Girl Gets Board

This past weekend I got to visit Ride Snowboards located down in the industrial district of Seattle. Ride falls under the K2 umbrella and its offices are in the huge K2 building. The building has to be big–it houses all of the offices, machines for developing prototypes and testing, and has a warehouse to store all of the products for most-if not all-of the products made by all of the K2 brands.

We started out touring the front offices. When we walked in the front door it was easy to see that we were surrounded by people that loved to ski and snowboard. There were skis and boards hanging on the wall that showed the progression of design that’s happened, there were old advertisements and posters everywhere. One wall had snowshoes. Here, Molly was checking out the bike pictures.

Molly getting the perfect shot.

Cubes were lined with boots and bindings.

Ride snowboard boots.

Then we checked out the marketing and development offices for K2 and Ride. The K2 office was definitely going for the old west vibe.

K2 marketing and development office.

One thing that was really cool to see was all of the design comps hanging for board graphics. Here you can see the light box and a rack of designs. There were two racks like this.

Snowboard design comps for the top sheet and base graphics.

Once we were done in the front offices, we headed down to the production area. Ride is set-up so they can design and create prototype boards in house. Once the boards are ready for blind testing, they head out to the Summit for some riding.

Rolls of different types of fiberglass.

The best part of the whole tour was seeing how snowboards are made. Paul made a complete, ride-able board while we watched. In one board there are 20-30 different layers all held together with epoxy. Each layer is different and certain combinations of wood and carbon make boards that have varying degrees of snap or stiffness. The board we saw being made had three different types of wood. Certain wood was chosen for its lightweight quality and others were used for their durability. Each layer was so thin. Watching a board in production it was easier to see how a poor coating of epoxy can make a board delaminate.

Paul showing us how a snowboard is made.

Once all of the layers were added to the board, it was sandwiched in between fitted metal plates. The plates hold the layers in place as it is heated and pressed together by the machine below. You can see the curve of the press where the tip and the tail of a snowboard are. They use air pockets to make sure the board stays smooth throughout the entire pressing process.

Doug, our tour guide, explaining how the press works.

Once the board was done, we headed over to the printing room where we got to see how graphics were made. Ride has both a screening processes as well as a digital printer.

Sample of a board graphic.

Ride also tests durability in house. One of the ways they test their boards is to see if they can hold up to -4 degrees F. The freezer reminded me of restaurant freezers but it was about the size of a trailer. It was, obviously, cold.

Testing boards for cold durability.

After seeing the manufacturing section of Ride we walked through the cavernous warehouse they use for storage. All of K2′s US products are stored here. The picture below is about 1/4 of the space. Despite the amount of room needed for storage, they were still able to squeeze in a bowl and a basketball hoop.

Ride's warehouse

Thanks to everyone at Ride for inviting us out, especially Doug , Paul, Casey, Angie, and the rest of the design and development crew.