Armada Snowboards: Will They Spread the Love, or Will They Spread the Eagle?

By Justin Meyer

It’s official, Armada (a newish-age ski company) has launched Armada Snowboards. Plenty of other ski companies have, and still do, make snowboards. Yet this one seems to be causing quite the stink. How should this make us feel? Is it damaging to our culture? Is this a sell-out moment?

The gut reaction would be “Yes, this is the definition of selling out.” Rest assured, in my younger days, I could have joined in on that from the comfort of a room in my mom’s house. Give that sentiment some time as an adult on their own, and I would quickly change my tune closer to where it is today, or even where it was when we first started Videograss in 2008.

Going from hobby to jobby spanned some formative years for me. Somewhere between my “hater” years, to my “lover” years, with “Love/Hate” in between, I made the commitment to stay in this game and become a “lifer.” While struggling to make rent because I rode more than I worked, I would have taken a check from damn near anyone if it meant I could snowboard more.

Did I feel a deep disdain for skiing in my late teens? Most likely. Am I still proud to say that, to this day, I have never once strapped into a pair of skis? Yes. Does the fact that I went splitboarding once kinda make me question my snowsuality? Is that a word?

Dive into this culture’s creation and it’s worth facing a simple truth: the founders of some of our most legendary brands started on a pair of skis. Skiing is rooted in snowboarding as much as we all wish we could deny it. I like to think of snowboarding as the bastard child of a strange three-way between skiing, skating, and surfing.

We squeaked our ways into acceptance at ski resorts. We were rarely welcomed and, in many cases, denied access altogether. It’s safe to say the beef began there. Our instincts to hate skiing are deeply rooted in that denial of entry. Unknown to us at the time, that hatred was crucial and built a grit into the essence of our culture.

I wouldn’t have ever wanted to snowboard if it were some fancy country club activity. I was drawn to the outcast culture that proudly threw a middle finger to these rich skiers. As much as skiing fought our emergence, it gave us technology we didn’t have, it gave us access we didn’t have, and, more importantly, it gave us strength by denying and vilifying us.

From those early years, snowboard culture has maintained a low simmer of skier hatred, all of which has mostly felt like some sort of slopeside sibling rivalry. The early days of snowboarding are chock-full of get-rich hopefuls coming in hot, kooking it up, and making a swift exit ahead of a path of destruction and crushed dreams.

Fast forward 30+ years, and here we are today. We are a carefully guarded, slightly skeptical, and still childlike collection of people who—above most anything—enjoy riding a snowboard.

Are we still bitter? I don’t know. Skier-owned brands aren’t exactly a major topic in any circle I have been in for the better part of the last 20 years. I would assume at this point we’ve grown to accept them, as some of my favorite riders take that bloody ski money, and I don’t think twice about it.

So what’s different about Armada? From what I know, we’re seeing one of the first ski brands that came up after snowboarding, followed our cultural playbook, and now has decided to make snowboards. The younger brother has just hired the older brother to now work for/with him.

The naysayers, and maybe a little voice in the back of my head, share the same gut feeling: it all smells a little “un-core.” Do those feelings come from our own protectionist instincts or more so a list of crimes Armada is guilty of? I can’t see anything Armada has done to suggest a trial is warranted. Are the same haters just trying to make noise to hear themselves complain?

There are some of you who are strongly against this move. Then there are those of us who are cautiously open to it. I would challenge you to assess your role in the grand scheme of our snowboard culture. I’m not saying to completely abandon your principles here, but maybe focus on your own goals and ignore the urge to prematurely cast stones.

It’s easy to hate from the position of a weekend warrior. You get to own your opinion similar to a fan in a sports stadium. The difference between lifers and you is that, like that fan in the stands, you aren’t trying to be a player on the field. You are happy with your pickup game on the weekend, and I applaud you for that. There is an enviable innocence to that lower level of commitment. Unfortunately, half-stepping into this snowboard life was not for me, nor any of my friends.

Maybe you are from the other camp? You are comfy on your current roster and the emergence of Armada Snowboards is a little threatening to you, and you see, so far, they’re looking good. I’m not here to fanboy their entrance—it’s not flawless—but it does look good. I do agree, we should keep a level of guard up to keep this whole culture alive so as to avoid a similar fate as rollerblading, but I have yet to see the crimes many of you are crying about.

