Hello Mark, can you tell us about your background and how you got to where you are?
I started out like a lot of people in the industry with dreams of being a big time pro rider. When I was a teenager, I had a number of sponsors as well as good contest results and started getting shots in videos when I got my hands on a Transworld Media Kit. It was 1992 and I was living in Breckenridge Colorado in a 2 bedroom apartment with 10 other guys and 2 pit bulls. We lived ghetto – I think I survived off $1500 for the whole season, riding every day. I did some quick math from the media kit and discovered that magazines could make real money. At the same time, Big Brother Magazine had released its first issue – I was inspired and put together a zine with my roommates called Player that we released at the 1992 SIA show. We went through all of the copies in about 4 hours. It was a hit – and I had found a calling in the snowboarding industry.
The next year I put out Player #2, which was the seminal magazine for me, putting together product, resort reviews, industry interviews together for the first time. Looking back at that little zine, about 15 years later, it has everything to do with the content direction of SNOWBOARD.
Player 2 was a little bit ahead of its time, and it ended up pissing off some people who got less than favorable product reviews. I decided it would be a good idea to go back and finish college. About a month of being back on the East Coast, I decided I still had the publishing bug and started East Infection Snowboard Magazine out of my bedroom. I ended up making 8 issues of EI while I was in college – and had jobs waiting for me at TW and Snowboarder after I graduated.
I choose to go with Snowboarder because at that time, Snowboarder was more low key and still independently owned. In 1997 I started as Associate editor at Snowboarder and quickly moved through the ranks to Senior Editor and then got the promotion to Editor around 1999.
Those were good times. When I took over as editor, I hired Pat Bridges (who I had been friends with since the age of 14), Aaron Draplin who was about to graduate college and Jeff Baker who was working at the Wave Rave Snowboard Shop in Mammoth. My crew worked very hard to redesign Snowboarder and come up with something new and fresh. I am pretty proud of the fact that some of the stuff that I started at Snowboarder is still being done today.
I realized pretty quickly that the people behind Snowboarder were motivated by making their own jobs easy. Case and point was the new Buyer's Guide format. When I started at Snowboarder, we used to do a photoshoot at SIA, taking pictures of every board, boot and binding made. Then we would slave to create a 'Buyer's Guide' to be bound in with our September issue. Inspired by Japanese Buyer's Guide's, I thought up the pay to play with the Buyer's Guide model. The powers that be scoffed at the idea. I ended up having to put my job on the line to get it done and it ended up turning a $65,000 a year loss into a $400,000 a year revenue gain. I still laugh about that today. It ended up working marvelously and the 'big bosses' tried to take credit for the idea. Ha.
How was the time you spend at Snowboarder with Pat Bridges?
I actually spent a bunch of time from when I was 14 years old with Pat and ended up hiring him to work at Snowboarder. Pat was also my partner with EI mag in years 2 and 3. I am still impressed with Pat's sharp wit and ability to churn out quality content.
Before I had hired Pat, he had blown out his knee at the 1998 US Open Big Air. Unfortunately he did not have insurance, so he was not able to ride between 1998 and 2003. I made a deal with Pat, that if he got his knee fixed and could ride again, I would move back to the mountains and turn over the Editor-ship to him. So in 02 he went under
the knife. I was relieved because, after 7 years in socal, I was still convinced that it is impossible to be a snowboarder living at the beach – even with a good travel budget.
What happend with Snowboard-Mag one day the magazine hit glory and
the next day there were no more investors behind the mag/web? Or is it
more complex than that?
The problem was that we never really had the investment we needed to get things going properly. The magazine was started with money put up by myself and a guy named Doug Pendleton. Everyone else put in sweat equity, so there was never a lot of money going around. To give you an idea, we started the mag with $60,000 and our first print bill was $75,000. Right off the bat we had a lot better luck finding advertisers than investors and pretty soon, the numbers were looking like we could 'bootstrap' it, after selling more than $100,000 of ads into the first issue. Unfortunately we never had a cushion of capitol
to fall back on. To put it in perspective, when I was depressed about our financial straights at the mag, I would go onto Future's shareholder sight and look at their numbers. By the time we had sold the mag, they had already lost significantly more than $3,000,000 on their 'action sports' efforts. Ultimately we did not have enough money to make it through the summer paying all the salaries as well as covering the up front on the print bill. We did everything on $60,000 and hard work. And it worked – everyone had health insurance, a salary, photographers and writers got descent buyouts. I am proud of the fact that we did something that was not only right for snowboarding, but was responsible to and for the people involved with it. Had we started with a more adequate amount of capitol, things would have turned out differently. I think more than anything, we proved with SNOWBOARD that big ideas and hard work still count more than money.
