I want to live in the city. Like, uh, portland was just so was drawing me there similar to how Ben drew me. Like I was just like all signs. Port to port, port to portland, portland was having a bit of a renaissance and in the summers, when we got a little older, uh, we would go down to portland for the for some nights during summer camp and we'd run, ride bikes around.

Speaker 1: 2:20:24

People were like living down there and had houses. We go to house parties and like bars downtown. It was just like so magical. I was like this is such a cool city and it was affordable and a lot of people all the snowboarders were there yeah, there was a big scene. There was a big scene and like Nemo was there and Cinco and Draplin was there, like these design firms working within the industry, I was just like we got to go to Portland. There was no else, nowhere else.

Speaker 1: 2:20:52

Um, I don't know how we got no, I did oh, but the same feeling I got after when I started writing and thinking about what's special to me. I was living in the city, I lost touch with nature and snowboarding. I just there was years. I just didn't go. I had had Meadows was so far away and the traffic and I was hung over or like when I'd go, I'd like have to like drink some beers on the way and then go to the bar Like I was never.

Speaker 1: 2:21:20

It was always just like there's like the, the saying like my drinking team has a snowboard problem, like the, the, the snowboarding was just like something to do while we were drinking. Uh, which is sad but true, and uh. So it was always like adjacent to that, it's like, yeah, I'm just gonna stay in in town, like I'm not going up to the mountain. That sounds like a whole lot of work to get up there and cold and I'm out of shape still. Like I was skating. I had a skate ramp in my backyard and I was so involved in the Portland city lifestyle where Sean mentioned. I opened an art gallery and like, had a like a serious gallery business and art studios that I rented out and that's where I ran the new art department out of a satellite office there. It was really cool.

Speaker 1: 2:22:07

But, yeah, I just felt like I needed a change of scenery for this new chapter in life. Yeah, and again it was just like Bend. It just kept coming back to Bend. I was just like I want to move out there. I had never really spent time here in the summer. I'd driven through and like I didn't understand the high desert as much as I do now, what I was like getting myself into.

Speaker 1: 2:22:36

Like I got, I found an opportunity to go work at Blackstrap, which is a you know a brand in Bend and has a lot of history, and I didn't know much about it at all. I'd never heard of the brand before I got the job. I was all I knew is I it was going to bring me to to Bend. It was during COVID and I didn't even. It was a Zoom interview and they were like, yeah, we would love you to come here and work for us.

Speaker 1: 2:22:56

I was interviewing for a assistant graphic designer job and they're and jim, who runs blackstrap over there, and they're like you're way overqualified for this job. I was like I don't care. I was like, get me over there, I want to work anywhere in bend, I just need to go somewhere. They're like, okay, well, what if we made you the marketing director? I was just like, well, that sounds like a title and like I it, we could make this work. Because they, they had seen my resume, they kind of knew of my career and they were like I think you would be a great asset here to what we're doing, because Abe was really trying to build the brand side of.

Speaker 1: 2:23:32

Blackstrap and I was just like I'm going to. I had learned how to not care what people think, even though Blackstrap is what it is a great company in Bend employing a lot of people. I was just like for me it was a step down at how I looked at it and I had to be like no, it's not. This is a nice challenge. It's A getting me to a new place. I'm going to be able to live on a salary. I wanted to have a structured job where I showed up nine to five at that point in early sobriety and I was just like cool and I went in and it was great and it got me into the band community. I started snowboarding every freaking chance I got. I got a split board. I had already a split board setup, but I really started early season, day one when there was snow on the ground.

Speaker 1: 2:24:20

Here I was on the snow yes and I was touring a lot and I was I rode. I was a weekend warrior but I'll wake up and ride the comb. Before I worked at Blackstrap and I started like getting into shape and riding good. There was a dramatic change in my first year living here of snowboarding. I started riding a bigger mountain board. I started getting more gear again. Like I was just I had old stuff. It was like funny, I was like riding a twin tip freestyle force bailey board and like old, out of date, like mismatched gear. I felt like a kind of a tool a bit. I was just like I always used to have that fresh shit and it was a big part of like my aesthetic. Like eventually I got there I was like, well, I just don't have. I don't want to reach out to people and get free stuff like well, it's kind of humbling sure it?

Speaker 1: 2:25:15

was humbling and like the crew I was riding with, I still ride with this day like I call us the c team at bachelor.

Speaker 1: 2:25:22

Like there's the a team for sure there's even the b team, but we're the c team, like we all grouped up and we rode hard and we rode a lot. And then we'd always see like Austin and Ben and and that crew Curtis riding, go by and be like see him in the left line and be like Whoa sick. There's the A team dude, um, and I would always like think like I wonder if I'll be able to ride with those dudes someday. That would be cool with those dudes someday. That would be cool, man, and like really got into like the community here. Yeah, uh, and it was very welcoming and I was just fired up about snowboarding again.

Speaker 1: 2:25:58

Yeah and all and like. Getting into split boarding was something totally new and feeling more comfortable in my skin every day going to work, uh, feeling healthy. Get right, I was going to meetings still here, I was getting into nutrition. I was like I was drinking celery juice religiously. I still, to this day, make every single meal for myself. I barely ever go out to dinner. It's got to be a real special occasion.

Speaker 1: 2:26:27

A I'm poor and B I like making my own food. I meal prep the same dinner every night. I almost eat the same three meals I make. I almost made my lunch today before this podcast because it would be my lunchbox and just ready. I just eliminate those kinds of things. But, um, it got me into a solid routine here in band and the community and just snowboarding. To a solid routine here in band and the community and just snowboarding. Uh, getting into the back back country. Um, starting that new chapter of a new style of snowboarding, of like human power, walking around the woods, taking time to see, like it's like riding a bicycle versus driving a car it's slowing down and like I started waxing again.

Speaker 1: 2:27:11

You know, I started, uh, getting my um split board stuff ready the night before. I'd have my skins on and my poles and my backpack all ready and I'd be up at the crack of dawn driving by myself up to the mountain with coffee pre-made. I have my lunch made to go to work right after that to get one cone lap, and then what do you? What happens when you get up there? There's 20 people there already there. I'm like weren't these guys getting up earlier than me? Jesus Christ, and they're ahead of you.

Speaker 1: 2:27:39

I got people freaking passing me on the way up, older than me, these guys that are in great shape. I'd see Jerry Lopez walking past me. I'd be like, hold, that's Jerry, dude. It's like six, 30 in the morning on a February, and Jerry's up here, uh, and he's passing me. Seven years old, 60, whatever, yeah, and there's that, that, that those humans here living this life where I'm just like I want that, um, and these guys, some of them are just retired, some of them are going to work after it, they're getting their laps in, they're filling their tanks early in the day and they are loving life and they're setting themselves.

Speaker 1: 2:28:20

I'd walk into work that day and I'd feel like a freaking unstoppable. I'm like I've already been to the mountain and rode powder Like it was the best and I could. I could handle anything. That day it was just like, yeah, throw whatever you got at me, it was just that, another epiphany and a lifestyle. And I started monitoring this or thinking, noodling on this philosophy, on this lifestyle, and not even writing it down, just thinking. And at Blackstrap I was there for three years. It went through a big growth spurt and with that came some new management that I didn't agree with. And uh, um, yeah, your time there came my time there came to an end.

