Christophe Bouvier, Global Chairman and Mountainwear Product Manager.

Which one of us shred lovers never dreamt of becoming a pro rider, and then when comes the end of your short but intense snowboarding career, turn into an industry boss? Well, that’s pretty much what happened to Christophe Bouvier, and this certainly didn’t happen by chance. For this Tech Heads, the boss of the winter product at Rip Curl goes deep into his job, his inspirations, and the line coming up soon. Another passionate guy who makes the snowboard world spin in the good direction.

I’m pretty sure a lot of readers out there are wondering how can they land such a cool job. So how does that happened for you?

Cool you said? Ahah! If you love XLS sheets, hard negociations, and try and make the whole world happy about your stuff in such a difficult market, then I guess it’s a cool job!
I’m actually a former rider and a coach. I did that for about ten years and a lot of trips around the world, before starting at Rip Curl at the bottom of the scale. I was in the warehouse in Australia for 2 years, then 2 other years as a marketing assistant, and another 2 years as a tech rep in Victoria state, Australia. 2 other years as mountain wear product manager for the South hemisphere, then I came back to France doing this job for the Europe zone. And now I’ve been the Global chairman and mountain wear product manager for only two weeks. I guess I love new challenges! But the main thing for me as always been moved by one goal: the ride. It’s the ultimate goal for all of us right? Live the search!

Well I guess everyone has an idea of what a Global Chairman does – or maybe not? But let’s concentrate on your other title: mountain wear product manager: what are the different aspects of this role?

Unlike most companies out there in our business, this role is anyway linked to the brand manager role, as far as the mountain wear division goes. The product manager is in fact the last person to check if everything is ok, and also the first person in charge of the results of his division, so it’s the guy who’s getting his ass kicked by the General Manager and the owners in case of a problem.
My job consist in coordinating, direct and check the good processing of all our mountain product line. So I’m involved at all the stages of the garment production: market research, collection’s structure, design brief, prototype validation, price negociation, sourcing, buys, shipment, inventory, stock… It’s also very important to coordonate well with the marketing departement as well so the communication stays tight and understandable, and also in the spirit of the brand. In short, it’s a bit like being the conductor of an orchestra, as you are taking care of the product from before its birth to its adult age – when sold to the final consumer. And even after sometimes, when a default product is coming back!

With the complexity of your job, what would you say take the most of your time among these different tasks?

Definitely the product development. It’s the stage when the quality of the product is in process. The sales and the feedback from the field is also very important to ameliorate and get rid of all the little problems we might have before we validate the final product. That’s where the feedback is really important. It pretty all together takes from April till November every season.

Rip Curl outerwear girls line 13/14.

Where does your inspiration come from regarding product design?

Observation, talks, being on the ground and feel what’s going on. You can’t be disconnected from the filed, I mean you need to be out there and shred. I have the final word on this but I work with a very good team of people that I really trust. We listen a lot to our riders, especially for the technical aspect of the outerwear. They also have their word on the design. And we also listen to the sales guys, it’s important too.

Rip Curl is a massive company in our industry. Is it not a problem to get reactive on the trends, fashion?

Rip Curl is a big company in surfing, not so much in snowboarding. In fact our team is pretty small and it can react pretty fast for whatever we need – a small limited collection or reacting on trends etc. It’s not all prefect for sure, but it’s good to be part of the Rip Curl DNA, for its roots aspects and its authentic identity. And that’s exactly this mix who makes working at Rip Curl such an unique experience. As of today, Rip Curl is still a private company, even a family company I would say. It’s still managed by its founders, Brian Singer and Claw Warbrick. They built the company during the hippie years of surfing, being core surfers themselves, and with quality wetsuits in mind. The product has always been the main thing in the company, and not the processes. Because of the simple and pragmatic approach, I don’t think we can picture Rip Curl as a massive brand, or heavy in term of processing the product, but it just gives us the chance to imagine maybe more possibilities than others.

Speaking about it, how would you describe the identity of the brand?

Fun, Technology, leadership, irreverence, belief, tradition, Search!

Having such a renowned name in surfing when it comes to technical gear, how was it to transfer this into snowboarding?

I think it’s just a question of respecting your values, which I have depicted in your previous question. If you keep the same line, the same way of seeing things or dealing with issues, then there is a great change the company’s DNA goes into everything you do. The main idea is to create quality and technical product, for the young, fun audience. For example, the Cocona technology (increasing the breathability of the outerwear), mixed with 4 way stretch material and applied on a multi-layer system – the Ultimate Gum Series, this is how we stick to our values of leadership and innovation in technology. This way, we offer one of the best multi-layer system out there in term of waterproofness, breathability and flexibility, that really makes your riding experience more comfortable, with a super competitive price.

