Comeback Kid
Nitro Snowboards, the American Gladiator of snowboarding, is ready to succeed.
By John Stouffer

Two years into a new U.S. distribution deal, Nitro Snowboards appears to be on a comeback. The company continues to present modern and innovative products at yearly trade shows. It’s supplied retailers with the product, and continues to be a top deliverer in the industry. This is aided by the fact that Nitro has forged successful long-term relationships with key board, boot, and binding manufacturers, while avoiding the cash-draining expansion into the build-your-own-factory game that many snowboard companies are attempting.

However, one successful season and a good trade-show presentation do not mean a company will be around next year. Nitro’s owners have sorted out the management problems that plagued the former U.S. distributors, and have gotten nothing but strong support from new distributor Da Kine.

But to survive in the current snowboard market, Nitro has to prove it has strong customer service and that products will be durable and delivered on time. And these are really only proven by time.

SNOWboarding Business had the recent opportunity to meet with Sales Manager Kirk Zack and Marketing Director Lisa Vinciguerra in the Nitro Hood River, Oregon office. The discussion revolved around the company’s worldwide organization, redirection, manufacturing philosophy, and why the company will be a player in the snowboard market beyond the year 2000.

A Little History

Nitro Snowboards was formed in 1990 by Tommy Delago; Sepp Ardelt; and some of the owners of Windline, a Seattle, Washington-based sailboarding distributor.

Delago had been snowboarding since 1979 and had spent a stint at Sims as a team rider. He was originally hired by Windline in 1989 to be a European designer for Gnu Snowboards, which was distributed by Windline at the time, and help coordinate production at the Pale factory in Austria.

Then, with the help of Windline owners and Ardelt, Delago launched Nitro in 1990. "After looking at the license situation between Gnu and Windline for several months, Sepp and I recognized that the royalty fees involved were much too high for a brand name which had suffered from poor production quality and insufficient distribution control," says Delago of the Windline-Gnu relationship. "In January of 1990, we convinced the Windline management that it would make more sense to invest our money into our own brand rather than paying royalties."

However, with Nitro management in Europe overseeing production and U.S. distributors working on design and graphic development, the company ran into numerous logistical problems.

By 1994, Windline sold the distribution rights back to Delago due to continuing capitalization problems, disagreements over brand direction, and conflicts among the various principals.

Quickly after ending the relationship with Windline, Nitro signed an agreement with Da Kine (based in Hood River, Oregon) to handle the U.S. distribution. Since then, Da Kine has assembled a new staff to rebuild Nitro’s domestic presence. Former Kemper Sales Manager Kirk Zack was brought on as sales manager. Former pro snowboarder, and one of the first women to ever have her own pro model, Lisa Vinciguerra was hired as marketing director. Rounding out the main in-house staff was Marketing Coordinator Chico Bukovansky.

After two years of regrouping, the current Nitro organization has several different offices worldwide to keep a diversified view on the international development of the sport.

The Hood River office handles all the domestic sales, marketing, distribution; coordinates some of the worldwide marketing, team management, R&D; and is setting up their Internet Web pages. When the office crew needs help, they can also draw on the Da Kine staff for help with development of bags, POP, art, or even T-shirt screen printing.

The company also has an art and design office in Huntington Beach, California headed by art director/visual designer Mike Dawson, who has worked with Nitro since 1990. Vinciguerra says, "Mike is a big key in the development of the whole Nitro line worldwide."

Working with him are Martial and Lii Crum. Martial had worked with Quiksilver, Volcom, and Acme, and now designs most of Nitro’s clothing. He brings a lot of surf/skate flavor and experience to the program. Lii helps with the production and graphics.

Sepp Ardelt works in an office in France, overseeing business matters. The final Nitro office is Tommy Delago’s in Germany. According to Zack, "It’s a full-blown design studio. They can work on geometry of board shapes, bindings, have a CAD-CAM system, and can do pretty much anything you need from that office." It has five or six people working in it full-time.

Nitro only has fifteen or so employees. The company seems small compared to the other players in the market.

Kirk Zack: A lot of companies will have three- or four-hundred people working for them. They are counting every factory worker they have. I mean, obviously, we work with a boot factory, a binding factory, and two different clothing factories. We do T-shirts here, POPs over there, and have a sticker guy who does all the stickers. If you count all those people as working with Nitro, we wouldn’t be any smaller than any other company.

With your boot, board, binding, and clothing factories, those are all contractors? None of them are actually owned by Nitro?