You are the "MAN" who created the Snowboard-Mag website right?
Actually there were two of us behind the site – Cameron Barrett and myself. We sat down in October of 2004 and put together all of the functionality of the site. We launched that site in December of 2004 and it seems to have worked out well as it hasn't really changed since and the traffic has eclipsed the circulation of the magazine title by a multiple of 3 or 4.
Top powder days of your life? why?
5) My first 'real' pow day. I was living in Summit County at the time and we did a trip to Utah to film for this video called A Flying Circus – there was about 3 feet of snow at Snowbird and we hooked up with Andy Brewer and George Johnston, who were 'the guys' at Snowbird back then. The snow was nothing like powder in Colorado or back east. After we were done riding we went back to do a video review and when my first clip came up, Brewer said, "huh, so you've never ridden powder before."
It was pretty humbleing, but that was the first time I ever choked on powder.
4) Mt. Baker – About ten years ago I was up at the Banked Slalom and decided to stick around for a few more days. It snowed 2 feet before the contest then went blue for a few days. The whole mountain was chopped and here I am breaking powder at my knee following Temple Cummins. I soon found out why. The only was to describe it was equally terrifying and thrilling. Pillow lines, double bubbles over exposure and lines that did not look ridable until Temple dropped in.
3) Valdez with DCP- One day last season, I rode with DCP and Smoky at ABA. Riding Valdez with an athlete the caliber of DCP is something to behold. There was also a skier in our group who was shooting pictures. She would drop in and do rhythmic hop turns though cascading sluff. It looked really scarry. Then DCP would drop in and do 3 turns on the entire face – then we would drop in and bomb it like DCP with a couple of extra turns thrown in.
2) Cordova- In 2001 I was on a trip for Snowboarder in Cordova. We ended up having about 5 totally epic days (any one of them could have made this list.) On the last day, the crew of riders goaded me into riding a mountain called Dog Leg. Basically it was a mountain with a knife edge ridge. You dopped in on one side over a 400' cliff and had
to make about 1500' to the "dog leg" before you were clear of falling over these huge cliffs. After we landed, we were waiting for the light to improve on a square of snow the size of a palette for something like an hour. It really is a strange feeling, almost like vertigo, being on top of a huge mountain that drops away from all sides. I am not normally one for 'big exposure' but doing that run helped me conquer a fear that I had had since riding big mountains.
1) Last season, I had just about the perfect day of heli-ing. Our guide was Tony Mann, and Rydor and Donny Mills joined up with Smoky and myself. I used to compete in big mountain events with Donny and Rydor and we have been friends since – anyhow, riding with these guys was like having good friends and 3 guides with you. We got to fire off
some insane runs, culminating with the first run of the season down the Berlin Wall. It was a run that I will never forget.
What is your favorite publication out there?
My favorite publication is named Revolution – it is a high end magazine out of Asia that has really come to redefine its market.
What is your favorite website and why?
Snowrev is the most in depth and the most current in my book. I also go to a few design sites like nitcot.org and ffffound.com quite a bit.
Top ten most metal riders ever and why?
1) Farmer – He did it his way and still does.
2) Danny Kass – For bucking the system and getting rich doing it.
3) Kale Stephens – The original hard charger.
4) Dan Coffey – A name that many will not ever know, but I saw that kid put himself into and get out of some of the most hairball lines I have seen.
5) Travis Rice – There is nobody better on a snowboard.
6) Jeremy Jones (Big Mountain) – He rides lines that should not be ridden. Also big mountain is a high stakes game at his level.
7) Scott Lago – The next Travis Rice.
8) Peter Line – When Peter came out, he made pink triangles punk. He did it his way.
