In the mid 90’s Shorty’s Snowboards took the best of skateboarding and translated it to the snow. There were the popsicle stick, quick kick, twin tip shapes, iconic team videos like Young, Brown, Walsh,and a roster of riders who made style paramount on the slopes and mayhem mandatory off it. Devun Walsh was the main draw with his nuanced approach to backcountry freestyle where regular and switch were synonymous and equally stylish. Devun’s allure would continue to grow for decades to come, and remain the benchmark for what tricks should look like when done properly into pow.
Like many offshoot brands of the era, in this case the snowboard division of a skate hardware turned skate deck company, Shorty’s succumbed to the ills wrought by a lack of focus by its owners. Yet the memories of what this scrappy brand brought to the scene and the promise of its return kept the faithful primed for when the day would come where it would rise again.
Well, that day has come.
2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Shorty’s debut on the snowboarding scene and to accentuate this milestone Devun Walsh is resurrecting it. This new chapter for Shorty’s is a full circle moment for Devun on many levels as it also reunites him with Rob Dow, his onetime roommate and pre-Shorty’s Option Snowboards team mate. Slush had a chance to discuss this next chapter for Shorty’s directly with Devun Walsh himself.
How did the relaunch of Shorty's come together?
So long story short, the founder of Shorty’s, Tony Buyalos, passed away about five years ago. On his deathbed he said to his wife that he really wanted to have the skate revitalized and start the snow again. The snow part is kind of how I came into it. She went out and relaunched the skate portion with Chad Muska and reached out to me to do the snow portion.
So she left is up to you to put the whole Shorty’s Snowboards relaunch together?
Yeah. At first I kind of wasn't really sure what she was asking. I thought she wanted to do everything and sort of just consult me. And after kind of talking to her I figured out that it was all of my own investment and she just wanted to see the brand start again.
So I had to brainstorm if I had the time and would even to know how to do it. That led me to Rob Dow, who used to be my roommate and he's one of my best friends. He owns Wired Snowboards which are custom boards out of Vancouver, Canada. I talked with Rob about it and he said, "We could do that." That led us into a partnership. We went back to Tony’s widow Krishna and said, "We could actually do this." So we came up with a game plan, signed some agreements and here we are today.
And you brought Kevin Young, Chris Brown, and Dionne Delesalle into the conversation?
I versed those guys on it and let them know what was going on. I want them to be involved on some level at some point. I think it'd be really special. Dow is like, "If we have the money, let's go to Japan trip with all those guys, like redo it all." It would be really cool.
We've also reached out to a couple up and coming riders on getting them on the team and we got a guy in Whistler, Tommy Hinse, who is French Canadian.
How has the start of the relaunch been going?
For year one, we are primarily focused on Canada because of the tariffs. Though, some boards will be available in the States We have an online store, shortyssnowboards.com, so we're shipping worldwide. We’ve had a lot of orders from all over the world. We also have dealers in each province but it had been a really small rollout. I kind of like to call it like a soft launch this year. But for next year we plan to work with at least one store in each key state that has mountains.
Tell us about the boards.
We looked at the original boards and the best shape we had was the Kevin Young. It had such a good shape. So we took the original Kevin Young, softened it up a little bit, gave it new sidecut and effective edge and bigger kicks because the kicks were so short back then. That's what we are doing for the first two years. After that we're going to come out with more of an all mountain/powder board and then possibly a park board. We're doing that one board for now though but it will have a couple different graphics next year. This years model has the script logo, which is a pure blast from the past.
You've had a chance to reconnect with Muska through all this, right?
When I was talking to Tony’s wife Krishna, she's like, "You know, you should talk to Chad. He's been helping us relaunch all the skateboards and he'd be stoked to chat with you." We had a really good relationship back in the day and skated together in Santa Barbara a lot. He would be around whenever he wasn’t filming or whatever and he would film me skating. He would get so hyped and it’s his footage of me skating in the old videos. So I called him and we had a great conversation about what he's doing and his role in the bringing the skateboards back. It got me pumped to get back into the snowboard side of it. It was super rad to connect with him too. He's just a rad guy.
What are some of the key shops that people will be able to check the boards out at this season?
The Source in Alberta, Sanction in Ontario, The Boardroom and West Beach in BC, Empire in Quebec, Pro Skates in the Maritimes, 204 in Manitoba, and a few others. I want to grow organically so it is a limited release of 5 boards per store. Maybe 10. I want them to sell out and once they're gone, they're gone. If you wanted one and didn’t get it then, you have to buy it next year. But we do have a few boards for sale online as well. I don't want people blowing boards out. This isn't to make money. It's more to just have a cool brand. I want people to really like what they're buying and that's more of the goal here. Make good stuff and get it while it's there. If it's not there, then too bad. Get it next year.
Waatch the Shorty's team videos Snow and Young, Brown, Walsh below and then visit www.shortyssnowboards.com to check out the boards and everything else Devun and Shorty's have in the works.
SNOW - 1996
YOUNG, BROWN, WALSH - 1997