KZ: Nitro’s chosen to not own its factories. Then we don’t have to worry about having "x" number of people show up every day from nine to five, paying them, and dealing with all the things that go along with having employees. We’ve chosen to work with factories, and we hope to grow them to become good snowboard factories. We want to be their number-one company, or be their sole brand. That’s been our goal, and it’s worked really well. It’s almost a Nike approach—dare I say that we’re like Nike? Nike doesn’t own all its factories, they contract out a lot.

Lisa Vinciguerra: The major point that matters is that with our board, boot, and binding factories, we are the number-one customer. That puts us at highest priority in every place. The majority of the information that’s specific to Nitro is proprietary. No one else has access to it in the factories.

KZ: But we do all our own molds in the factories. We’ve even got people at Elan working for us. We’ve got a guy there who oversees production and what we’re doing.

Is he employed by Nitro?

KZ: Yes. It’s something new we did because we can’t be there. We can’t drive back and forth every day. That’s part of the reason we have an office in Germany, because it’s centrally located in case we need to get to the factory quickly.

You have your boards built in Elan in Austria?

KZ: Yes. The boot and binding factories are in Italy.

Why has Nitro continued to stick with Elan? Have you considered diversifying your production of boards to the U.S.?

KZ: Elan has become a partner for us. Instead of just making the boards and saying, "Here are your boards, pay us for them," they’ve really tried to work with us and we’ve worked with them. They’re always open to whatever we’ve got going. They’ve used us and we’ve used them to the benefit of each other. Tommy Delago has been in Elan for a long time. He’s promoted them and helped grow their snowboarding business. At the same time, they’ve also helped Nitro grow. Elan is a pretty impressive company. When you look at what’s behind the line, they don’t just have a snowboarding factory. In the Slovania factory, they make glide planes and boats. They make 43-foot sailboats. They’ve got 1,000 people in their Slovanian factory. They’ve got three- or four-hundred people in their Austrian factory. It’s important to have a factory that’s been there for something like 50 or 100 years.

Have you looked at other options?

LV: We’ve looked into it, but when you’ve got something so good, why would you throw that away? A sign saying "Made in the U.S." is not necessarily, for our worldwide picture, a benefit.

KZ: We’re not against manufacturing in the United States. A common question a shop will ask is why we don’t own our manufacturing plant, or why don’t we just build one?

I don’t know if people have ever stepped back to think how much it costs to build, run, and maintain a factory set up to make Nitro products. Instead, we put our effort into what would be a good geometry for a board design and what the flex should be. We work with our riders, distributors, or whoever. We concentrate on that part of it and we let the factory worry about who’s going to work tomorrow, who has a day off, who’s going to run this, who’s going to run that. There’s enough high-quality manufacturers in the world right now.

We don’t see a need for us to go out and build a factory. We’re not against it, and we’ll continue to look at it to be cost effective and to be profitable. You can’t just go out and throw money away. There’s enough capacity out there that we don’t have to stay with Elan, but we’ve been such good partners and we’ve worked with each other for so long. It doesn’t make sense to switch away from them.

LV: When you’re their number-one customer, it doesn’t make sense.

KZ: I believe that manufacturing, too, has taken a twist. Before, everybody was beating down the doors to have the factories make their boards. It didn’t matter which factory. The factories never had to go out and sell themselves. Now, a factory has to go out and convince companies to have them make their boards, or make them some samples, or have the companies visit their facility. Three years ago it wasn’t like that.

You have a unique setup with offices around the world.

KZ: Nitro bridges the gap. We’re not just an American company. We’re not just a European company. We’re a little bit of everything for everybody. We have an extensive board line—it doesn’t just have freestyle boards, it doesn’t just have race boards. It’s got freestyle, race, freeride, the powder gun, and even the tour board. I think it’s important to mention one more time that worldwide we’re strong in places we want to be strong. There are companies that are just strong in Japan, in America, or in Europe. But we’ve bridged the gap really well and it helps us out on the financial side. If something happens in one country or another, the other ones can carry the line.

Who’s your distributor in Japan?

KZ: Piaa Corporation. They do car products. Fancy, really high-end driving lights, and parts for cars. Now they have a separate division just for snowboards.

What is the breakdown of business between the United States, Europe, and Japan?

KZ: It’s almost a third, a third, and a third. We’re really pretty equal in all three places.

LV: It depends on the different parts of the line. The clothing part of our line is definitely stronger in Japan than it is in the U.S. But if you were to take the whole program—boards, boots, bindings, and clothing—as a package, it’s pretty even.

KZ: We’re fortunate to have good distributors and good people all around.

