BoardSport Source, Issue 99, December/January 2019/20
Jake Burton passed away on November 20, 2019. Jake was a true pioneer whose vision helped lay the path for how we slide sideways on snow today and his love for the shred – and to do so as much as possible – will be his legacy. Read our tribute to Jake on page 15.
We’ve seen a mixed bag in early season snowfall across Europe, with sporadic dumps serving those higher resorts well but strange weather patterns has seen warmer pockets do away with the early white gold. How the rest of the season will pan out, only the layers of an onion will tell us, but as always SOURCE Mag is here to dissect what we can.
Our Market Insight reports do the European rounds and on our British stop, the guys at Absolute Snow present an interesting snowsports retail theory arising from Brexit, or the lack there of. Founder Paul Macnamara says, “when people book holidays in late summer-early autumn, they then have at least four pay-days between booking at going. They spend this time musing what kit they may need, purchasing that kit and ‘enjoying’ the whole experience that leads up to their holiday. Brexit has caused people to postpone decisions – they’re booking later, much later. This cuts the paydays in half, and then there’s Christmas in-between, taking more money away. The disposable income available between booking and going is cut in half, and probably more.” Turn to page 69 to read our annual boardsports market reports from the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
Elsewhere in retail we speak to Addicted Shop in Lyon, France as this issue’s shop profile and we speak to the team at Hurley about a big push they’re making into the cold weather surf apparel category. We preview all of the upcoming tradeshows and on snow demos and as our focus switches to winter, we say farewell to our former Senior Snowboard Contributor, Tom Wilson-North who’s left us to transform the Nidecker Group’s digital operation. However, stepping into these big boots is former Whitelines product guru, Andrew Duthie, who incidentally has size 13 (US) feet.
Driven by a love for Japanese snowboard culture and with radically striking videos to showcase the brand, KORUA Shapes have become one of snowboarding’s most interesting brands in recent years. We sit down with Co-Founder Nicholas Walken to dig into the vision behind their success for our 99th issue’s Big Wig.
Ride on, Jake!
Harry Mitchell Thompson
Editor