A relationship with a snowboard shop is a rite of passage in this industry—a cornerstone that every sideways slider seems to trip over at some point. From the days when legends like Craig Kelly asked their local bike shop to make room for snowboards, to my own experience—finding a second family in a small Western Massachusetts shop—it’s a thread that ties snowboarding’s roots to the present. What started as my weekend hobby quickly spiraled into a full-blown obsession, a crash course in creativity and culture I hadn’t even scratched the surface of before.
Sometimes, though, leaning on the old “shop talk” trope feels a bit, well, overdone. At least to someone like me, who’s written more words about the "core of snowboarding" than I care to count. And yet, there’s no denying it: the shop is still the epicenter. It’s the living, breathing connection between the folks who buy the gear, the ones who make it, and the whole snowboarding ecosystem.
Though the plan was to recap the LSD public event, the real story was with the shop kids experience. For three days, select shop employees from around the world swapped stories about customer quirks, geeked out over next year’s gear, and got a firsthand look at how it’s made at ARC, K2’s snowboard manufacturing facility.
They took us through every step, from the first sketches to the final press of a board. Machines hummed and whirred—one in particular caught my attention, simulating the gut-wrenching sound of a rail slam, complete with the audible wince you’d expect. That machine was kept in a giant walk-in freezer to simulate the temperatures the products are designed for. The pièce de résistance was surely when Justin “J Stone” Clark whipped up a snowboard right in front of us, start to finish. If there’s anything that’ll make you appreciate the magic of design and craftsmanship, it’s watching a board get hand made right in front of you.
The crescendo of the weekend was The Landscape Snowboard Discussion. A gathering of the tribe, so to speak. A chance for the public to chat with the Product Development Team and riders like Sage Kotsenburg, Kennedi Deck, Gabe Ferguson, Parker Szumowski, Aya Sato, and Jake Kuzyk to talk shop. Partygoers ogled the Landscape Collection which sat amongst some killer photography, and soaked in a rare opportunity to mingle with our snowboarding heroes. And of course, what’s an industry event without a little fun on the company dime?
It’s moments like this—when you’re sitting in a room full of people who live and breathe snowboarding—that remind you why the whole thing started in the first place. Shops, factories, riders, designers—it all circles back to the same core: a shared passion. No matter how many words get written about it, you can’t deny the truth of it. This community, these stories, they’re what keep the whole thing moving.