LV: In Italy, for example, we’re the number-two snowboard line. Whereas maybe Austria, or somewhere else, we might fall around four or five.

If you were talking to a retailer who used to carry Nitro and you wanted them back as a customer, what would you tell them that’s different about the company today?

LV: Three or four years ago, the backing behind Nitro was really up and down. That affected everything—like how retailers got shipped. Now, because of the strong relationship with Da Kine, the U.S. is priority, which means our retailers are priority and see the product when they need to see it.

KZ: There are people now who have been put into place who have more financial support and the means to do what we need to do. Three years ago, there were a lot of people who were really good, but they weren’t necessarily focused all in the same direction or going the same way. Now it’s like it’s a new company.

There are four different offices worldwide. We’re all working together with a common goal to maintain and continue to be an innovative snowboarding company to the year 2000 and beyond. In the past, to the outside guy it was just chaos, and there was always a rumor of some sort about Nitro.

LV: You’d see Nitro, then you wouldn’t see Nitro. That goes from people on the hill with boards, to stores carrying the boards, to ads in the magazines.

KZ: Financial stability is a huge deal for Nitro now. We have worldwide financial support. Worldwide, the company has the same common push, the same common look, and the same common goals. It’s made a big difference overall.

How often do the people from the other offices actually interact, other than just on the telephone?

KZ: A minimum of twice a year. Typically three or four times. We have the usual times, like when we do our distributor meetings at SIA and ISPO, plus one in the summer. But Tommy and Sepp aren’t afraid to jump on a plane and haul ass somewhere if they need to.

LV: We’ve been really good about getting feedback from everybody. Our Japanese distributors tell us what the market looks like there. In the United States, we know what the market needs. In Europe we know as well. That’s why the board line is so expansive. We don’t want to just be an American company, we want to be a company that meets the needs of any snowboarder who walks in the door. We should have something everyone can ride.

Some retailers complain there are too many boards in snowboard lines now and that it’s impossible to figure out what board is important to carry. By trying to please everybody, you’re almost pleasing nobody. How do you guys answer that?

KZ: We try to sit down and work with the shop to see what their needs are. Are they a small specialty retailer that needs high-end boards like our V Series? Are they looking at the price? We can show them different places in the range that’ll work for them. A shop probably doesn’t need three different twin tips that are all high-end vertical laminate woodcore boards.

LV: When retailers say that about companies, they’re saying a company has all freestyle boards. When we talk about Nitro being one of the few companies that has a really diverse line, we’re talking we go from racing to freecarving. I think there are a lot of companies out there that have twelve different twin-tips in their line. We have a twin-tip line, a directional line, and lots of other stuff. Granted, it’s still a lot of boards for a shop, but when we say our line is broad and diverse, we don’t mean we only have freestyle boards. We have all types of snowboards.

KZ: And different price points on top of that.

LV: Some shops in the U.S. aren’t necessarily educated about the Alpine market, because that market doesn’t work in all regions of the U.S. However, there are pockets where it does. As a worldwide company, we know that’s mostly what we sell in Italy. The reps have an important job of looking at their shops and the parts of their territory and helping the retailer discover what’s important to them—as opposed to getting them overwhelmed by all the boards.

KZ: For a lot of reps, their job is to sell or oversell the shops. Maybe they’ll provide some service, but the first thing is to get whatever they can into the shops. We want to have a strong presence in the shop. We don’t just do boards, we do boots, bindings, T-shirts, bags, clothing, and outerwear. We’ve got people specifically working on all these different things. Each can stand alone or they can come together as a group. I think there are too many snowboard companies that don’t do that. They just sell retailers whatever it is they have to sell—they don’t try to work with them.

How many reps do you have?

KZ: We have nine different reps, and they also have sub reps. If you add it all up, it’s fourteen total.

What’s the most important thing facing the industry in the next three to five years?

KZ: For some people, it’s going to be just trying to stay in business. Snowboarding has become a viable business. There are outside stockholders. The feeling for a lot of us is still that it’s a fun thing, but it’s evolving away from that. It’s business and we shouldn’t be afraid to say, "Hey, we’re here to make a profit." Everybody should make a little bit of money on this. It’s not just a fun thing to do.

LV: Companies need the financial means to weather the storm. Do they have a long-term commitment to the industry? Are they putting money back in the industry? Or in two years will they say, "I made a profit, I’m out of here. I’m on to the next cool thing." Some will tell you flat out that’s what they want to do. We’re going to get the weeding out—we’ve already started to.

KZ: Some companies are going to step up to that next level and be a professional business.

LV: Nitro’s made that turn with a handful of others.