Snowboard Upstarts Break New Ground The snowboarding industry is on fire, as evidenced by these two newcomers proving it with their own spin.
By Jennifer Wang •
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Signal Snowboards
The best perk from having your very own snowboard factory? You get to play. The folks at Signal Snowboards, which will manufacture approximately 7,000 boards out of its Huntington Beach, Calif., location this year, have made playing part of their business plan.
It's a hot afternoon in July, and Signal founder and CEO Dave Lee and his team are testing a paintball gun on a mannequin. The plan is to mount the gun to a board for an epic snowboard-paintball battle scheduled the following week on Mount Hood in Oregon.
The entire process, along with battle day, is being filmed for the second season of "Every Third Thursday," an online video series that Lee started last year to "build freak boards with random materials" and explore the creative boundaries of snowboard construction.
The crew has created themed boards using Legos, Vans sneakers materials, vinyl records, recyclables--and even hard-wired a karaoke machine to a board before hopping on a plane to Japan.