Speaker 1: 2:29:19

Thankfully because I let. I had that spring. I left late in the early summer of that of 2000, whatever three um, 23 and uh that I remember at the at the big wave challenge that year, I'd been walking to the parking lot, through the parking lot with my buddy, justin, and telling him the idea for spiral. And it was like two months prior to me leaving and I was just like I got this idea for this brand. I was like I think we can make snowball wax. I think I want I know. I was like I got this idea for this brand. I was like I think we can make snowboard wax, I think I want it. And I was like I just for some reason I want the. I want it to be called snail. And he's just like huh. I was like I think snails are cool. He was like one of my best friends and that's something I. I bounced ideas off of him and like I hadn't whispered this to anyone yet. But all the bigger picture behind it was brewing from all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 2:30:17

I listened to all these stoic philosophy podcasts. I'm reading all this stuff. A lot of it is baked into the recovery literature, the big book that it's called. It's leaked into. Spiral.

Speaker 1: 2:30:32

People don't know it what they're doing. Um, but uh, you know, that day I was just like I think that and I started talking about it to him. I started a document on my computer this is before I even left blackstrap and uh, started thinking about the brand and I was like, oh, maybe I could just do this part time or in my spare time while I'm still working here. But it ended up coming to an abrupt end there and I walked out of there. I was just like, okay, it's go time and I tried to.

Speaker 1: 2:31:01

After I left, I applied for multiple jobs and I like had interviews and I was just like, no, I couldn't get hired. So all signs were like pointing to like invest in yourself, like this is. I was healthy and emotionally, spiritually, everything was just like this is the only time I have to do this. I'm 42. At the time I was like, okay, I'm gonna give it 100 and uh, that's. And then that's how spiral was born. It was called snail first and the logo was the snail. And when I started looking into the IP stuff, I was just like, oh, there's a cosmetics thing called Snail, it's going to be some—it's not going to work. And I had a couple other names around that kind of theme, and Spiral was one of them. And well, that's where it happened.

Speaker 2: 2:31:51

I want to play you some audio from your very good friend, shelby, because she was. She was a big part of that.

Speaker 1: 2:31:57

She was there I mean the shell. The seashell is okay, this is uh. Shelby was my partner for a while and I love her to death and she's like a family to me, but I made her painting once of uh of the spiral shell for Christmas. This is way before spiral and I call her. Logo on my phone is a shell, a spiral shell.

Speaker 2: 2:32:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:32:20

That's so rad. Yes, she probably does. She knows that.

Speaker 6: 2:32:24

We met on Bumble. We both did dating apps for a short period in time and we were one another's first dates on Bumble, to my awareness, and I remember driving like thinking I'm so tired, but something inside of me was like you need to meet this person. This is a really good person. Like this needs to happen, and so we had a really nice moment in the park and it just initially, you know, the foundation was set for emotional connection and we set off and Tim I don't think I'm the only one who finds Tim a creatively inspiring person, and also we just had connections in so many ways as far as our drive to be entrepreneurs.

Speaker 6: 2:33:21

We had both lost our jobs at the same time. For me, it was pretty dire. For him, same situation this position and role he had had as he transitioned to Bend was really gave him a lot of stability. It was a huge purpose for him and he gave a lot to that job, though, as his partner at the time, I could really see the ways that it was keeping him small. And so, even though we were in these dire straits financially and both looking at each other like, what are we going to do, tim would get jobs standing tech decks and I would help support him. We would just be doing random things to earn money all the while he's applying for jobs and I'm just thinking in the back of my mind like, okay, I don't really want him to get a job. I think he can really do something and I really want, I really selfishly wanted to see him step in to to something that was his own creation and that also I think he had gained a lot of. He was ready to step into collaborating with others in a new way, was ready to step into collaborating with others in a new way and in a way that was really truly creative. Like I think, within humanity, we're in this place and piece where we can look at collaboration differently and we can really truly see the talents in various people, and that's what I love about Tim. He's really good at noticing other people's talents and really letting them shine and just truly like wants to learn from them, wants to be around them, and I think it really creates this inspiring environment and I feel like that's what and will be one of the pillars of success for the brand.

Speaker 6: 2:35:36

When he was coming up with the concept of this, it very much kind of we walked around these different places and like what kind of product it could be, but ultimately he really looked at what we and he. What I really liked about the WAC is that there was an issue with what's going into the earth after people are skiing and snowboarding, and the petroleum does really do damage to the plants and the water sources that are feeding plants, animals ourselves, and the wax was this perfect fit. In that way he is solving, and Spiral is solving a problem and changing the paradigm for one, how we treat the earth and nature, but also creating this ritual of care that's more intentional about your connection with nature, and for both him and myself, snowboarding is a way for us to connect to nature and means a lot to us because of that. Does that make sense? Good, my very good friend and partner in crime, this is Shelby.

Speaker 6: 2:37:03

If I could say one thing to Tim, it would be to believe in yourself. Thing to Tim, it would be to believe in yourself, Amen sister.

Speaker 3: 2:37:12

I love her so much.

Speaker 2: 2:37:13

I know you do, man, she has such insight into you, bro, and as she should, and just like kind of that, the work you were doing and the frustration of kind of not finding a job, and like what, what's going on, and just like you know, like I, I really understood with her how many people were rooting for you to kind of to do this and it's next level.

Speaker 1: 2:37:38

Yeah, the problem was my mom. She's a warrior, she's just like a lot of moves I've made in life. She's just she wants me to have a stable life and to her it was just like there's a lot of risk there. Go get a job anywhere and I have that same. I need stability financially. But I learned it's been a crazy process of like.

Speaker 1: 2:38:12

When I started fixing my house up and fixing my life up. I really learned this skill set that I use every single day now of like carpentry and simple trade stuff and simple trade stuff. I got all the I've got over the last. Now it's been like 15 years of working carpentry and learning everything that goes along with it. I could pretty much do fix anything or build anything now and it's like it's not rocket science. You need the right tools, you need to follow a process, you need to be motivated and confident and show up.

Speaker 1: 2:38:48

So when me and Shelton, when I left Blackstrap and started a spiral, I started doing odd jobs. I got a power washer and I started power washing decks. I started going on next door and thumbtack and posting a power washer for hire. That summer I power washed I don't know 25 decks. I sanded decks, I stained decks, I was out in the sun like sanding, staining power, washing, cleaning, and then I get paid and I go home and I was building out my garage into a workshop, a workbench, and getting tools and building the brand at night, uh, behind the scenes and just by any means necessary of just like getting by, and I had not really saved money. So I was just like this is a big risk.

Speaker 1: 2:39:38

Most people, most entrepreneurs, like started business. At least they probably are smart enough to have some sort of nest egg in case of emergencies. None, I had bought a house that was too expensive for me to be living in, and uh and had no money and uh, but knew I kept, you know, I liked, I knew I was supposed to be doing this, yeah, and like I was just I'm again going back to the original thing from grenade. I was like I'm just gonna work harder than anyone, nobody's gonna get in my way, and I'm just going to work harder than anyone, nobody's going to get in my way, and I'm just going to wake up earlier. I'm going to work harder, I'm going to. That's all I'm going to do. And like this is my shot. I'm going to either be successful or die trying kind of work ethic.

Speaker 1: 2:40:33

And you know, last week I spent half the week painting walls in a house on ladders, taping up, taping and dealing with a client and their expectations with a project, managing the budget for a painting job, going to the paint store, matching colors, coming up with the plan of executing the paint job from start to finish, from room to room, and how we're going to move through the house. And during the mornings before that I was making wax for Spiral and then I'd go home afterwards and make wax and Troy and Clara and I would be packing up the wax. So you know this is a normal day, this is a 12 hour day and you know that is a is my life there and I'm at grocery store like all the time people are like weekend plans. It's like no, I'm working.

Speaker 3: 2:41:21

Like I run a business I.

Speaker 1: 2:41:24

this is my work. My plans are working.

Speaker 2: 2:41:27

Yeah, um, was it you and Shelby who started kind of experimenting with the kind of formulations of wax.

