Just a few kilometers north of downtown Denver, USA, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, sits the headquarters of Never Summer. The office of co-founder Tracey Canaday is spacious but cluttered, with several snowboards leaning haphazardly against the wall. He picks one up and places it on the table so its base profile is clearly visible. “This,” he says, “is the most innovative snowboard we’ve ever made!” This “we” includes Canaday’s brother Tim and the other 70 employees at Never Summer. The company manufactures a wide range of snowboards, and the one he presents is a limited edition produced for their 20th anniversary—the all-terrain freestyle Proto CT. This board is the result of four years of challenging conventions and innovating snowboard design.
Let’s rewind to January 2008, when the Canaday brothers had just returned from a trade show promoting the next season’s snowboards. Shortly after, Tim, who led the R&D department, came up with the perfect “rocker-camber-rocker” design—a hybrid of traditional camber and rocker profiles—that made the board both easy to maneuver and more fun to ride. As pioneers of a new product, they succeeded—and succeeded big.
They quickly scrapped the original production plan for their existing line and, just months later, launched the new 2008–2009 season lineup featuring the “rocker-camber-rocker” snowboards. Initially, distributors were skeptical about the new product, but its strong sales proved that Never Summer had sparked a revolution.
Sales doubled for three consecutive years
“It was a huge risk, but we felt it was the right decision,” says Tracey, who sports a beard, a muscular build, chews gum non-stop, wears a black Never Summer T-shirt, and a black Never Summer baseball cap. “Especially in action sports, you always have to keep pushing forward. Our secret to running the business is to go all out first, then see what happens.”
The $540 Proto CT snowboard features the company’s proud carbon fiber layer, which casts a rainbow-like sheen beside the Never Summer phoenix logo, along with a long list of proprietary technologies: an ultra-light wood core; varioPower Grip sidecut that effectively manages edge control; and a signature damping system that makes riding double black diamond runs (the most difficult category) smoother.
Of course, it has the “rocker-camber-rocker” design—one competitor described it as “a McDonald’s (Weibo) golden arch logo with the ends popped up.” The board is relatively flat in the middle, takes on a banana shape between the bindings, and arcs upward toward the tips, making it easier for beginners to transition from toe to heel edge with fewer falls, while the raised center provides stability and power for advanced tricks like ollies.
The “rocker-camber-rocker” design is so unique that Never Summer secured a U.S. patent for it, which led to a minor dispute with Seattle-based rival Mervin Manufacturing. That company, owned by Quiksilver, produces hundreds of snowboard models under brands like Lib Tech, Gnu, and Roxy. Executives at Mervin claimed they had been making “rocker-camber-rocker” designs since the 1980s. However, Canaday said chasing patent royalties wasn’t particularly appealing, and he planned to donate a portion of the proceeds to charity.
Since then, other companies in the industry have followed suit, with nearly every major brand offering some version of “rocker-camber-rocker” boards, also known as “reverse camber” boards. Davis, research director at the National Ski Areas Association in McLean, Virginia, explained, “In fact, 45% of new snowboards sold in 2010 were reverse camber designs.” “Never Summer is a very agile brand. Its founders are great at connecting with customers, but their ability to adapt quickly also stems from being one of the last remaining domestic snowboard manufacturers in the U.S.”
In other words, although industry giant Burton Snowboards from Vermont holds a larger market share, Never Summer still has a home-field advantage because competitors who manufacture overseas can’t adjust to changing consumer tastes as swiftly as they can.
Willey Ga, marketing director of Signal Snowboards, which operates a small factory outside Huntington Beach, California, and has sold out of inventory for the past few years, believes smaller brands have fared well during the economic downturn because they cater to more discerning audiences. The slow response of larger brands may be part of the reason for the overall decline in snowboard sales—over 300,000 fewer units sold in the past four years—even though the entire snow sports industry was worth $3.3 billion in 2010, with participation rates at an all-time high. He said, “These companies may be taking a hit because retailers are looking for more innovative products, but we still have our core customers who love specialized gear, so our business continues to grow.”