What would you say at this stage are the main point of development for Rip Curl in snowboarding?

To focus more and more on quality, innovation, and technology. Even if that means reducing production numbers. We want to keep reaching to the core mountain lover who’s passionate about big mountain and backcountry.

Do you think we will see one day Rip Curl boards or Rip Curl boots in stores?

No, because it’s useless to start diverting into products where you don’t have the necessary expertise. I think it’s a much better idea to put our energy on what we do best, in order to make those strong points even stronger.

Victor Delerue Pro Serie jacket for next winter.

What product make you the most proud in this coming and yet to discover (in our Product Guide out this summer) 13/14 range?

In term of look, the Victor Delerue Pro Serie jacket. And in term of technicity, the Ultimate Gum Serie jacket.

What are you working on right now?

Winter 14-15 design.

Can you give us a little insight on the design trends for that line already?

A lot of punchy colors, and also some heritage looks. But I can’t tell you more right now… It’s secret you know!

Check Rip Curl’s website.

WORDS: ANNA LANGER

While we’ve focused on the art used for snowboard graphics in previous issues, we decided to shake things up a bit at the peak of the season to
tell you the skinny on the Pirates Movie Productions Art Book.

Every crew has at least one ‘art-fag’, scribbling and sketching wherever they go and on anything they pass. This phenomenon is not a rare one in the sideways moving scene. “Snowboarding and art are related” explains Pirates Art Captain, Tobias “Ludschi” Ludescher. “When you’re snowboarding or drawing you’re in the same mindset – you don’t think, you just do.”

Ludschi knows what he’s talking about as he belongs to that mindset himself – as well as photography he used to do board graphics – and had his first work published in Onboard ten years ago. Four years later, together with fellow shredhead and Pirate Gigi Rüf, he had the idea to create a little art magazine to distribute amongst their friends. They then had the idea it might actually interest a lot more people and so they spontaneously decided that instead of stapling the collages together by hand as originally planned, it would be a nice idea to integrate it into the Pirate Movie Productions’ DVD and spread the love among all the pirates in the big shred sea.

While it was mainly works of Ludschi and Gigi in the fi rst Art Book, they involved more and more people over the following years, be it riders like Prince of Darkness Danny Larsen (who’s first contribution were “a bunch of weird drawings on an old greasy Pizza carton,” says Ludschi remembering his surprise), design collective Papriko that are living and working in Tokyo, artist Claudia Marclay, snowboard über snapper Blotto and many more. This colourful collection of different styles, backgrounds, and techniques accounts for the Art Book’s unique look.

Particularly unique is also the way the sponsoring brands are integrated into the book. Instead of using regular ads, the riders specially create a page for their sponsor that range from a simple shot of them with some doodles (Ludschi’s “signature” design) to delicate drawings from Danny Larsen and Marco Feichter for K2 and Ride.

For those more deeply involved, Ludschi organised something special in the preparation for Hooked: the Isolation Camp. “It was an old idea of mine to do a creative camp and so this summer we invited a bunch of musicians and artist buddies to my hometown in the Vorarlberg to spend a week cut off from the real world to be productive together, jam, draw and have a good time,” he remembers. Being in such a creative environment is something all of the participants deeply enjoyed and used productively.

“In skateboarding the connection between art and board riding is still a lot more obvious. It got a bit lost in snowboarding, and with the Art Book I’m trying to push and bring it back a bit,” was how Ludschi summed it up: And from Onboard’s perspective he is succeeding. If you’re interested to see more of the Pirates artwork, check their blog for the next exhibition. They have already had shows in Barcelona, Paris, Moscow and Vienna.

For details check out the Pirate Movie Production website.

WORDS: Anna Langer

NITRO – PRO SERIES ‘GROSS OUT KIDS’

While most brands involve their riders a lot in their individual pro models or even let them create it from scratch (like travis Rice, whose board we featured on this page at the beginning of the season), Nitro this year has followed a different path by giving each rider an individual top sheet in a line of boards.

Looking for a theme that captures the personality of each member of the team and at the same time makes up for a cohesive story, Nitro team manger Tonino, Creative Director Mike Dawson and artist Paul Brown decided it was a fun idea to transform the riders into ‘Garbage Pail Kids’, a series of trading cards that was popular in the US and Australia in the 80’s.

Mimicking the originals by cartoonist Art Spiegelman, where all characters had funny names and some kind of peculiar abnormality, Nitro’s ‘Gross Out Kids’ are mainly based on word plays with the rider’s names. “Tonino and I came up with names that fi t either a personality trait, their physical appearance, or something in their name” explains Paul.