Speaker 1: 2:41:34

Yes, so Shelby, when I met her, has had her own uh self care brand called Fay and. Fay, it was a CBD uh body oil. Okay. And CBD tincture. Really cool, kind of high end women's fashion, high-end wellness, really polished, really women's high-end lifestyle brand, not snowboard related at all. Totally.

Speaker 1: 2:42:05

More like you know day spa, but a little bit hippie too, like spiritual, totally, she's all those things. She's a really beautiful, fashiony, fashion-based lady. She's also hippie, all these things, and she also ran a pot farm, you know, and made her own hemp. She's also a mom, all these kick-ass things about her. She's a hard-ass worker. But she, when we first met, she told me like oh, I run this thing, I make all this stuff. I thought it was super cool. This is before Spiral.

Speaker 1: 2:42:40

And she had a lab at her house. She was making this stuff with beakers and you know measuring cups and ingredients and I was just like, wow, that is fricking rad, I use this stuff. I religiously still use this face oil. Uh, that's a tough industry and she ended up walking away from it and, um, but it informed me, she helped in the original lab stuff. So the reality of starting a brand it isn't the reality for a lot of brands these days because they have stuff made overseas. It goes to a fulfillment center, then it goes to the customer. We do things the exact opposite, the old school way. We make everything ourselves, we ship everything ourselves. But in order to make the stuff, you have to make it and you have to figure out how to make it. There isn't any kind of literature or video showing you the process, the tools behind making snowboard wax. We had to figure it out for ourselves and she was a big helper of helping me understand the equipment I needed and kind of the lab procedures. Yeah, the process.

Speaker 1: 2:43:56

The process and the scientific method. Wow, and I am very since I. You know, what I didn't notice about myself is and this is normal in recovery is when I was drinking I had no control over anything. I didn't want control, I didn't want to. But when you get sober, you need control over everything.

Speaker 1: 2:44:18

Ocd kicks in, yeah, so true, and it kicked in hard for me, meaning everything in my life, down to this notebook, where my pens are, where my bottles are, what I'm wearing, everything needs to be right and if it's not right, it's not right and it needs to be fixed. And that happens in spiral to kind of a frustrating degree sometimes for people like Troy and Clara and Shelby. And I apologize for it all the time because I'm aware of it, because if I see Troy pack a box wrong, I tell him I'm like well, that is not right, you need to put it this way and it needs to fall that way. You need to put the sticker in upside down, you need to fold it this way, and I know it's not actually that important, but it has to be done that way. But she helped me lean into more of the magic of product making in the lab.

Speaker 1: 2:45:13

The workshop, versus a lab, a wizard's workshop, the alchemist's workshop, versus a scientific lab. And it's a balance of both because we have high-tech equipment. It's a balance of both because we have, like, high-tech equipment, we have ingredients that have this structure to them that they, you know, when you're cooking and when you're making stuff, it reacts to each other. So there is science involved. Like you can't get away from that stuff. Everything is chemistry, everything is chemistry, everything is chemistry. So the chemistry is real in a way, but there's also some magic when you want to get into it. That is invisible If you approach it right.

Speaker 1: 2:45:57

The intention that goes into making stuff, your mood, what's happening in the lab rather than wearing lab coats, you know, and having white walls, it's very much an art studio approach, an artist's workshop, and there's cool inspiration everywhere. There's books, there's posters, there's music playing, there's incense burning, there's an energy in there that's different than probably a lot of my competitors. Wax labs, yeah, and we, we lean into that really. And uh, when people come over and similar to me walking into the Mervin factory for the first time, I'm like Whoa. And when people come over to my house and see it, they're like, oh, okay, I see this totally differently now and when I get I have people like pour and like make wax themselves. Cause it because once we get it up and running it's not that difficult. Once it's established it's like baking bread. It was difficult to get to the bread recipe and get everything lined up and now it kind of goes.

Speaker 1: 2:47:03

It's still a lot of work until I start developing a new product, but Shelby kind of enlightened me or opened my eyes to approaching product development differently than I thought I was going to do it and had been taught really to do it.

Speaker 2: 2:47:18

So she is a big part of that vibe that happens and you know made a bunch of the original wax and you know helped me learn the process of melting wax and temperatures and temperature control and scales and ingredients and sourcing different ingredients from different suppliers, suppliers and yeah, because one thing I learned with talking to you through bow and just you know, spending time learning about spiral and the product is like you guys differentiate yourselves in a lot of ways because of the like, the, the materials and the in the in the like, the base products that you create with are different than everybody.

Speaker 1: 2:48:07

Yeah, that just goes back to like ignorance kind of, and like there's a saying that I use all the time too is either like you need to know all the rules to break them or none of them. And we are on that approach in the beginning, with knowing nothing and same as grenade. We are so green, we didn't know what we were doing, so that leads to it breeds innovation, for sure. So I didn't know what we're doing, so that leads to it breeds innovation, for sure. So I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew generally, like with shelby's help, like what I should be looking for in a wax, like the chemistry side of things, and like looking at the natural wax market, looking at finding suppliers that probably no other wax company are going to, and looking at ingredients that no one's using, maybe because they're expensive or maybe because they just are too lazy or not. Looking and not knowing I should be following these recipes, making up my own, testing them. The first wax was garbage. It wasn't good, but I learned, like how to make it and how to cure it and how to about molds and about the general practice of creating wax, and then I just started experimenting, writing down results, testing, testing, testing, changing the environment, changing the temperatures, changing the ratios and ingredients, changing the ingredients themselves, seeing what popped out, waxing my board, scraping my board, and we I did that even before the snow fell for a while just scraping. I bought, honestly, bought up a bunch of my competitors waxes and had them in my lab. Try to, you can't reverse engineer them, but I was waxing my board with them and scraping them and feeling it, feeling the texture of the wax, feeling how it broke apart, feeling how it crumbled or seeing how it melted, and trying to find something close to that with what the ingredients I was using. That's what led to the wax and by the time winter came, I started testing the boards and it still wasn't good and the first stuff we even put out wasn't that great compared to what it is now. Sure, uh, but we did it and you know even there's some placebo effect and it was packaged really well and it did work just fine. But compared to some of the what was on the market and compared to what I want, wanted to be, it wasn't there yet.

Speaker 1: 2:50:29

But uh, that whole winter um started just really riding and scraping and, uh, taking notes and coming back, cause I my wax lab is in my spare bedroom in my house, right next to my, where I sleep, and the spare in spare. In my spare bathroom. I gutted and made a scraping room so I could wake up, go to the wax lab, make wax wax my board, scrape it, go to the mountain ride, come home and figure out what I was doing. And a lot of it was just changing ratios of ingredients, introducing some different minerals and oils and stuff like that. That led to it working.

Speaker 1: 2:51:14

I don't have a chemistry degree but there, and I don't know the chemistry that's actually happening in reality, but I just know it works. And there is that magic too. It's just like maybe me wanting it to work so bad made it work. But uh, I do, I do. I do understand the basics of the chemistry and and and what I'm doing in there and um, it led to some innovation happening in the wax and what's you know. The reality is the wax really works.

Speaker 1: 2:51:46

uh, yeah it's a great product and it's a great brand. So we have both things going for us and there's a lot of decent, great waxes on the market, but there's not a lot of waxes that are exciting and have a lot of energy and storytelling happening behind the product, and that's exactly what we're trying to do, but a never-ending experimenting happening. Even right now. What we're developing is new stuff. I'm tinkering around with some really far-out earth minerals Wow, gallium and boron, wow which are earth minerals that are expensive and work as water repellents, and that's what's coming out in the Max's brainwax has gallium in it, which looks like mercury. It melts in your hand. It looks like a Terminator metal. Yeah, it's magic Itator metal.