For Never Summer, creating the “rocker-camber-rocker” trend marked a major turning point. After 15 years of steady growth and a strong reputation for premium quality, this U.S.-based snowboard manufacturer saw its assets surge. Over the past three years, annual revenue has doubled each year, nearing $10 million. In May 2010, the Canaday brothers expanded their 13-year-old office space by 15%. To meet soaring demand, the factory now operates two shifts. In 2010, it produced 22,000 snowboards, 12,000 skateboards, and 6,000 pairs of alpine skis for local partner brands, including Icelantic, Fat-ypus, High Society, and Rocky Mountain Underground, as well as 2,000 promotional items for mainstream brands like Coors.
Quality Products Are Everything
The company started in a tiny garage. In 1983, the brothers, who lived in Fort Collins, started Swift Snowboards with friend Scott Rolfs after playing around with snowboarding for a year. Tim was only 14 at the time, and Tracey was four years older. Tim built his first snowboard in woodworking class. He said, “Tracey and Scott handled the business side, and I was good at making things. After learning mold-making in woodworking class, I taught them how to do it.”
The industry was still in its infancy—more of a crude sport back then. Snowboards were made of wood, resembling sleds with upturned tips, and brands had dull names like “Snow Surfer” and “Flying Yellow Banana.” There were no real industry standards or market demand, so they eventually shut down Swift and moved to California. “It just didn’t seem like there was much of a future, so we decided, ‘Let’s go learn to surf.’” Tim joked.
Seven years later, the snowboard industry had changed dramatically. In 1985, snowboarding was officially recognized as a sport. More and more ski resorts began allowing snowboarders, so early snowboards resembled widened alpine ski shapes with fiberglass and carbon fiber composites, designed for smooth terrain.
“There were a lot of business articles about this new sport, and we thought it was a great opportunity with huge potential. Plus, our experience running Swift made us even more eager to jump back in,” Tim said. Snowboarding was going mainstream, and many new brands were entering the market. Many different brands’ snowboards were actually produced in the same factories, with the only differences being graphics and logos. Most of these brands disappeared by the late 1990s—some due to poor sales, others through acquisitions.
With the timing feeling right for another challenge, the Canaday brothers moved back to Colorado, rented part of the Summit Snowboards factory in Silverthorne, and began the rocky process of building their own production line. In 1991, Never Summer was born.
In the early years, the brothers embodied classic entrepreneurial grit—they maxed out credit cards, borrowed $10,000 here and $20,000 there from friends and relatives, and drove around in a Honda to pitch samples door-to-door. “I visited some well-known shops. Some people were interested, but most asked, ‘Who referred you?’ or ‘What makes you different from the rest?’” Tracey said. “We had no money and no connections in the industry, so we had to offer something truly unique.”
That something was—and still is—premium quality. Never Summer offers a three-year warranty on its handmade U.S.-produced snowboards and has built a reputation for crafting durable “bombproof” boards. Tim said, “Originally, our strategy was to make snowboards tougher than anything else on the market. That was a simple way to differentiate our products.” Since the fledgling company couldn’t afford to hire sports stars or advertising agencies (Even today, Never Summer spends only 2% of its revenue on marketing, while some competitors spend up to 10%), they relied solely on creating exceptional products to attract customers.
In 1993, they moved to Denver to be closer to suppliers and opened their own factory. Since then, Denver has been Never Summer’s home base. The beating heart of Never Summer is a nearly 20,000-square-foot factory filled with noise, stacks of materials, steel molds, and the hum of machines daily pressing plastic (9945,-10.00,-0.10%) and fiberglass topsheets onto hundreds of alpine and snowboards.
Tracey explained that the factory is crucial to Never Summer’s success. While manufacturing in China could reduce costs, keeping production local gives them complete control over the process and eliminates worries about shipping or currency fluctuations during economic downturns. More importantly, with so few domestic manufacturers, they can help sustain a portion of the market demand. Currently, about 15% of the company’s revenue comes from collaborations with local snowboard brands. He said, “We can help launch a snowboard brand by producing just 100 units, so we get a lot of requests—and we often have to turn some down.”
