We caught up with Mike Gagliardi, Snow Sales Manager at Never Summer Industries to get some insight on what Never Summer Industries is all about and how they continue to produce top quality snowboards and longboards. Mike also happens to have roots in the midwest and a unique history with Windward Boardshop.
Tell us about your personal background with snowboarding/Windward and how Never Summer came into your life.
I actually got my first and second real snowboard from Windward (that is if you don’t count the snurfer I had from the late ’70’s). I lived around the corner on Buckingham and would get off the at Belmont El Station and walk by the shop…..always looking at the display in the windows. The first winter I noticed boards in there was 86-87. Being a old skater and having the snurfer still in my toy closet (I’d use it at the hill on Diversy on lake effect powder days), I could not stop talking about how cool the Wintersticks, Barfoots Sims and Burto’s looked to my fiancee. “I’ve gotta try it! It looks so rad!”
We Honeymooned in Breckenridge in Feburary ’87 and she gave me a Burton Cruzer 165 for my wedding gift. I’d fly out west with her every year from Chicago in early December for a long weekend in Winter Park,
and again in January or Feburary for a week in Utah with the guys. We’d go hit Wilmot and Alpine for a Saturday, and Devils Head for the weekends. I was a headhunter downtown working at Riverside plaza, but lived for shredding on the weekends.
I moved out to Colorado and went from being a VP of a headhunting firm to $6.00/hour running a woodshop for a snowboard company in Boulder – knowing I would eventually be a sales rep. In 1993, I started working for Barfoot as a rep, but noticed Never Summer really starting to make waves as a come up small Colorado brand. I approached the owner several times over the next year about being his first sales rep. The company was growing slowly but surely in Colorado, and they really didn’t need me to sell in the area they were strong in. However, as the business grew they realized they needed to focus on growing in other areas and after a year they brought me in to take care of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona – persistence networking and tact learned in the headhunting gig eventually got me in with the company I’ve been with for 17 seasons.
Never Summer is one of the few snowboard brands still made in the U.S. What does this mean to your brand and how have you been able to keep production local?
We never want to outsource our production. Never Summer is very proud of being one of the few brands that has not abandoned American workers and manufacturing to make things “cheaper” in the Orient or in a European factory that we’d just be another brand, another number to crank out. We can react to market trends much quicker than our competitors, as we did with the innovation of developing Rocker/Camber and Vario Powergrip sidecut. It’s honestly a riding nerds dream! We have the ability to come up with an idea for a new construction innovation or a shape for a board on Monday, build it Tuesday and ride it on Thursday or Friday. We have a great factory team (we’re actually moving to a new facility this December) and some workers here that really take pride in what they do – some guys have been building for us for 18+ years.
When you outsource you lose control of the production, and if we notice something is wrong or off with a production run, we’re not stuck realizing we have 1000 boards that suck 3 months after the fact…we have 2 or 3 bosrds that we won’t sell, and we can notice and fix the issue immediately. Quality of construction, improvement in raw materials and durability of the boards is everything to us here at Never Summer! We don’t have the huge carbon footprint of shipping our boards from China or Europe to the US for distribution in our biggest market. Factory tours! We can and do bring our customers, both consumer level and retailers through the factory for the coolest episode of “How it’s Made” you’ve ever seen. Having our factory here is a huge advantage for R & D, quality control and the survival of the American Entrepreneurial Spirit.
Tell us about how Never Summer made the transition to also making longboards.
We noticed the longboard market was evolving in the early 2000’s, but there was room for a higher end composite built longboard. Most of the goods available 6 or so years ago in longboards was glorified plywood with a cool paint job and a kick tail, and there was only a few brands competing. We have a factory that can press up some amazing shapes, but was not fully utilized during the lean months. If your factory has some downtime, why not use it instead of lose it?
Never Summer makes longboard shapes for all sorts of different applications from bombing hills to sliding to classic cruisers, and all feature the same 3 year warranty, p-tex tip and tail inserts to minimize damage from impact and carbon and fiberglass layers from the same raw sources we use in our snowboards. Sean Macallister is constantly developing the Never Summer skate division to stay on top of the longboard trends.
Anything new and exciting that you guys are working on that you would like to share with our readers?
Hey Chicago we’re coming to visit a few times this year! Never Summer will be involved with the Mighty Midwest Snowboard Camp tour that will have demo stops at many major resorts in your turf. We’ll also have a booth at the Windy City Snow Show manned by the Midwest Rep Tony Sasgen. He’s been living out in Colorado for 16 years, but is a Chicago area native – grew up in Lombard. We have a renewed commitment to redeveloping some of our women’s boards, and you’ll see that in 2 offerings we intend to release for 2013-14. We’ve developed some boards like the Proto and the Cobra in the last few years for the men that have won some great awards and filled gaps in our offerings for men, but all of us are excited to bring better offerings to the table for the ladies. The factory move coming up is huge. It will improve our capacity and efficiency, and the offices will have an much better infrastructure and meeting/presentation area. It’s only a mile away so the commute will not change appreciably for anyone, and this place was practically built with what we do in mind.
What are you looking forward to most this coming winter?
The first day of the season when Loveland opens. Traveling and getting to stamp my mark on some new terrain I’ve never been on. More powder days than I had last year – I only got my snowmobile out twice for backcountry missions. Learning a new trick in the park (yes even at my old age, I still love park), and helping Never Summer whoop ass on the big overhyped marketing companies that have abandoned American manufacturing. Long live American innovation!
Browse of of the Never Summer goodies that Windward has to offer.