Speaker 1: 2:52:50

Yeah, it's magic, it's metal it's a rare earth, metal, and it blends in with the wax just like graphite. Yeah, but it's like a thousand dollars a pound or more. It's so expensive by the gram, it's like multiple dollars per gram and you know we use 60 grams in a bar of wax and if four of those grams were uh gallium.

Speaker 1: 2:53:16

It adds up so it makes it expensive, it makes it make maybe a barrier to entry for any other brand, being like we can't put that in our wax. It's like putting gold in your wax, which I'm gonna going to do. Gold flakes, another rare earth metal. This is, you know, what we're going to do to be different and same as like what I learned from Mike and Pete. They had the best slogan ever Innovations.

Speaker 1: 2:53:39

Even we don't understand Is like they had the balls to try stuff, yeah, and without caring about the bottom line, and what that does is breed this innovation that leads to success, and we're never going to stop doing that. And like, getting back to like the financing is, I want more money because I want to take more risks and build more cool shit, and like the, it is an open. I see it as there. It's so much opportunity within this space to build a lot of cool stuff that doesn't exist, with tuned tools, totally Tools that I want to see that don't exist, or at least re-imagine them, similar to how, like you know, other great companies have re-imagined the computer and the cell phone. Totally.

Speaker 2: 2:54:28

Like Apple you know perfect example of like making the coolest looking stuff, uh, and you have like a. I mean you just mentioned max warbington, but I mean some people obviously know who max is, other people's won't, but he's, he's kind of your, he's a co-founder yes but he's also still writing pro friggin new yeah, max, I should definitely like he's been a big part of this Big time.

Speaker 1: 2:54:50

So I met Max when he was like probably like a 15 year old little snowboard grom, that was on the B team of GNU and that came to our photo shoots at the time when I was like running the brand at GNU for the creative and had a lot of creative control and started making GNU about the get weird campaigns and club weird and a Mount weird and like created this fake resort called Mount weird and we had these photo shoots and made it look like we were at Mount weird and built all these crazy artistic, sculptural treadable stuff.

Speaker 1: 2:55:25

And Mac showed up at a couple of these with his brother Gus and I just, and Max and Forrest were friends and it was like this new energy in the brand, these young, new, creative kids. And I heard Max was from Ben. I was like, oh cool, and everything I heard about him I liked he was like a really cool humble kid. He's like a vegan and he grew up on a farm in Ben and his dad had like is the vet in in Tumalo and, um, he grew up like on the farm they have like peacocks and llamas and crazy animals. It's like a.

Speaker 1: 2:55:57

It's like a zoo out there and I was just like, oh, that's cool, and he was very creative to just took a different approach to snowboarding, where I was like that kid's different and we just always stayed in touch. Me and Forrest were very close and you know there had been. You know, when I struck, when I concepted the brand, it was always like going to be attached to a snowboarder. I'm not a professional, I know how this industry works and a recipe that works. And I was just like, okay, I'm going to approach a snowboarder to do this with me. And uh, I'd moved to Bend and Max actually lives down the street from my house. He lives in Tahoe right now but he owns a house right down the street from my house and I called him up and had him come over and, uh, I showed him like, the deck I had built and the early bars of wax. This is before anyone had.

Speaker 1: 2:56:49

You know, a couple of people knew what I was doing, shelby being one of them, but I didn't talk about it at all. I still am very much a hermit, I don't. I live out in the woods. I don't leave the house much unless I'm going snowboarding or working. I don't really have a social life and I'm fine with that. It's by design. But Max came over and I was just like I want you to do this with me, and I showed him pretty much what it looks like. To this day, things have progressed.

Speaker 2: 2:57:15

Sure.

Speaker 1: 2:57:15

But he was just like this is rad.

Speaker 2: 2:57:17

Yeah, you show it. He saw the vision man. He saw it.

Speaker 1: 2:57:20

He saw where you were going and like I was like he had known the, the transformation I'd been going through. He had met me and I was Dr Weird was my nickname, this character. I was a fucking crazy man and he's just like, and I told him everything that was going on. I'm like, dude, I'm doing this and I've gone through this. And he was just like stoked. He was just like, yes, he had gotten an opportunity to invest in Juneshine early on, if you know that brand.

Speaker 2: 2:57:48

I don't?

Speaker 1: 2:57:48

it's like a hard kombucha from socal. It's actually a big thing, but early on, like similar to saint archer, which was a skate brewery, skate influence. Like crew of investors, he passed on it and, uh, sage and some other dudes ended up actually cashing in. They sold and they made some money and Max was just like, well, I'm not making that mistake again Not that we're ever going to cash in or make that but I think he saw an opportunity that I was giving him. But I saw it as a partnership.

Speaker 1: 2:58:21

I was just like I don't want to do this and can't do this without you. You're the person to do it. And he became my partner and we found like that was the real founding of it. I had the vision of the creative and the brand and the product and Max really came and made it real and and invested some capital into it as well, which helped us get it off the ground.

Speaker 1: 2:58:43

Um, and then flies the flag every day, pretty hard and totally like Max is the coolest and super duper respected in the sport. He's going to be a lifetime snowboarder, forever and just the. You know, the coolest, similar to Danny, but very approachable. Max is just like a regular kid that loves snowboarding. That just got really good. And just he's out there snowboarding. That just got really good. And just he's out there snowboarding, probably right now, on any patch of snow. That's in Tahoe right now.

Speaker 1: 2:59:14

Those kids are created the brain bowl, which is like this super creative DIY movement shorts and shades, up on Mount, up on bachelor. The crew has the most fun. You know, those kids are all like super eco-friendly, super mindful and, uh, they're eco-friendly, super mindful. They're living healthy lives, healthy lives Like Max and those kids like they all party but they don't drink and I love it. I'm like they're out till like 3 am, just like hanging out, yeah, listening to music, like smoking some weed fine, but like just hanging out and talking. And then they like go to bed and wake up and go snowboarding next day together. They like make breakfast together. I stayed with them and I'm like I'm in awe watching them. I'm like you guys are living like this communal lifestyle, a healthy communal lifestyle, and there's so much love there. And like I was just so grateful he would be involved. He legitimized the brand and to the outsider or to the retailer, they might think max is running the brand.

Speaker 1: 3:00:16

That's totally fine by me and kind of the point yeah uh, he's on the cover of the catalog and he's our guy on social media and he's got his name on products and I'm behind. You know the wizard in the background behind the curtain and he is hands-on and he's hands-off and he believes in what we're doing and I hope someday we can build this to. He can be the brand manager someday when he retires, or the events planner, because we have big plans on if we make more money, we're just going to make cooler things happen. Max will be able to run a team or build a video and pay riders or create an event series where we can have prize money. That's what we're going to do with our money.

Speaker 2: 3:01:05

And Max will be able to come to the office and have health insurance and make a decent living after his life in snowboarding and yeah, one thing I've really appreciated about watching his space and snowboarding is when I think about pro riders that are trying to bring snowboarding to people who might not have the privilege to buy a Mount bachelor pass. It's that kind of back to that D DIY, kind of like brain bowl right, like and and just hearing and learning about that through people like um, it's really. It's encouraging to see because it reminds me of when we were that age and like we would build our own features and and like it's you know, and then the pendulum shifted so far to the massive parks at Mammoth where you had you know and then. So now to see like snowboarding, kind of go from that. It's just fun, dude, it's fun, it's fun. Yeah, those kids are they?

Speaker 1: 3:02:01

I just went to the new brain, the recent Brain Ball at Baker, and it's organized and it's unorganized. It's, you know, high end and it's organized and it's unorganized. It's, you know, high end and it's super low end features.