Is snowboarding a perfect house with no dirt to clean? Absolutely not. Is a brand granted the pass simply because it is founded by snowboarders? Not fully. We have plenty of our own “core” brands that do a poor job contributing positively to our culture. Many of them make gear and profit money, and our whole purity test is whether the person in the big chair happens to ride a snowboard? Important—YES. Everything—NO.

If you run through your mental list of acceptable brands and factor in who actually signs the checks at the top, congratulations—your list just went from a proud manifesto to a sad sticky note. How many riders contracted by these certified brands have been strung along for years, only to get dropped at their peak? They get used during their cheap days, and right when they finally deserve the fat check—gone. How core is that?

How many top-tier video-part riders can’t get their “core” brand to chip in and help fund their video parts? How secure do some riders feel at the biggest of big snowboard brands in our industry? Not to mention the other “acceptable” brands that are nothing more than licensed logos owned by some private-equity outfit that hires a painfully out-of-touch marketing agency, pays them triple what they’d ever pay a real filmer/editor, and suddenly a wakeboarder is deciding who and what is cool in snowboarding. And we’re supposed to pretend that’s somehow more core than a brand started by skiers?

So, beyond supporting their riders properly, what makes a brand legit in my eyes? Simple: the people steering the ship—brand directors, marketing directors, team managers—all should have receipts. Have they filmed a video part? Competed? Dropped into a halfpipe? Ridden a real line? Spun off a cheese wedge? Even slid a park rail? (Sure, like any child, they can all make a pow turn at a heli lodge. That doesn’t count.)

How can I prove to you that those things are far more important than how the CEO gets down the mountain? Here’s a quick story with my own battle of “selling out.”

The year was 2010, the early years of Videograss. We were already gratefully funded by the tainted skier money from the K2s and Salomons, etc., yet we were halfway to a greenlit project. Falling short on funding, we were fortunate enough to get a chance to accept the even-bloodier money—that greener money—you know… that sweet, sweet taste of energy drink money.

At the time, it felt like selling out. But the reality was simple: without that money, those films wouldn’t have existed. Most of the riders in those parts had zero backing. They certainly didn’t have Monster contracts—yet here was an energy drink company stepping up, and the result was a Jake OE or an LNP with a camera pointed at them and a video part in the fall. Hell, we even had enough money left to subsidize Keep The Change (whose alumni list also includes many legendary filmers and riders).

That’s when it clicked: it’s not about the logo on the can, hat, or board. It’s about who is inside the building making the decisions. The people are the recipe. When the right humans get the keys, good shit happens. VG got to immortalize a Jonas Michilot part not because of some corporate mandate, but because Monster hired people like Cody Dresser and Evan Lefebvre—snowboarders with receipts, who actually care—to support snowboarding the right way.

We want the money to rain in the middle, on the right people, and result in lasting contributions to our culture. Who gives a shit what raindrops make it past us to Skiville or Energy Town when our fields get watered and our crops flourish first?

Yes, in a perfect world we could keep snowboarding self-contained, but let’s be honest, there are very few of us with the ability to build up and operate enough brands to sustain all of the hungry/deserving mouths out there. If the newish-age ski brand hires some of the most tuned-in people in the biz to run the marketing, design the graphics, engineer the products, make the videos, shoot the photos, all while giving multi-year contracts to some really legit core lords, then why should we care if the profits, theoretically, go to a skier?

Hell, I loved M3 when they came out swinging, and that money went to a brand rooted in soy sauce. If the Armadas, Salomons, etc., are willing to hand the cash/keys over to a crew of legit snowboarders to operate their marketing team and ride for their brands, then we should support that.

There’s always room for us to bring it to jury as time weighs in, but as for now, all is looking to pass the test. Yes, it was fun when they hated us, but maybe let’s see how it feels when they don’t hate us. We can all benefit from a slight bit of unity these days.

Mike Liddle, Danimals, Justin Phipps, Stefi Luxton, and so many more are keeping their dreams alive, and I’m all for those dreams playing out and resulting in more video parts to memorize. Perhaps we should consider holding judgment for a brand that supports the right people and has yet to show us any red flags.

I’m certainly not saying to go buy a pair of skis, but maybe a couple of them glued together floats your boat?