Extracting Visions: An Interview with Nitro

NItro snowboards are rad. I was lucky enough to recently sit down with Nitro’s founders, part of the design team, their team manager, sales manager and our Northwest rep and figure out why. Now you can too.

“It seems like so long ago,” Mike says. He’s one of the designers at Nitro and he’s looking at the art for this year’s Eero on the gallery walls here at evo. The initial sketches are hung on the wall beneath the final graphic, which depicts a chaotic room strewn with boards, boots, cameras, books, pizza boxes, magazines. Front and center is a shaggy blond kid sitting at his computer with his back to us. The air is crowded with close up shots from the screen, speech bubbles compete for attention. It’s all IM conversations and photos of snowboarding, someone’s mohawk, friends, girls. At first glance, it’s a mess. But there’s more to it than that. You get a sense of what this kid is about and the jumble of his life translates to a sort of fervor for, well, snowboarding.

What’s sometimes lost when we look at a board is a sense of how much work went into the graphic and the enormous amount of time it took to finalize it. Listening to Mike talk about it while the board is right here in front of me, I get a better idea of what it’s like to develop the final graphic from just a flash of insight and a few preliminary sketches. The design is printed out, slapped on thousands of boards, shipped out to shops all over the world, and suddenly some kid is out there on a brand new board, buttering boxes, shredding powder, hitting rails at the local high school, banging down steep ice – whatever. With that in mind, the sketches seem so distant from what’s there on the board; time actually becomes distance. In this case, it has culminated in the graphic living on a white walled gallery back in Seattle.

Nitro’s design team is housed across the water in Redmond, but Mike is visiting evo with a crew from all over. “We just got together, basically,” Nitro’s co-founder Tommy says, explaining how Nitro got its start. He’s referring to himself and his partner, Sepp, and doesn’t immediately elaborate. In all honesty, the way he says it, with an earnest look on his face and a slight laugh, it seems like answer enough. Back in the 90s he and Sepp looked around, thought about what was important to them, recognized what was lacking in the snowboard industry, and decided that those things were what they should be dedicating their time and energy toward. Tommy was competing while Sepp was distributing GNU boards in collaboration with Windline here in Ballard. So yeah, they just got together and began making quality snowboards. And they’ve stuck to that honest, straightforward approach ever since.

Most of the people who are now part of the company have been there from the beginning. Mike uses the term “lifers”. It was his first job out of school and he can’t imagine leaving. In fact, he compares it to suddenly getting a new family after 19 years or being a foreign exchange student in a strange country. The people involved in Nitro aren’t there just to be a part of the industry. They’re there because they are passionate and they’re there because they are what make Nitro what it is. They are Nitro.

This sort of dedication coupled with Nitro’s upfront attitude and complete immersion in snowboarding is what sets the company apart. They’re snowboarders themselves. But then that’s nothing new – Todd Richards, Jake Burton… Who isn’t a snowboarder in the snowboard industry? What is new is Nitro’s sales plan and lack of marketing hype. They’re not producing boards with the mass consumer in mind. The pattern isn’t to look at the numbers, see what’s been working, and tap into that. Riding is their passion and they produce boards based on what feels right. The results are original, both technically and artistically, and they’re made with the knowledge that at least one rider will love it, and the hope that, if it hasn’t already, it will turn into a love for snowboarding. What they’re building, then, is a community. Everyone, from designers to owners to the kid buying his first board, is involved in the creative process. Nitro doesn’t make boards because they’re hot this year. “Does it limit sales?” Tommy asks. “Maybe.”

But who cares about sales when you’re doing everything for all the right reasons? Tommy and Sepp needed something no company was providing so they worked hard to create it. Instead of marketing hype and spin, Nitro’s spreading their own passion for riding through graphics, technical makeup and community. For example, Nitro made a whole line of black boards one year. The rest of the industry criticized, asked why, wondered what they were thinking, and they had to take the heat. But they didn’t change because of it. It’s what they wanted to do and what they believed in, so why would they change? Look at team rider Mark Frank. People see him as all hip-hop and gangster. Look beyond that, though, and you see that he’s all him. That’s Nitro. “That’s snowboarding.” Tonino says. Trends are secondary. He laughs. “If you stick to what you’re into, you’re eventually going to become the trend anyway.”

So if they’re not just following the trend, maybe not even consistently setting it, where do they get the ideas they so smoothly mold into physicality? All over the world, really. Nitro is an extremely international company, as has been evident from the beginning. And their respect for employees is half of what allows them to remain so. Employees are not forced to move from their families or home mountains. They’re scattered from Redmond, to Austria, to California. As a result, they are able to cultivate a huge variety of influence and endless, varied inspiration.

