Snowboards, New York Style:
Angelic waits for a shake-out.
9/16/98
By John Stouffer

Angelic Snowboards is a four-year-old Brooklyn, New York-based snowboard manufacturer. Owner Mark Klich has operated a multi-million-dollar window manufacturing and installing business for the past eleven years. After he and his two sons got interested in snowboarding, he decided to set up the OEM facility across the street from his window factory in the Polish section of the New York borough. SNOWboarding Business recently had the chance to visit the factory and meet the staff. Included in the group was Steve Hayes, an early Burton team rider who, along with his two brothers and in partnership with Angelic, has begun making and selling Hayes Brothers Snowboards.

With 27 presses in the factory, Angelic is ready to build snowboards. The company has its own CNC machine to mill out 3-D shapes from molds to create the unique and functional 3-D topsheets that are featured in both Angelic and Hayes Brothers Snowboards. The machine is also used cut matching 3-D woodcores that help eliminate excess weight in these boards.

The company has made snowboards for several different brands in the last several years. Although business has slowed this season, Klich believes that things will turn around by next year, after many of the smaller, under-financed companies disappear from the market. For now, he's content to let things sort out. With all his machinery paid for and a successful business to fall back on, there's no rush to make things happen. Klich doesn't want to be a major player in the snowboard market: he sees it as an interesting sideline to his busy construction business.

"Nothing in a hurry," Klich says of the snowboarding business. "Our time will come. A little luck would help, but we don't need it."

Having Steve Hayes on staff will accelerate things a bit. Hayes rode for Burton in the mid 80s, and worked at Apocalypse as well. Currently, he's a mainstay of the East Coast snowboarding scene, working to get pro snowboarders such as Hobie Chittenden riding the product and promoting the brand.

While some snowboard companies overproduce product and try to blow it out to any retailer looking for a deal, the staff at Angelic knows that they have to produce better-performing product to separate itself from the others in the market. And the brand plans on being here for the long run until things begin to pay off.

The photo of Angelic Owner Mark Klich is of him at a window installation job in Manhattan looking toward the Empire State Building from the tenth floor of the building.

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