Speaker 1: 3:02:16

It's more of a gathering and a festival than even a snowboard contest. There was like a thousand people out in the middle of the back country, outside of Baker and up high in the mountains. Those kids dragged a mile into the woods a rope tow and a dj booth and they built these features that look like you know x games quality massive things all hand dug and then there's just people blowing bubbles and juggling fire and you know like, lots of face make.

Speaker 1: 3:02:46

Like you know, face glitter everywhere. It's like a circus face make. Like you know, face glitter everywhere, it's like a circus man, yes, and like nobody was really, like you know, drinking. It was more like people were having their lunches bought lunches out there, cleaned up after themselves. The you know the forest rangers came out and they were just blown away. They're like this is what it's why the forests are here. Yeah, you know we're stoked, you guys are having a blast with nature, and then we, at the end of the you know the event, they cleaned everything up.

Speaker 1: 3:03:12

Yeah, no trace, totally. Uh, the only trace left was the energy left on that. All the blood was showing that. You know, like there and there was some stuff that went down. Oh, I'm sure, and I couldn't, I didn't, I barely rode because of my shoulder, but I was just sitting there in awe, I didn't even know where to look. There was so much going on, it was beautiful, and Max was the ringleader and I'm like so proud of him and I'm just like, dude, that is marketing. You can't plan, you can't sit in a meeting and plan what's happening here.

Speaker 1: 3:03:42

It would drive some marketing director up the wall, absolutely. It would just be a no in the room, but dude. It's so authentic, it's so, it's so, it's so, it's the realist and like I'm proud of him and it helps our brand. I was there waxing boards, yeah. And to a completely rad audience of kids that were just like, oh cool yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:04:05

Wax, wax me up, dude, and some of these kids are. There's kids from. I was asking a lot of people where are you from? They're like I'm from Bellingham, I'm from Olympia, I'm from Seattle. Like they don't have. They're like street kids, street snowboarders. They're probably not. Maybe some of them have, you know, season passes or whatever, but it wasn't like that elite group of snowboarders there were some pros there and group of snowboarders there were some pros there and uh, but it was just this and anyone was riding to any ability level, max was dropping in. There was some other dude that could barely clear the jump next to him and everyone was like high-fiving. Yeah, it was sick. Yeah, it was like being able to go to the x games and ride with everyone at the same time.

Speaker 2: 3:04:43

Yeah like what, which is why we all fell in love with it so much back in the day, you know, because it was approachable, yeah, yeah and it's so, un.

Speaker 1: 3:04:51

So Max is doing something that you know and I saw that in him. And getting back to like what Shelby says and I totally, part of my job is recognizing talent and I've done it for a long time and it is a skill and I feel like Pete really taught me that the founder of GNU and like he saw it in me and gave me a chance and let me spread my wings, like gave me room to grow and fail and not have to keep me on a leash, really and um, I've done that, especially building spiral. Like I saw max and I've been monitoring for years and I was just like, when the time came, I'm like that's my guy and uh, even with troy, when I met him, I met him, we hired him at blackstrap, we shared an office together. I'm like this kid is smarter and more talented than me. I like he just hasn't had the opportunity yet.

Speaker 2: 3:05:49

This is a good time to play Troy's audio here.

Speaker 4: 3:05:53

I don't know. We kind of just hit it off and I always really respected, you know, the fact that he came from Grenade. That was a really, really cool business and yeah, I just kind of looked up to him in a way. He actually gave me a call and mentioned that he was starting up this wax business and I knew immediately I wanted to go ahead and hop on board basically Building the brand from scratch.

Speaker 4: 3:06:19

I mean, one thing that we all have learned is it's just like a ton of work but super, super rewarding at the end of the day. I mean, if you're wanting to start a business, the best thing that you can do is just do it. I mean, if you're wanting to start a business, the best thing that you can do is just do it. I mean there's like a million different reasons that can pop in your head why it won't work, or struggles that might make it so that you don't do it, but if you just basically send it and do it, you can usually sort most of those things out. I mean it's the only way that you're gonna create the business at the end of the day. I mean that's something I've absolutely learned from tim. I mean it couldn't have come at a better time.

Speaker 4: 3:06:57

I mean, the snowboard industry is, seems to me at least, to hit, you know, this area, where in the past it was you know, super, super counterculture, where everyone's drinking and partying really hard and it seems like there's been a lot of people that are now sober and it's kind of more accepted into that community and stuff like that. So that's kind of what we embody as a brand as well. Yeah well, my name is Troy Lalonde. I'm one of the co-founders of Spiral Wax Co in beautiful Bend, oregon, and one thing I'd love to say is thank you, tim, for the journey. It's just been a pleasure.

Speaker 2: 3:07:34

He seems like. Is he younger than us? He's just turned 30. 30. I'm really excited to watch each of the kind of you guys and like, as this thing grows, cause I don't have a doubt in my mind, I mean I, I, I can see it Um, and it's going to be really cool to see how each of these kind of individuals that are in on the early stages how they individually grow and it's just going to kind of create this positive feedback into this brand man, cause he, because he, he, you can tell he's talented when you talk with him. Yeah, he's uh smart.

Speaker 1: 3:08:12

Yeah, comes from like he's. He's born in bend. Yeah, he grew up in bent. He went to like summit high and his dad was the ceo of um shoots brewing oh no kidding. And is now the ceo of ceo central organ community college cocc. Yeah, his mom is a kind of a famous jewelry making artist. Uh-huh. So that to the household, his house. His parents are super cool. His mom is helping us learn our mold making process. She's pouring wax with us. His brothers his two brothers are, and his mom come to the house and help us pack wax and his dad is cheering us on and would help us if he could. He's a ceo. So it's like I saw that I was just like. This kid is smart. I'm like playing chess many moves ahead is like a. The game is Troy's running the business. That is my goal. Yeah, I'm in Japan snowboarding, like selfishly, like I'm not going to lie that, but I'm going to be, you know, hopefully building relationships over there with touring companies or or developing products. I'm joking, but no, you're not.

Speaker 2: 3:09:25

I see true man. I mean, he's stepping into that role.

Speaker 1: 3:09:28

That's your superpower, you know, and that's going to be his superpower, yeah, and he is that dude Like I can never, I could just see it in him. I know, like in 10 years, you know, I'm going to be 54 and Troy is going to be 40. You know, when he's 45, I'm going to be 60. Yeah, to be 40, yeah, you know, and when he's 45, I'm going to be 60, yeah, and troy at 45 will be the ceo of spiral and running things.

Speaker 1: 3:09:56

Yeah, and uh, fuck, yeah, I look forward to it and I know that he'll be steering the ship right yeah uh, and I'll be involved.

Speaker 1: 3:10:01

However, I'm involved, yeah, and I hope that's the case. And and troy is married to Clara, who is our COO. Right, like we started and we would be meeting me and Troy before I got even a little bit real. You know, claire, he'd be like I got to get home to Clara, he loves his wife and Clara went to school for business. It just didn't click for me yet. It didn't like the piece hadn't fallen into place on the board where I was just like uh. And then one day I was just like let's get claire over here. Yeah, um, uh. And the day she sat down it was like I can't believe she was never there.

Speaker 1: 3:10:39

I was just like how do we do this without you? Like what was going on then? Like shelby was helping with some of the books for a little bit. It was chaos in that that department, but I was like it's going to work itself out one of these days. Let's just like put it over there. For now we're not getting many orders, we don't have money, so it's not a big deal yet.

Speaker 1: 3:10:58

But then when Clara, when that clicked into place, it was like Troy and Clara coming together. It was like they're doing this together, doing this together. It's like there's never like Clara being at home wondering where Troy is, like they're coming over and it's just like a perfect thing. They're both hard ass workers and both ridiculously smart and there's a yin and yang there to their relationship, even, and even between me, troy and Clara I'd say me and Clara are closer than me and Troy in some aspects of the business and we see a line in our vision more than we me and Troy do, but then me and Troy do as well, and then they're having their own opinion and a vision for the brand, which is great.