I ask how the apparent distance between the creative process that goes into developing a board’s graphic and the finalized product translates to the distance between the guys producing the boards and the guys buying and riding them. Basically, what still gets the people making the boards stoked to ride and how do they express that directly to the consumer through the boards themselves? Mike answers first, and he makes it seem simple. He’s an artist – if he’s stoked on the graphic, he wants the consumer to be stoked on the graphic too. He wants them to look down at the board they’re riding and smile, he wants art to excite while they’re doing what they love.

But it’s not just that. “We think like riders,” he says. They’re not catering to a mass consumer, they’re not chasing trends. They’ve got a certain guy in mind for each of the boards they’re creating and they want that guy to feel as stoked riding the board as they feel when they’ve finished creating it. He pares it down to “With Nitro, what you see is what you get.”

“What’s the first thing a little kid does after lacing up a brand new pair of shoes?” Tonino asks. “He bolts across the room, he takes off running.” And you can picture it: some kid with a huge smile on his face sprinting from one door to another, thinking he’s the fastest guy alive. Tonino says that’s how people should feel when they pick up a new board. Strap it on, press the nose a bit on your kitchen floor, who cares if it’s still August, who cares that they’re making a new Indiana Jones, who cares that you’re missing the same happy hour you go to every Thursday night. The feeling you get when you unveil and strap into a new setup is why these guys are making boards and that’s how they connect to the consumer. They don’t just think like riders. They are riders.

Of course, any company needs to make money, and that’s where Nitro’s team comes in. Instead of developing new tech specs or building boards just for specific price points, they rely on team feedback and R&D. Mike, having started for Nitro just out of school, says it took him a long while before he realized that “team driven” often isn’t a reality within snowboard companies. For Nitro, though, it’s just the way it is. They’re going to encourage risk, they’re going to be honest about their shortcomings and they’re going to do what feels right because that’s how you truly progress.

Building a board is about making the on snow feel perfect and giving riders what they want. It’s a conversation and a process, which means that the team riders, the guys who are determining what’s needed and what can be scrapped, what feels funky and what feels rad, are a huge part of that conversation. It’s not just “I like it. I don’t like it.” The riders should understand the history of the board, why it’s made the way it is, and they are encouraged to be honest and detailed with their responses. Tommy says they “unleash” the artists to work directly with the riders and really take an individual approach. That’s how it went with the Austin Smith pro-model. The fact that Mike Fox hadn’t been encouraged to make a pro-model before was shocking to them. With Andreas Wiig, they really had to push to understand what he was thinking. He seemed to have a vision, a certain feeling in mind, and to be able to properly execute it, the designers had to understand that feeling in an organic way. Mike called it “extracting visions”. It’s a combination of effort and passion. The difference is that there is no indifference within Nitro

All of this mixes to create genuine, sincere boards directly inspired by the riding. The new Scratch and Rip base is a prime example. Instead of branding with a faux skate deck, Nitro lauds the chewed up, well used deck every dedicated skater has had or still rides. The new technology allows the base to actually scratch off and reveal a mix of colors and designs on the bottom, creating a custom look on each board. The rider shouldn’t be ashamed of a beat up board. Rather, the proof of hard riding is glorified. It’s inspired by the juxtaposition between a brand new deck and one that’s been trashed, obliterated, destroyed and it all comes back to authenticity and creativity.

The newest biggest thing for Nitro this year is the Sub Pop. It’s a 2010 limited edition preseason release coming out soon. With negative camber toward the tips but not in the middle, it’s Nitro’s contribution to the rocker craze. But they didn’t just whip out a rockered board because every other company had one in their line. The board is actually steeped in history and tradition. Like New England, but way more hip. They looked backward to move forward, added raised edges from the old T0 and threw in drifter base. The fear was that it would turn into a saucer. Tonino gives a clearer visual picture.
“You know, like Griswold family Christmas.”

The desire was to have the negative camber, but to maintain pop, but the prototype felt soggy, with a washed out tail. It was easier to get on rails, but it wasn’t snappy. This was eventually corrected with two small cambers toward the tip and tail under the bindings, which means there is more pressure automatically applied to the tip and tail. It’s designed with the more technical rider in mind – the guy with the looser, slower style – so their version of “rocker” isn’t something that goes across the line. Rather, it’s very specific to a certain rider and is only offered for urban riding styles. “Negative camber, positive pop,” Mike explains. Garvey had brought the board in and we’re all gathered around it. From outside, nobody would know what we we’re looking at. They’d hopefully understand, though, that whatever it is is all we care about at the moment. Like the kid on the Eero, despite the mess around him, you understand where his axis is. Nitro is the same.

Check out photos from the opening.

Artwork from Nitro will be in the gallery for the month of October. Swing by, say hi.

The 09 boards are right here.