So without involving the snowboarders themselves but just based on his perception of each of them and stories he heard about them, Paul surprised them with their very special alter ego.

The best combination of word and character play is probably Cheryl Maas’ model. Nicknaming her Cheryl Massive is as obvious as it is brilliant: “I think Cheryl pulls lot of weight as a female snowboarder,” Paul explained. “While she is still very girly, she’s a lot more rugged and tougher than your average shred-girl and can get as gnarly, if not gnarlier, than any guy. And drawing her with arms ripped off was just to good not to do!”

Bryan Fox’s character is a similar play of name and character. As Bryan is an artist himself, the spray can immediately came to Paul’s mind. “He’s sly like a fox too, so putting him in a bloody fox pelt and let him sneak around was a good way to go.”

Also Jon Kooley’s alter ego kind of almost made up itself. With tattoos all over his body, giving him “the sailor/anchor thing just kind of came naturally.” And with a last name like this, you don’t even need to think of a funny nickname, let alone come up with a better situation for a character than an ice block.

A-Bomb Austin on the other hand is based on Austin Smith’s physical appearance. “He always has crazy hair that looks like he just woke up, so we thought the explosion messing up his hair would make a funny image,” Paul smirks. And based on his riding you could definitely call him a bomb.

While the character for Markus Keller is only a funny word play with ‘Messed Up’ at first glance, you get the deeper sense of the art when you know that he is sponsored by Red Bull and he is ‘hopped up on energy drinks”, fi guratively pierced on the bull’s horns.

The most loosely connected character is probably the one of Eero Ettala. “I just liked the name combo of ‘Eerie’ and ‘Eero’,” Paul remembers Paul. So he turned Eero into a Halloween-style Dracula, which is actually quite the opposite of the calm Finnish pro, who was even a bit surprised as he “didn’t think (he was) really that creepy”.

So instead of asking them for their input, Nitro decided to surprise their team with something completely unique: their very own comic character. And we think that whether it really fi ts them or not, in our world of mainstream individualism and copy-pasting it’s always refreshing to see a different approach to top sheets once in a while.

Words: ANNA LANGER

In this page we are always talking about the connection between art and snowboarding and as photography is the most prevalent art form in snowboarding we chose photo topsheets for this months dissection. Chris Prosser was only given one word as inspiration for his designs for the 2010/11 collection of YES. boards and that was YES. Romain De Marchi and JP Solberg, part owners of the label, were more than happy with the unique way he accomplished the task. “He came out with the dudes of history pictures which I think is a really powerful statement,” said Romain, “I’m not always a fan of pictures on a board but those ones were well done and I’m really proud of this graphic.” “The whole concept start to fi nish was perfectly executed” added JP.

Putting black and white portraits on the topsheet may seem a bit odd at fi rst, especially as none of the dudes has any relation to snowboarding. But if you look at the whole series of the Great Dudes Of History featuring Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King JR, Abraham Lincoln, Haille Selassi, John Lennon and JFK, the pieces start coming together. “The ‘dudes’ all had one major thing in common: they all stood up and said YES WE CAN, just like the YES. NOW BOARD snowboard company. They were all revolutionaries, freedom fi ghters and generally righteous dudes,” Chris explains. Picking them was almost a no-brainer. “It was totally clear immediately. As soon as they told me how many boards we had to work with I just whittled down the people I wanted on there.”

The simplicity of the photos is key for the power of this board graphic or as Chris puts it: “The photos get the idea across, point blank. They are all famous portraits and amazing pictures.” Keeping the rest of the design really old-school and plain only adds to the effect. And with the similarity between all the portraits the whole series also makes a really great collectors item; it’s already decorating the drinks corner at JP’s home.

But of course it’s also the dudes themselves: “I would hope that you associate each of them with being pretty righteous individuals, dudes with a greater cause. They all preached or represented a higher level of being and I would also hope that people could apply that higher level of thought to themselves,” says Chris. Martin Luther King and his fi ght for civil rights is probably the easiest to get, as is John Lennon who was spreading the ideas of love and peace, long after the flower power movement had wilted. Abraham Lincoln, whose ambition was to end slavery in America, and Haile Selassie, a messiah of the Rastafarian movement, not only fought for what they believed in but also inspired others, while Albert Einstein and his theories opened new horizons of thinking, as did the politics of John F. Kennedy.

You can of course always argue that printing a photo doesn’t have a lot to do with art but as Chris counters, “it is graphic design; some people consider that art and some people don’t. I’m not necessarily concerned about that. I wanted a powerful board graphic with a positive image”, which is something both Romain and JP back him up on: “You can have anything for a graphic if it makes sense, right?” So lets draw this page to an end with the words of one of the Great Dudes, JFK, “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”