Mervin is a snowboard company, if you do not know who Mervin is then perhaps the names of the snowboards they make will be more familiar; Gnu, Lib Tech, Lib Tech Skateboards, Bent Metal Bindings, some Roxy Snowboards, and for next year, outer wear. Mervin was founded in 1977 by Mike Olson and Pete Saari. Whoa, wait 1977 that is a hella long time ago? That's right Mervin has been making snowboards for over 30 years and not just making them but living it! These guys, most of the workers, their families and so on not only make the snowboards but are up on the hill riding. Not too mention the team that range from current stars Travis Rice, Danny Kass and Mark Landvik to OG riders Temple Cummins, Jamie Lynn and more. Basically the whole company lives to ride. You won' find Mervin boutique stores in New York or Los Angeles, Mervin is not buying surf companies or other non snowboard type things. What you will find is the last major factory in the USA where snowboards are still made on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. The weather gets nasty in Washington but that just means the people there have lots of time to come up with great ideas that that help you ride better. Some ideas that at first rocked the snowboard world but now everyone is copying; just little things like the Skate Banana (reverse camber boards) and Magne Traction to name a few. Mervin has been quietly working on designs and taking over the world. Not long ago industry giant quicksilver bought Mervin from the founders but Bob McKnight is no fool and pretty much let Mervin be. Recently Snowrev.com was lucky enough to get a tour of the factory from Product Manager Paul Ferrell. Paul took a good portion of his day to show us around so you can get a sneak peak at what they do. So there you go, all you have to do is dedicate your life to making snowboards, navigate the ups and downs of trends and economies, stay true to your course yet remain flexible, become and industry leader and voila, you may be lucky to have a successful snowboard company when it is all said and done. These photos even show you how! By the way, one of their slogans is built in the USA by snowboarders with jobs and that is not a lie. I was amazed to see the workmanship and human involvement that went into every board as you will soon see too. Snowrev.com thanks Paul and Mervin for the tour!

Mervin may not be a familiar name but surely you know the boards they make; GNU, Lib Tech, Bent Metal and some of the Roxy Boards. Danny Kass is one the many talented riders that rides for them. Photo by Andrew Miller

Mervin is in Sequim Washington, it takes a few hours to get there from Seattle and you take a ferry across the Puget Sound

A short dirt road takes you to one of the biggest snowboard factories in the world.

The whole place is set in the woods, it kinda has a vibe where they can do what they want and no one is going to say too much

The entrance to the main building. The place is much bigger; this is just the front entrance to one of the buildings

The marketing building with none other than Barrett Christy-Cummins on the front porch.

Barrett pretty much rules and so does her husband, Temple Cummins, shown in this photo at Mt Baker. They both ride for Mervin

So let’s see the whole process of making a snowboard from the beginning. First, company founders Pete Saari, Mike Olson or anyone else could come up with a crazy idea, work on the designs and put a board to market, like at SIA in February 2009 where Pete here is standing

After Mervin designs a board, sells it, orders all the materials and so on, a bunch of wood shows up at Mervin headquarters. Wood, makes up the core of the snowboard

Here are a bunch of other fancy materials that make up the sidewall and other non-wood stuff

The wood from 2 photos ago gets glued together and trimmed down to a more snowboard friendly size blank

The wood scraps are sent out and used as firewood, which helps the environment buy not filling landfills and also saves, uh, firewood

The blanks get sanded down; notice the front of the board is thinner than the tail, just like the tip and tail of a snowboard. The sawdust from this process gets used at mulch.

The phrase handcrafted by snowboarders is no exaggeration. A human being is pretty much involved in every process along the way. Here is the base of a Park Pickle being assembled

Here are workers installing edges

The wood gets attached to the base, the top sheet and some other secret fancy stuff, put in a press, where it gets pressed into a snowboard like shape

Sometimes stuff like carbon is added

On the left you see a board coming out of the press

When the boards come out of the press they are rectangular in shape

The excess material is trimmed off, again by a loyal worker. Most of the workers in the factory seem to have worked there for a long time and also seem dedicated to snowboarding

The trimming process gets more precise

Don't worry all the excess non-wood materials get recycled too. Anyone want an old 70's rad ramp?

All the finished boards get hand inspected by the quality control department, every board

All the boards being made now are stored until the orders ship in the early summer so you can go buy the latest designs in August and be the first person on your block with a Park Pickle. They are working literally day and night to fill all the orders from SIA (see earlier photo of Pete at SIA). Orders to Australia are being shipped now since it takes a while to get there by ship and the winter starts soon.

Boards that do not meet the quality control standards are set aside. Seconds are sent to too team members and stuff; the flaws on seconds are so minor most people could not spot them. Thirds get stored, like this 155 cm Matt Cummins that Barrett picked it out for me, what an honor.

For those that think Rocker Technology is just for beginners, think again. Top riders like Travis Rice ride rocker technology. Travis is riding C-2 boards. For more on C-2 boards, read the interview with Pete here. Hey if Travis rides rocker boards, well I can't think of a single human that can ride gnarlier than Travis. Photo by Andrew Miller http://www.snowboard-revolution.com/news/CROSLAND-_-Pete-Sarri-Talks-Whats-New-at-Mervin.html

Here is Scott pushing the limits on a Park Pickle, they still make "normal" boards too, if you don't want a banana between your legs

Of course historical boards are all over the place

Bio Diesel

This machine made boards for the first few years of the company

An overview of part of the factory

Not more than a few miles from the factory, the Dungeness Spit juts out 5 miles into the Straight of Juan De Fuca, which separates Washington from Canada. A giant ship heads out to sea Yea, there are a lot of good companies out there but hopefully you enjoyed this look into one the oldest and most innovative companies in the biz www.mervin.com