By Ed Sealover, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Feb. 1--Anyone can start a company. That's amateur, dude.
But what if, in starting that company, you actually invent a sport that, a decade later, has 110,000 participants and its own national championship?
That's awesome.
It's also exactly what snowboard fanatics Jason Lee, 35, and Patrick McConnell, 39, did in their quest for fun and excitement in the months between snow seasons.
And now MBS Mountainboards, located on Delmonico Drive in Northwest Colorado Springs, is the world leader in production of the strange-looking contraptions and the creator of trends in this extreme sport. The company sells 20,000 mountainboards a year that cost $99 to $550 a board. They are available at a number of sporting goods shops in the Pikes Peak region.
After the 1992 snow season, the friends went looking for a skateboard they could ride down a grassy ski run or take on a rugged bike trail.
But no one made such a product.
No problem. Lee and McConnell decided to make it themselves.
'Prior to Jason and Patrick, there may have been some unusual designs for regular skateboards, but they were the first to really put together a board specifically for the mountains,' said Brian Bishop, publisher of Mountainboarding Magazine. 'They're definitely the forefathers of everything we do.'
Mountainboards often are called 'skateboards on steroids.' They look like skateboards with tires instead of wheels.
Skateboard wheels usually are 2 or 2 1/2 inches in diameter; mountainboard tires, which are made of tough rubber, are 6 to 9 inches around to make them faster and give the rider more clearance over rocks.
They also put the rider between the wheels rather than over them, giving a better center of gravity for carving and turning. And they come with a hand brake attached to the board by a cord.
After developing a prototype, Lee and McConnell took the fiberglass, wood and Kevlar composite boards to Moab, Utah, and kicked them off cliffs to test their sturdiness. Satisfied, they began selling them in groups of 10 to 35, mostly to friends and friends of friends.
Then, in 1996, MBS showed up at a surf and skate trade show in Long Beach, Calif., and turned heads. National newspapers reported on this new invention, and kids called outdoors stores and asked where they could buy them.
The most significant change came a few years later, when the company rolled out a line of boards for beginners instead of experts tearing down Barr Trail on Pikes Peak. These less expensive boards, which cost $99 to $199, account for 60 percent to 70 percent of MBS' business.
MBS boards are made overseas and sold in 31 countries. Although president Marc Jenkins declined to release revenue figures, he said sales are increasing for the six-person company.
To expand their reach, Lee and McConnell have sent a group of MBS representatives on a tour of California schools to introduce kids to the concept. They also plan to do more marketing in the area of wind sailing, in which boarders strap giant kites on their backs and let the wind take them where it will.
But the core market is mountainboards. Last year's national championships in Snowmass drew about 100 participants and 2,000 spectators, Bishop said.
MBS spent last week at the SnowSports Industries America trade show in Las Vegas, where it was the only company hawking mountainboards, as well as the only company from Colorado Springs. Spectators strolled by and examined the boards with a mix of confusion and awe.
'We still get the same 'What the (heck) is that?' reaction,' Lee said. 'But now we also get the reaction that 'Oh, those are the new boards.' '
'We've still got that angle to where it's a new product. But we've been around 10 years. We're a 10-year overnight sensation.'
To see more of The Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.gazette.com
(c) 2004, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