Never Summer has also expanded 10% of its business into longboards (elongated boards similar to snowboards), providing year-round income streams and expanding its customer base. Additionally, the company has partnered with retail chain B.C. Surf & Sport to develop its own line of fashion products.
Tracey admitted that not every startup can have in-house production, but he emphasized that product quality remains king, attracting a loyal, high-end customer base. “I’ve seen some emerging companies plaster magazines with huge ads and run expensive marketing campaigns. They got retailers’ attention but went out of business within two years because they didn’t have good products,” he said.
Never Summer is different. For over two decades, they’ve been favored by retailers, including some of the most selective ones. Emage, a skateboard and snowboard lifestyle shop in downtown Denver known for its pickiness—carrying only two snowboard brands, Never Summer and Capita—owner Brandt Wisenbaker said they only care about product quality. He said, “We only stock boards we’d use ourselves.”
Careful Retail Expansion to Protect Distributors
Additionally, Never Summer’s longevity largely stems from its strict adherence to “Clean Distribution”—a term Tracey Canaday uses to describe how the company maintains strong market demand and retailer satisfaction while expanding. He proudly said, “We don’t sell everywhere.”
One key reason is protecting retailers. “As we started gaining success and expanding beyond Colorado, we really wanted to protect our existing retailers,” Tim Canaday added. They carefully select retailers and distributors, preferring stores where the owners are actively involved.
"They could have dropped small shops like us, but they chose to keep working with us," says Patterson, owner of Aspect Board in Bend, Oregon. Her shop has just one employee. Before buying the store in 2009, she worked there as a sales clerk for 10 years. For her, Never Summer is the best brand to partner with because she doesn’t have to compete with big retailers like Dick's Sporting Goods or REI for the same products—those large stores clear out large inventories after certain sales periods. "I can’t compete with retailers offering 70% discounts, but because we’re the only shop nearby that carries Never Summer products, people will drive hundreds of miles to buy from us."
Martin, who heads the snowboard business program at Colorado Mountain College, adds, "Their product line is strong, and even during tough economic times, retailers are happy to work with them."
The Canaday brothers don’t take out bank loans—because with no company debt, they avoid paying interest, and the money saved on interest helps support around 350 retailers across the country. Retailers who prepay for orders 60 days or more in advance receive significant discounts. Never Summer also partners with the e-commerce platform Shopatron, which routes online orders to the nearest independent retailer to the buyer.
"No other company has ever protected retailers’ interests like this," says George, owner of Mountain Wave Board Shop in Breckenridge, Colorado, who has sold Never Summer snowboards for 18 years. "We were one of their first retail partners, and they were always willing to scale back production appropriately—even when demand was through the roof and hundreds of retailers lined up daily, eager to sell their boards."
That’s absolutely true, says Larsen, general manager of Shoreline Board Shop near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, who has been in the industry for 26 years. He explains that overproduction has long been a major issue in the sector, dragging down overall price levels. However, Never Summer’s supply is “just right” for market demand.
Of course, there are downsides. Never Summer’s high turnover makes it hard for new snowboard brands to break into the market. "We try to support smaller, overlooked brands and give them opportunities when we can," says Larsen. "They’re all good, but Never Summer has raised the bar."
But if you ask Tracy Canaday whether there’s still room for innovation, his answer is a resounding "yes." "Over the years, I’ve seen many snowboard brands—even smaller ones—try to gain traction with elite sports groups through sponsorships, much like Burton does. But that model doesn’t work for everyone. You have to make your product your leverage, and maintain the drive to innovate once you’ve found your niche."
There’s always room for improvement. Never Summer draws inspiration from the extreme sports community, experimenting with shapes and materials. Tim sees annual product refinement as a major challenge. "Our products have a strong reputation for quality, and I don’t want to become stagnant. I want people to see Never Summer as one of the top innovators in the industry."
Tracy adds that their next big focus is finding ways to improve efficiency and boost profit margins per product: "We’ve grown so fast—we’ve just added staff wherever needed. Better management speed can improve our profitability—but we’ll keep developing new patents, designs, and innovations."