Silverton, Colorado’s Venture Snowboards is looking to push the envelope of big mountain board design as far and fast as possible. The manufacturer, known for its powder boards and splitboards, recently established what it is calling the “Shape Shack,” an experimental division for dreaming up innovative new board shapes.
“The idea is to take a bit of a mad scientist kind of approach, experimenting with designs that might normally be considered too wacky, and then testing those concepts by offering small batch releases to the public,” said Klemens Branner, Venture’s founder and design engineer. Branner will be heading up the effort, with creative input from big mountain legend Johan Olofsson.
According to Branner, this small batch approach will allow the company to do market research, boost customer involvement, and create innovative new designs simultaneously. “On the consumer side of things, it gives our customers a meaningful way to get involved with our company by voting with their dollars for the shapes they want to see. And from a retailer perspective, the Shape Shack will help establish the demand for a given shape before adding it to the lineup, giving them confidence when ordering. Everybody wins.”
The Shape Shack launched this month with a late season release of Venture’s first two experimental shapes: the Euphoria pow surfer, built with rocker, reverse sidecut and a swallowtail, and designed to surf bindingless, and the Zelix, a directional twin that’s a cross between the company’s Zephyr and Helix models..
