No surprise here, but looks like Burton was also forced to make some changes to the way they are doing business thanks to the current “no buy” economy, according to the Burlington Free Press.
The cuts include layoffs of “less than 5 percent of its staff in North America,” and a decision by company founders Jake and Donna Carpenter to eliminate their own salaries. . . . “This has been a very painful process for us, and considering the global economic situation, we’ve done everything in our power to save as many jobs as possible,” Burton CEO Laurent Potdevin said in a company news release. . . . “Our goal this entire year has been to cut as many costs as possible on a global level, like sales meetings, travel and new hires so that we could avoid cutting people. Instead of a much larger number of layoffs, we decided to take a different approach, which is temporarily reducing salaries on a sliding scale from 0 to 15 percent for employees in North America.”
We have to admit it: few things make us feel more like going on a spring shred session than watching a Tahoe Dangerzone video. It’s kind of creepy to say, but Nicki Fresh and the crew make it all look new again.
Apparently, drawstrings in hoodies just don’t cut it for the kids anymore and looks like La Jolla Sport order a few thousand units that go against the Consumer Product Safety Commission Rules. Apparently, they all have a drawstring that can “pose a strangulation hazard to children.”
On April Fools day Eric Sweet, 47, and nine other Jews will take a 36-foot-long snowboard to Jackson Hole Resort and hopefully ride into the record books on the world’s longest snowboard, according to a story in the Jackson Hole News & Guide.
Sweet has also procured a trademark hold from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office giving him rights to the name “Ten Jews, One Snowboard” and “The Minyan Board.” . . . Sweet says he’s having fun with the whole project. . . . “It was more difficult to put 10 Jews together and agree on something,” Sweet said. “That’s part of what I think is funny: With 10 Jews, can we actually pull it off? I don’t know. With 10 Jews on a snowboard, it’s going to be hard for us to look athletic.”
The board breaks down into 10 pieces so Sweet and his friends can ride up the lift. At the top they will apparently put the board together and then ride down the mountain (without any official permission from the resort, Sweet says). l’chaim
Broslist.com mixes the classified ads of Craigslist with user generated content community functionality that seems to be loaded on every site these days. Post a profile, post a video, and then post a listing to sell your old skate deck. It’s all there on the broslist. We don’t know how popular the rest of the site will be, but if the classified section can hit critical mass it could be a great resource for snow, surf, skate gear trading.
Here’s what Mike Piscitelli posted on Club Mumble:
These challenging economic times inspired a few of us to build a classified website that would enable surfers to buy, sell and trade used surf gear, find cheap places to stay all over the world, get rides to the beach, and land work. Over the course of 12 months we worked with a talented group of web programmers to createBroslist.com, a simple but thorough classified website that addresses the needs of surfers on all levels. Unlike craigslist, we are your bros.
The site has only been up for a couple hours, so don’t expect to find much now, but if your garage looks anything like ours, broslist.com may offer some kind of salvation from surf, snow, skate overload.
Luyolo Mangele, 16, from the Mthumbane township in Port St Johns in South Africa was surfing Second Beach when he was attacked and died from injuries from what locals believe was a Tiger Shark, according to a story on Dispatch Online.
Vuyo Maza, a lifeguard for the Wild Coast Guards , was on duty at Second Beach when Mangele, a surfer, was attacked by the shark. “Everything happened so fast. We had people shouting ‘Shark! Shark!’ But when we got there the shark had already struck.”
Some say that local healers have been holding rituals at the beach that are attracting the sharks.
The healers allegedly throw raw meat and blood into the sea as part of their rituals. . . A lifeguard told the Daily Dispatch yesterday that on Friday – the day Mangele was killed – traditional healers were seen leaving the beach in the morning.
Tiffany Montgomery has been all over the Active bankruptcy coverage on Shop-eat-surf.com. Today, she drove to the Federal Courthouse in Riverside and picked up a copy of the bankruptcy filings and is kicking down all the details.
Also of note is the list of Active’s 20 largest unsecured creditors, which reads like a Who’s Who of action sports brands. Active owes a total of $8.8 million to its 20 largest unsecured creditors. . . .Interestingly, only one brand is on the list of secured creditors – the Burton Corporation. Secured creditors get payment priority in a bankruptcy.
Montgomery also notes that Active is cutting their contracts with the following team members: “Andrew Reynolds, Kenny Anderson, Billy Marks, Erik Ellington, Daewong Song and Jim Greco.
Looks like P-Rod and some others have escaped the axe of the time being. For more details (including the list of creditors with amounts owed) follow the jump.
If there has been one thing Vice Magazine has always been good at (aside from Dos and Don’ts), it’s been making money. So it’s really no surprise that their advertising arm (Virtue) is also doing well.
“We’ve been marketed to our whole lives, making our bullshit detectors very sophisticated,” says Vice co-founder Smith. “So our whole modus operandi was not to bullshit. We decided to set up this separate wing that could leverage our talent but also be a separate company to help brands reach this demographic.”
When you’re just in it for the money then it all kind of makes sense. No reason not to help Pepsi push sugar water to the kids if it means more money for drugs, women, and in-depth photo essays on Detroit’s flailing public school system.
Mohammad Malek lost both his legs to a land mine in Afghanistan when he was 16. Thanks to Loma Linda Medical Center Malek got to come to California where he saw surfing for the first time.
Malek’s first glimpse of surfing came last year, during a beach outing in Los Angeles. He was on a pier, still in a wheelchair, and he pushed himself close to the rail to get a better look as the surfers below paddled into waves. . . . Timothy Hickman, a director at the hospital, noted Malek’s interest. Hickman also remembered watching a television news feature in which Michael Pless, owner of M & M Surfing School in Seal Beach, taught people with disabilities how to surf. . . .So, last April, a surf lesson was arranged for Malek. . . .That day, everyone on the sand was nervous — even Pless — who had never taught a double amputee how to surf. Communication wasn’t easy. . . Still, if there’s such a thing as a natural surfer, Malek was it. He learned how to paddle and how to read the ocean. He learned to get his board on the face of the wave and, even without legs, when to get up. . . . He shocked spectators that day by riding wave after wave – on his head.
Now that Malek’s treatment is completed he has to go back to Afghanistan. But before he left he wanted to surf one more time. . . on his head.
