Brand Focus - Windlip Snowboards
Windlip offers a truly unique product, custom snowboards. Based in a small town called Pussy (yep that’s a real place) hidden in the Heart of the Savoir, France’s most mountainous region and the home of many a smelly cheese, Windlip produces a handful of boards each year for snowboarders who want the finest handmade rides or completely customised snowboards. Windlip create snowboards designed to match their owner’s ability, stats and riding style. Because it’s every snowboarder’s dream to own a custom freeride stick, Snowboard-Review.com contacted Windlip to find-out a little bit more about their snowboards and their unique approach to manufacturing.
Most people will have never heard of Windlip Snowboards. Can you tell us a little about where Windlip is based and the history of the company?
Windlip was officially started in 2006 and we are based in the French Alps, 15 minutes from our nearest ski station, Valmorel. The original idea came about during a winter in British Columbia, Canada, back in the 90’s. It was a great time for the evolution of snowboards. Modifying boards and bindings was the norm in those days! We actually built our first prototype in 1988 but it didn’t become a living until recently. Our focus on custom boards comes from our experience with surfing and windsurfing where owning a custom board was the ultimate thing!
How many people are involved in the business?
There are many people involved with the project but we mainly sub-contract to them. We have people who work on digital marketing, site optimization, core manufacture, and 2 sponsored riders. Essentially, it’s a family run company at its heart (Dan and Lisa Robinson) with all of the custom boards made by us.
How many snowboards does Windlip create each year?
We create 100 or so boards a year, it depends on the orders.
How much time goes into creating each snowboard?
A custom board takes 3 days to build but its spread out over a week with drying times.
Hand building snowboards is an expensive business, do you really hand build all of your snowboards? How big is the Windlip workshop?
Windlip’s workshop is small and yes hand-building is expensive and time consuming. So even though all boards are hand build it is only the custom boards that are built in our workshops. The standard boards are outsourced. If we take our new “Woodstock” for example; we make the design, we assemble the veneer top-sheets and send them off for production. This leaves us free to concentrate on the bespoke boards.
You guys use Cold pressing for a number of your boards. Can you explain the technique and its benefits over traditional hot pressing?
We hot press most of our boards. The heat makes the resin runny which helps the press to squeeze out excess resin from the glass fibre. It also speeds up the curing time.
However, with our “Ethic Cponstruction” we use only one sheet of fiber glass to bond the base on; the rest of the board is basically bamboo and cork which doesn’t hold much resin which allows us to cold press. This means that “Ethic construction” boards have a lower carbon foot print. Which leads us onto your next question!
How important is the environment, green materials and green fabrication techniques to Windlip?
The “Ethic Construction” has taken us 3 years to develop the perfect lam stack; cork and bamboo over a standard base with a sustainably grown core and sidewall material (Paulownia wood) It’s a low impact option and you can find more info on our site. We’ll keep you posted on its sales!
Hand building snowboards obviously assures that there are minimal defects in the craftsmanship, but how do you make sure that the materials you use are of the best quality?
It has taken us many years to build up our supplier list and we are confident that the quality of their materials ensures the quality of our product. That said, I can see that saving 20% on a side wall would be important to a bulk manufacturer but for us its the labour that contributes the most of the cost to a custom board. So we don’t skimp on the cost of materials. We just buy the best quality we can!
Can you tell us a bit about the process of creating a custom snowboard and what aspects/characteristics of the board design are customisable?
Our custom snowboard side is our baby and everything is customisable!
It starts of with the measurements (worked out between us and our clients). The measurements are imputed into the cad program and we cut the shape for the base and core. Graphics are discussed and can be wood, composite, printed or combined! Carbon stringer tapes and damping foil tapes within construction control the flex and damping respectively. The board is then laminated, cut out and sprayed. Finally the board is highly polished for a deep glossy finish. The end result is a unique board built to our client’s specification of the highest quality.
Can you give us a quick explanation of what kind of snowboarding and snowboarder each Windlip snowboard is created for?
Our production range tries to cover the main categories of rider.
The “Woodstock” freeride is for expert riders for big lines and hard carving. It’s the board that will be representing Windlip in the French boardercoss events this season with our new sponsored rider.
The “GT” all mountain is easy to ride but it’s a full carbon/glass construction. The shape and the flex suit all intermediate riders on or off the piste. Essentially it’s a performance board but you don’t have to be a lunatic to enjoy it!
The “Dream Warrior” freestyle is shorter and wider with an open freestyle stance to suite all mountain and park jibbing.
Windlip has carved itself a nice little niche in custom, hand built, freeride ssnowboards. For the coming season you are releasing a twin shaped freestyle snowboard. What’s the story with this new release?
The “Dream warrior” is a departure from our normal freeride culture. It came about because of our test days in Les Arcs. We hosted them with TipTop snowboards, our distributer from Bourg st Maurice and Kim our freeride pilot. These two relationships created a board shape to suite the board culture in Les arcs. Its topsheet is inspired by a tribal tattoo from another distributer; Snow Coco in Courcheval 1850!
So we are seeing how it goes.
Is Windlip experimenting with reverse camber or any of the rocker camber combinations?
The “Dream Warrior” has normal camber, we don’t feel ready to build reverse camber yet, I guess we are a little too freeridey at heart!
We might do a swallow tail for an experiment but we would need some pretty good snow!
Where do the Windlip shapers and testers put new designs through their paces?
We test here in the 3 valleys and Paradiski area . New freestyle boards are given to Kim to break! The rest we test ourselves and then pass along to Snow Coco’s rental dept to test for longevity.
You guys have just created a new website for Windlip, are there plans to grow the business?
We do have an expansion plan and yes the new website is part of it.
Out sourcing various tasks as we have already mentioned is also part of it. We have other things in the pipeline too such as a second sponsored rider who will be doing boardercoss and extreme freeride events. (He will be announced on the site soon!) We also have a couple of new retail outlets but we plan to grow slowly, we don’t intend to compete with the big guys, we’re not that kind of company.
Where can Snowboard-Review.com’s readers buy or demo a Windlip snowboard?
Your readers can pick up a demo board from our workshops, from Tiptop and from snow Coco. Also at the “Ultimate test tour” weekends in Sante Foy Tarantaise, France and Verbier Switzerland (All the details are on our website)
Am I right in thinking that Windlip has a loyal fan base all over the world?
We do have fans in many countries, people like real boards that are hand made with passion!
Big thanks to Lisa and Dan @ Windlip for the interview
Please check out snowboards-custom-made.com for more info on Windlip snowboards
Posted by Rich Ewbank in Features.
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