Snowboard Business Plan

Developed May 2022

Values:
The environment
The mountains
Skiing / snowboarding
Quality products

Purpose:
Be the low cost ski and snowboard supplier of choice while never wavering on our commitment
to sustainability, quality, and our love for the mountains.

Mission:
Over the course of my school career I want to learn and advance my understanding of
snowboard creation and of the mountains in order to set up my business centered around fun
and sustainability.

What I Love:
● Snowboarding
● Time with friends
● Powder days
● Experiences in general - being outside, being in nature, and enjoying every minute of it.
● Building things - creating random things, and creating things to solve problems
● Being in the moment - taking in your surroundings and really live for the now
● Connecting with people
● Comfortability - you should be comfortable in your snowboard gear and honestly
everything you wear
● Engineering things - using hands

What I Can Sell:

● Snowboards
● Skis
● Boots
● Bindings
● Some clothing
● Snowboard longboards
● Avalanche gear backpacks

What I Can Be Best in the World At:

● Practicality - I can have very simple designs with specific uses in mind
● Efficiency - I can make my production process quick and sustainable
● Finding a problem that someone has and innovating a way to help solve it
 ● Producing products that fit the extremes (and everyone in between) - for people who are
bad at skiing and experts, in turn everyone in between will be able to use it too

Strategic Plan:

Internal Assessment
● Strengths
○ Working with my hands
○ Materializing ideas and just messing around with them until I get the thing I like
best
○ Visual learning
○ Ambitious individual
○ I am very passionate about select things like outdoor activities
● Weaknesses/Obstacles
○ Kind of shy but I warm up once I know someone
○ Hard for me to learn some things if I can't see or visualize it
○ I can’t sit still for very long but I’m anxious to learn and get to work
○ Pretty closed minded about career aspirations but very ambitious about what I
want to do
○ Sometimes I absorb all of the information and other times it goes right out the
other ear
● Resources
○ Connection to Mountain Capital Partners - they can help me get out there and
figure out what I can do do start a business
○ I live an hour away from Venture Snowboards (which is very similar to the
business I want to create) - I also had an informational interview with them.
○ In-state college degree for ski / snowboard design - at Colorado Mountain
College in Steamboat
○ Informational interview with Wagner Customs - gave me a lot of useful
information about machinery
● Innovations
○ I made a snowboard into a longboard so I might make those in the future
○ Environmentally friendly ski wax
○ Design some sort of brakes for a snowboard, kind of like skis
○ Minimalistic style boots yet still fit most bindings

External Assessment:
● Industry Trends:
○ People are buying what is available to them, Arbor and other big brands send
hundreds of boards to shops all around the country.
○ Places like Venture it is more of a selective brand where they rely on experts
wanting to buy from them because they know what makes a good quality board
vs big brand mass production
 ○ Industry is only getting bigger, according to the National Ski Areas Association
the 2021/22 season was a record high for visits
○ People from areas without skiing flock to the small ski towns and the big
corporate resorts more and more every year
● Technology Trends:
○ It’s always advancing - constantly people are coming up with new innovations in
order to improve a product or to increase the quality
○ Burton has new, reliable step-on bindings
○ Snowboards now have carbon, bamboo, or basalt stringers in order to increase
pop and flexibility
○ Boots have become more minimalistic, comfortable, and warm
○ Different board designs like a fishtail change the way you ride the snow and how
it feels

● Competitors
○ Burton
○ Neversummer
○ Arbor
○ Venture
○ Niche
○ K2

Products:
● I will produce quality snowboards
● I will produce minimalistic, warm, and comfortable snowboard boots
● I will produce minimalistic and flexible bindings
● I will produce sustainable ski and snowboard wax
● I will produce old snowboards made into longboards

Customers:
My business will provide quality recycled products to anyone who is physically able to
snowboard. The beginners will be able to use them easily and the experts will be able to use
them until they retire the product. Therefore everyone in between will also be able to enjoy my
products.

People:
The type of people that I will need to have working for me are people who share the love of the
mountains, of skiing or snowboarding, and of nature in general. They will also need to share
similar ambitions yet different ideas in order to get a diverse perspective but still keep the main
goal the same.

Infrastructure:
After college my plan is to move to British Columbia because of the opportunity to test products
on some of the best terrain in the world. I will work at a snowboard shop and maybe a ski resort
in order to build capital, connections, and knowledge over time.

Strategic Priorities:
● Education - work at a snowboard shop, and go to college for mechanical engineering or
ski and snowboard design
● Snowboard as much as possible - live close to a ski area in order to test products, build
connections, and gather feedback
● Connections - network with a lot of people
● Experiment - Start building and testing
● Obtain capital
● Find employees - with similar ambitions who share my values, purpose, and mission
● Adapt - continuously improve products, solve problems, and listen to customers