The often underestimated Effect of Merits.
Every cultural concept has its own meritocracy – a system of different merits, handed out to reward people for their achievements, skills, talents, performances, whatever … Receiving such rewards always has a positive effect: From a clap on the shoulder to a formal recognition – everybody digs it when being lauded and walks away with a raised head.
In our - in all modesty - small insignificant snowboard culture, we obviously have our own reward system when it comes to those aforementioned values:
We all love to get up at dawn just to score first track. And after the fifth turn we look back to our track, the only one in this entire virgin canvas, and we simply claim this small white planet as ours. This reward’s legitimacy may only last until the next snowfall. But hey…
We hunt for the biggest spray, and the merit is the smile from our shred buddies. We go for the sickest road gap, and the reward is the traffic jam caused by our spectators. We pilgrimage to the legendary Mt. Baker Banked Slalom, and the trophy we are seeking is a roll of duct tape glued onto a cobble stone. All this may not be understood by others living outside our cultural concept, but to be honest: we don’t give a toss!
From a board manufacturer’s perspective, there are additional items lining up on the shelf beside those cups and crowns: The daily mails from uber-stoked riders reporting their experience with our boards are printed out immediately and posted above our coffee machine - they simply make our day! Since RnD and board design are empirical processes of usually three steps forward and two steps back, these merits count more than any medal, because it shows us clearly that we are walking down the right path.
When our design team receives awards such as Whitelines Mag’s “Best All-Mountain Board Of The Year” for the Singular, or Splitboard Mag’s “Best Product Finish” for our Millis (only to mention a small fragment of the full score) – this is equivalent to an Olympic Gold Medal – to create a metaphor for those who have a hard time identifying with our meritocracy system.
The end-point of all these merits have one thing in common: They have a positive effect on the people who receive them. They will enhance self-esteem, performance and therefore happiness. Riders will very likely do even more dawn patrol hikes to sign more virgin faces with our fresh lines. They will make sure the powder sprays tomorrow are higher than those of yesterday, to create even bigger smiles. And our RnD team will design even better board shapes with the next round of protos to make riders out there pleased with our board, so we can harvest even more product awards.
Here comes an unparalled result of awards, sprays and smiles - please enjoy our new and best product line to date.