9) Jaime Lynn - What he did and when he did it – looking back at some of his old parts, I don't think people haver done better straight airs ever.
10) Giacomo Kratter – He is a lover not a fighter- true to himself always, which makes him metal in my book.
Favorite snowboard brands out there and why?
I have a lot of respect for brands that build their own products and are driven by snowboarders. There are not really too many of these brands out there.
What is the role the internet will play for the snowboard media in the near future?
I think we will see a shift in the next 5 years from the web sites being extensions of popular magazines to magazine's being the extension of popular websites. Already, companies are beginning to shift more and more budgets to the internet, both with advertising and developing their own sites and content. I think that the internet is
the future of communications, so naturally I have invested a lot of my time in understanding where the web is heading.
PC or Mac? What do you think is better?
Mac. I have always been on Apples, but I think they are more 'design' friendly.
What role do you play in the companies that you start?
Generally the ideas have been mine, but it has also been up to me to take them to reality. In the case of Snowboard Magazine, I came up with the idea for a "Photographically Driven Product Magazine". Then put together the business plan, gathered a strong crew, raised the money, sold the ads, did the circulation, fulfilled orders, designed products, created cost effective marketing etc. etc.
What is the average workday like for you?
Usually I am up around 6:30. Make a pot of coffee and start working. I get a lot done between 7 and noon. Then I will take a break to hang out with the kids, then back to work until about 11:30 at night. This has been my routine since I stated SNOWBOARD, seven days a week. That said, I do like to take time off to go riding.
What is your favorite marketing technique to use and why?
By any means necessary... I guess just making it happen. Which is Guerilla Marketing.
Are you still involved in the Snowboard Magazine Company?
Not really, I am writing a story for them on my trip to AK this past season - but I am not officially involved with the magazine anymore.
What's up with your newest project MTNOPS?
MTNOPS is the culmination of my years experience in the snowboarding industry. It is a rider owned and driven brand that will be different.
How did come up with the idea?
It is based on the idea that if you find 'blue water', that is an area where there are not competitors, it is easier to find a place in a market. This bluewater idea has been on my mind since 1994. Finally, I have taken the time to make it real. Also, without the team I have put together, this would have been very difficult to accomplish in the past.
What is in store for MtnOps for the next season?
The website will launch in September. The SIA 2009 tradeshow will be our first official showing. Right now we are working on a line of all american made products that are significantly different than anything else on the market.
Who is involved in the company?
Right now the team of people working on MTNOPS fulltime includes myself, my partner backcountry guru JP Stoermer. We have also had a bunch of help from a number of other snowboarders including Joe McGinley and Art Mcnulty. We also have a bunch of other people helping out with their expertise.
We have also been working on putting together a team that includes riders from all eras that share our passion for the sport. Many of these guys were at the Tailgate Alaska event that is featured on the mtnops.com website.
What are your longterm goals for MtnOps?
To create enough free time for myself to ride powder with my friends and family, fulltime.
What is the first thing that comes to mind:::
Kaizen: A driving force.
Alaska: The best riding. Period.
Mt. Hood: Summertime.
Standard Films: Amazing AK riding.
Absinthe Films: Good angles, pushing new big mountain riding.
Terje Haakonsen: The Man.
Shaun White: Day Walker.
Johan Oloffson: A new NOBOARD part in Standard. TB5.
Mt Dew: X-TREME
Down Days in AK: Chillin.
Heli days in AK: Like busting a 100 gallon nut.
So Cal:Far from snowboarding.
Shaun Farmers Raps: Funny.
Guerrilla Marketing: Jay Conrad Levinson.
What would you consider a rider owned and operated company?
I think there are a lot of companies that claim rider owned that are not- rider influenced for sure, but I think you could count the truly rider owned companies in the sport on two hands. I think the idea of rider owned is a good one, but usually in the background is a person with money who doesn't ride.
What advice would you give to upcoming entrepreneurs looking to do their own thing like you have?
Probably the most important thing is to have absolute conviction in your ideas. Get ready to work really hard. It is much tougher to do things for yourself than for someone else. That said, doing it for yourself is also more rewarding- every small victory feels like a huge accomplishment.