Speaker 2: 3:11:38

It's really healthy to have. It's healthy.

Speaker 1: 3:11:39

And I try to foster the ego thing where I'm just like. This isn't mine. We have to decide this together Like. Yes, whatever At the end of the day there is partnership stakes. It doesn't matter to me. I'm like all three of us have this goal of like. Let's just be able to make a living. Troy and Clara both have full-time jobs. Troy works at Hydro Flask. Troy is one of the head designers at.

Speaker 1: 3:12:04

Hydro Flask. Clara is the manager of Sun River Brewing, one of the locations and like she works nine to five, so does Troy, and like they come over my house at six and sometimes we're working six to ten as normal, three days a week, sometimes five days a week, and I've already worked my whole day too. I like come over and I'm in the bathtub because I was out freezing cold, and then I get out because I've warmed up, because I'm in the bathtub, because I was out freezing cold, and then I get out cause I've warmed up, cause I've been working outside all day, and then we sit at the table and we get to work and we're like we have a running list of what's going on and we're just working on it and like no one's making money nobody. And uh, it's just like we're all working towards this idea of like. Wouldn't it be great if we were? That'd be awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:12:50

I can't believe. Like what would we need to come in here and just like this is just coming to work. Yeah. To me, like that is, would be incredible.

Speaker 2: 3:13:00

Oh, I can't wait to watch it happen.

Speaker 1: 3:13:02

It might happen, but we're going to try as hard as we can to get there and we've already set up like what it looked like and how much we need, because living in bend is not cheap and troy and claire are married and like have these goals in life and so we need to. But I think it was a small team and we're gonna like we have defined six like where we want the company to go. We talk about it often and like manageable at a level where we can still manage it. We don't have to bring someone else in to manage it because it's grown too big like let's not get there.

Speaker 1: 3:13:37

If it happens, it happens. But let's try our hardest to just be able to maintain this growth and not stress and figure out how to put the right pieces in place to fulfill the growth. And we have been able to do that. It's been a non-stop uh to-do list of never-ending fires putting out or at least we're.

Speaker 1: 3:14:02

We're not stopping the improvement of the products like, or introducing new products, or trying to figure out how to make them better, or or fine-tune the supply chain or the deliver them earlier or open up a new account or whatever that is like ship. It better get better at that side of everything not just stepping stone approach man, yeah, and like I didn didn't. I haven't been as involved with anything as this because I've always been in the art department and the marketing department and sat in on the sales meetings and was zoned out.

Speaker 1: 3:14:40

It was like not listening or just didn't care or like didn't ever ask, like where is the money coming from? Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:14:47

Like how, what were sales last year? I knew I never asked like where is the money coming from? Yeah, like how, what were sales last year? I knew I never knew like how many boards sold. I never even asked. No clue was never on my radar of like how do we do Like things are good, everything was good there. I just there was, you know, when there's. It was never a top of conversations like sales are down, like how do we make it better? That was a luxury we had there, I guess. But yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:15:13

Troy is has unreached potentials. He's just going to grow into this leadership role. Yeah. That I don't see myself.

Speaker 2: 3:15:26

Well, I think that speaks to maturity on your part.

Speaker 2: 3:15:28

You know I was I don't I think I was having this conversation with my partner, dan, who you know about his experience in in in business and in creative brands that oftentimes the person who kind of facilitates the vision once the system is running can actually be a hindrance to the company because that's not their special thing. You know, and what I love and what I'm hearing is you're recognizing who that person is and like already, like you have a vision for that and and I mean it, just it it really I think positions you well to succeed, um, in whatever form that looks like. I mean, arguably you already are, and I do this all the time, you know, and I think it's healthy to kind of like take a minute, especially when I'm discouraged, and pause and look back over the past 12 months and all these kind of like really cool, some mostly painful, kind of gross like opportunities to grow and develop that that only happen if you kind of just put your head down and do the work, you know.

Speaker 1: 3:16:34

Yeah, we've had little victories that have been strung together that keep us. There's been setbacks, for sure, but little victories where it's just like, okay, great.

Speaker 2: 3:16:45

Totally.

Speaker 1: 3:16:45

That helped. A little online sale here and there, a new account, yeah, pre-booking or great little things that have happened. That is this universe, you know, winking at you and nudging you and be like keep going yeah keep going yeah and it just fire, fuels the fire again.

Speaker 1: 3:17:02

It's just like, okay, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and keep going. Troy and claire just show up. Yeah, just like you guys are here again, you're still doing this with me and this is freaking awesome. I'm always thanking them. They're like, dude, you know you don't need to do that. I'm like, yeah, but I'm just like I can't believe you're doing this we're doing this and because they could be doing whatever they want.

Speaker 1: 3:17:23

I, I carry a lot of the burden. They were out freaking fly fishing on the river this weekend. I was not, uh, but that's my role at this point. I'm making, I'm sacrificing a lot and I'm want them to live their lives. They come in refreshed and recharged and I'm, some days I'm, I'm, I feel, burnt out already. But, um, I we've had. We have these tiny little victories and I know like it's normal, like sitting in Bao again, like sitting in those rooms, recovery rooms, normalizes this insanity.

Speaker 1: 3:17:57

So, going in there, I told Gary I'm like I feel like I'm at an AA meeting. I go into Opportunity Knox. I'm like we're just sitting around talking. I'm like this is freaking awesome, but we're not talking about our addictions. We sitting around talking, I'm like this is freaking awesome, but we're not talking about our addictions, we're talking about our businesses and these.

Speaker 1: 3:18:12

This guy's talking, exact, telling the same story as I have. And I'm okay, okay, I guess I'm not crazy doing what I'm doing, like this guy's doing it too, and that is exactly what would be happening at AA. Oh, okay, I guess I'm not the only one. And then they're like hey, let me give you this tool that I learned to help and I'm like, okay, let me write that down. Like what is it? And that's what Bao was? Like, okay, let's give you these tools, let's get you through this and then learning, like seeing like Scott and Will and Gary being like these freaking success stories, these bosses, freaking successful, grounded, beautiful humans. Yeah, that did it. Yeah, they got through it. And I'm like, okay, I can do it. Yeah, and like, it's encouraging.

Speaker 1: 3:18:59

They're trailblazers, trailblazers and like that. Now.

Speaker 2: 3:19:02

Who also learned from trailblazers.

Speaker 1: 3:19:04

Definitely and like that's why I'm like wouldn't that be cool? Like, definitely like that's why I I'm like why wouldn't that be cool? Like sitting in that chair someday, like when I'm 55, 60 like we'll see but uh, that was very encouraging and like I know, like I can call any of those dudes which I don't, but I know that I could, I can I talk to gary sometimes and cindy more often?

Speaker 2: 3:19:24

yeah and uh, but I know like they're there yeah, we need them and um yeah, cindy is worth her weight in gold man.

Speaker 1: 3:19:32

Yeah right and now she's support. Like going back to what I was talking about, I was painting cindy's house, like she's like. She's like finding these humans that see and want to support you. She could have hired a team of painters but, I'm like she's like I hope you're good.

Speaker 1: 3:19:48

I'm like, yes, we're gonna do a good job and uh, but she gave, she gave us that opportunity and it was a lot of work and that helped me pay the rent mortgage this month. Yes, and like she's just like it comes over and says like she wants us to succeed. She loves snowboarding um, yeah, she, she's a snowboarder and it's really encouraging this community again. Coming back to Bend, it's pretty rare what's happening in Bao Again the sharing of ideas rather than being gatekeepers, and I'm trying my hardest to not do that when I'm talking about how I hide my sources and my methods. Why forget that? I'll tell you who I'm making stuff with, but uh, and it's mostly making it myself. But you know, that is a different approach than back in the day and when it was like Barans were at war with each other instead of like working together.

Speaker 2: 3:20:48

Yeah, I mean you had the grenade army, which kind of has that kind of feel to it, and now it's like the spiral community, which is a lot you know. It's like open arms and Bend is unique in that way, not just an outdoor industry, but I mean it's very, but I mean it's very. There are people here, in my opinion, on average, are happy to give you their time and talents when they see what you're trying to do and it's it is very unique man. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:21:22

Yeah, bend is a bubble in so many ways and in some ways, not always positive, but when it comes to kind of the sense of community I mean that's how I got into this is like there's so many amazing people in this town that have just such amazing life stories and like to get to share that with your community, I think, um it, just it. It's a. It's a really cool opportunity, man, I love it, love it.

Speaker 1: 3:21:47

Yes, bend is a bubble and I have said that too, and in a good way. I have built a glass dome over my life, a creative dome of protection, and I built my house before I started Spiral into this workshop.

Speaker 1: 3:22:06

It's got everything I need the space, the tools and it's in nature. It's gorgeous. It feels like I'm on vacation every day there. And then Ben, like being so close to the mountain, all these healthy, amazing people around me. Like I go from home to the mountain, go back home, I go from home to the mountain, I go back home and that's my life inside that little glass bubble. It's beautiful and like I try not to engage with anything happening in the world. It doesn't really affect me, it doesn't and it doesn't have to.

Speaker 1: 3:22:41

I try not to let it seep in at all because just it's, it's not know, I can't control what happens yeah, and it's almost like it's designed to distract you, man. Yes, you know, control you and make you scared and fear and fear cause you to want to prep for the worst.

Speaker 2: 3:23:04

Well, fear taps into a human kind of instinct that can be beneficial when necessary. But where we live is usually just a lot of unnecessary signal and noise that distracts you, you know.

Speaker 1: 3:23:19

Nature too, just like being, I can always find a pause. Or like the mountain always cures whatever's ailing me. Even if what's ailing me is a design challenge or something happening in my. Whatever life, it's always gonna stop up there and that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 3:23:48

It's always there for me, and mount bachelor in general is a magical place and I I say this it's my favorite place to snowboard. I've been all over the world and like, had great days at other places, but there's something about mount bachelor that is uh, magic, and about this town and about my specific area of where I sleep every night and make stuff.

Speaker 1: 3:24:13

Um, there's an energy there that is, you know, undefinable. That um has you know. I've going back to saying like spiral, how we work really hard, but it's been easy, like normally, like when I had other design challenges, like working at other brands, like trying to rebrand or something or come up with a storyline or a product or a marketing campaign. Sometimes I'd be banging my head against the wall and being like I have no clue what to do here. This has been so flow. It's just like. Yeah, it's like there's too much, too many ideas. I would say you know, know, put it in the bank, because someday we're going to run out of ideas. We'll just remember.

Speaker 1: 3:24:54

It's there, troy and I, and like we play, we're improvising a lot. We're like I say we play jazz and like we do that and it's hard. I've tried to do that other places, like the last job I had and I got in trouble for it. Like there needs to be structure here. I'd be like we need two hours in the morning of free time, a free creative time. Whatever happens happens. It might yield something, it might not, but we need to have it. And uh, there's a lot of that going on with what?

Speaker 2: 3:25:26

resistance None.

Speaker 1: 3:25:28

Yeah and that. But then there's structure, when it needs to be there of like, okay, the catalogs do, so let's gather everything up on the table and throw it in the catalog. And we, we just know, because we've been doing it for so long, how to make a bad-ass looking, professional looking design agency quality catalog that we could do in four days.

Speaker 5: 3:25:53

We built our website in four days and it looks like something that took a year at an agency.

Speaker 1: 3:25:55

but me and Troy just know how to do it. Troy really knows how to do it, so we just have that going for us. I feel like other you know we can do a lot and like nobody's getting in the way. Half of the problem with these agencies and these marketing and creative departments, sales departments everyone needs to have their say. There needs to be all these checked boxes, all these briefs and approvals and timelines. You're sitting in meetings, planning meetings, planning meetings and like it's just like all we're doing is meeting. There's no time to actually get the work done. We just cut out the meetings. There's no meeting, just go get it done. But when you know your partner is going to be working, I don't need to like look over there and be like what are you doing over there, dude? I just know he's working harder than me, or at least he's getting into something that's going to.

Speaker 1: 3:26:47

You know I'm always in awe with when he turns around his monitor. I'm just like damn dude, that's fricking sick. Yeah, because he knows what he's doing.

Speaker 2: 3:26:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:26:56

He loves design. Yeah, same with Clara. I look at one of her spreads. She's like that looks like hieroglyphics to me and she's, she's like dude I and I'm just like hell yeah, and it's like a symphony working beautifully, with no conductor really, and sometimes it's the conductor or the thing that gets in the way or all the fucking bullshit red tape. To get a project approved and through the finish line it could take a year for what we could do in a week and another brand, and I hope we never lose that.

Speaker 2: 3:27:36

Where do people find Spiral? Right now you guys are in Tactics, evo REI.

Speaker 1: 3:27:44

Yeah, we've opened up, we have a have a rep force, which is like when I started the brand, I thought we were going to be really direct to consumer, like the most brands these days are. Like you think about you. This is the Instagram myth of like I'm going to start a business and sell everything on Instagram and be printing out labels All my order labels are going to be okay. I'm not going to be able to keep up with this demand. It's far from the truth and pretty rare and not realistic. But when we, you know, got our reps involved, I started building a rep force and they really got us in with the retailers. Yeah, and we had both a good product and great marketing and that lightning in a bottle like that was needed at the time. A little I called it like a brand fatigue in snowboarding. We came in at the right time. Yeah, again, you know when there was just like it was boring. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:28:45

Like autumn was cool. There were the new kids on the block but when I looked back I was like autumn had been around for like seven years and like public snowboards is like a new brand. They've been, they just celebrated 10 years. I'm like these aren't new brands, so like there was this, like, oh, something new. Finally, like the retailers, the buyers, they're like the snowboarders, they're like this is cool. Yeah, um, in a new category, so that, uh, we got some early believers or people test us out, maybe giving us a test, placing an order, and then what we do right behind the scenes troy claire and I is deliver. Yeah, we pop. We are professional with delivering on time to our retailers. So when the order is due on October 1st, it'll be at the shop October 1st. It'll show up in a box. It's professionally packed with packing slips and an invoice all behind the scenes stuff that's super important to these retailers. We're doing right. What's the next step is? The hard part is it's selling in the shop, which we've also done, and that really helps big time.

Speaker 2: 3:29:49

Yeah, and also, you know, I remember when I first met you at that opportunity Knox meeting I attended and you were, I think, that day, or had just gotten back from, like personally delivering an order to Evo up in was it either Seattle or Portland?

Speaker 2: 3:30:05

But, like when a retailer learns about the people behind the brand, they're in there, like they're, they're on board, they're part of it, they're excited to kind of like share this product with their customers, and that's how that kind of momentum builds. And I was very impressed with that man, you know, cause that was way before I knew the backstory, you know, and it's, it's, uh, I'm super proud of you, tim. This is going to be really fun to watch, um, as you guys grow as a team and as a brand, and I, you know, it's like a movement really that that I'm incredibly excited about in a space that is so important to me and has played such a big role in my life. I mean, like you, there's few things in my life that are part of my identity, uh, and have influenced me more than the sport of snowboarding and all that goes with it, the relationships and the access to nature. And, you know, it's just, it's, um, we're very lucky man.

Speaker 1: 3:31:02

Yeah, Thanks, and uh yeah Uh, tactics was our shop Number one shop. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:31:08

And yeah, Tactics was our number one shop, yeah, their first place in order, first believers in us. But yeah, we're now in, I think, like 57 shops in the US, like some mom and pop shops, some massive retailers. Like REI is testing us out for next year and if that goes well, we'll see what happens. But Evo, like tested us out last year, we did really well there. Yeah, and if that goes well we'll see what happens. But Evo tested us out last year. We did really well there.

Speaker 1: 3:31:32

I think that there are buyers at big companies and retailers that are paying attention to what we're doing and those little things. Like the reason I delivered those boxes to Evo is because the boxes were heavy and we gave free shipping. It was our first mistake on our order form Orders over $1,000 year one got free shipping. I was like won't that incentivize them to maybe bump up the orders? Well, when evil orders a big order and that boxes weigh hundreds of pounds, now you're losing all your margins. So I'm like, well, I guess I'm driving them. And knocked on like talk to the buyer. I'm like, can I deliver them? Like she's like no one's ever done that. She's like they'll get a kick out of it. And it was. And then when I showed up, I took pictures like I I shaked everyone's hands. I'm like I made all this. Yeah, they're like so cool. Yeah, and it's be it turned into a thing there with them.

Speaker 1: 3:32:20

They're like that was cool yeah and we and people, the right people, pay attention to that stuff it's a differentiator, for sure yeah, and like just to go back to you meeting, I want the listener to know adam rips at snowboarding.

Speaker 1: 3:32:33

We got to really connect one day this winter on a great day riding together oh yeah, I was with my daughter, and oh and yeah and another, I think we wrote a couple, a couple runs on cloud chaser, together with and, uh, you know, I grateful for these little things that have come from starting a business that I wouldn't have met Gary or Adam or Cindy or Scott or Will, and all these people I bumped into uh, gary's wife Jarell, at the post office. It's just so cool because now I have a thing in town. I'm like there's the spiral guy.

Speaker 1: 3:33:12

It happens to me in the parking lot all the time I'm like isn't that cool man? Yeah, I have a purpose in life. Really, now that I've created for myself, my purpose for a while was just stay sober, and now my purpose is building this business for the community and my friends and being able to now, hopefully, you know, I ride midweek now like again selfishly. I was just like how, what can I do to fricking ride midweek? I don't want to ride on the weekends Like I need to run my own business. That's the only way to do it. Um, so, being able to just snowboard more, ride my and that is the has been such a gift. And if that keeps going in the future, where I can like work nights on spiral or in weekends and just ride nine to 11 every day like those legends up there are doing, um, that is a good life.

Speaker 2: 3:34:06

Yes, it is my friend. Yeah, I wanted to close this with reading your brand statement, if you're cool with that. Sure hell yeah, or you can read it.

Speaker 1: 3:34:16

Yeah, I'd like to hear it come from you.

Speaker 2: 3:34:19

Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anyone else read it. We learned a lot about the importance of a brand statement in Bao and I remember when I first read it, or you read it to us during our final presentation. It's just, it's very powerful and I think it really kind of summarizes well what we've spent the last couple hours, three hours, talking about, and I would encourage people obviously go to the Spiral website. Is it? Spiralwaxcocom? Spiralwaxcocom.

Speaker 1: 3:34:57

Yeah, Spiralwaxco Instagram too.

Speaker 2: 3:35:00

Yeah, yeah, and people can read it there, but in case you don't, it's too good.

Speaker 1: 3:35:04

You'll be able to read it on the new website. It's actually not even there.

Speaker 2: 3:35:09

We just wrote it, so it's fresh. Oh, maybe it was in the documents you sent over to me.

Speaker 1: 3:35:13

Yes, I put it in the documents. It's not on our website yet because it's so fresh. We're about to redesign our website this fall and Troy and I wrote that together, so we were playing jazz on that. I started something and sent it to him I also call it playing tennis, like I volley to serve and he gets it, and we've had a lot of success doing that. So he wrote parts of it and I wrote parts of it. We wrote it all. We didn't use technology on that.

Speaker 1: 3:35:39

Well, it comes across and we tend to not lean in too much into AI. I'm not a hater by any means, but I feel like what we do have going for us best is our brains, our specific brains. But there you go. Yeah, this. It was again like this thing that happened at Bao that I didn't. It was difficult to write and I probably wouldn't have never written it, and I'm glad it's there, oh man.

Speaker 2: 3:36:04

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:36:04

And it's all these things that helped define our business that we couldn't even define at the time. There's some nuggets and there's some great lines in there.

Speaker 2: 3:36:15

Oh, it makes you come back for more. All right, here goes Spiral Wax Co. Brand statement. Take a moment to slow down before sending it A time to wax, to soothe, to tune in and out. This isn't just board care, it's self-care, it's planetary care. Spiral is in our DNA, our hearts and our souls. It's in the way we ride, the way we live, the way everything moves. We think globally, we act locally, we ride consciously. We're all spiraling together in the galaxy, the solar system on a rock, ripping around the sun on our board, chasing lines, carving out moments that matter so, light a candle, crank up the tunes, wax up, breathe deep, drop in, enjoy the ride, ride and leave nothing behind but a clean line.

Speaker 1: 3:37:13

Yes yeah, so good man. I've never heard someone read it, so it's nice to hear you say yeah, there, I agree with that, and uh, it's rad when you can feel it. That is as close as it gets to the feeling I want to feel in life. Yeah, uh, just, the philosophy behind it is not just a spiral, isn't a wax company?

Speaker 1: 3:37:40

No it's not a product, it's. It's a lifestyle, it's a philosophy, it's a philosophy company. Yeah, it's. Um, we might make a. It's a philosophy company. We might write a book someday. We might make a movie someday. We make snowboard wax right now. So it just helps steer the ship in the right direction when we're figuring out what to make. It'll all come out of that.

Speaker 2: 3:38:11

I feel really fortunate and lucky and thank you for letting me get to share this with people. Yeah, I hope people listen. Oh, they will.

Speaker 1: 3:38:19

That was a while. I haven't really done this before, so it's an honor and a nice environment to come and a beautiful day, and now it's time, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:38:30

To go back to work. That's right. Thanks for your time, tim. Thank you, adam. All right man. On the next episode of Birth of the Brands from Bin Magazine and Oregon Media.

Speaker 5: 3:38:40

What's been interesting for me in that vein of things is discovering for me what it all does mean to me and what are my ultimate goals. You know I go back to being in bow and developing our our why, what, how, all that, and and really kind of struggling at first why am I doing this, what does this mean? How do I put this into words and all that? So kind of putting something down on paper, having a starting point and then seeing it evolve in my own head and realizing lately that connection is kind of my focus. So with the Giddy Up Glove it's connection between people, connection to the outdoors. I want people who want to be around others, but if you put on the Giddy Up gloves, suddenly you're like your own hero, because you feel a sudden confidence and power and joy in wearing it and you say, yeah, let's Giddy Up.

Speaker 2: 3:39:46

In our third episode of Birth of the Brands, we meet founder Cherise Erlinson. From childhood flea markets in frozen Minnesota to cross-country Lindy Hop adventures to late-night sewing sessions here in Bend, cherise has always followed her creative instincts, but it was motherhood and her daughter Esther that reignited her entrepreneurial dream, turning a quirky, insulated beverage glove into a fast-growing brand. It's a story of functional mischief, determination and learning by doing. Don't miss this inspiring journey. On Episode 3, coming soon.