Family owned snowboard venture markets from the grass roots up

PALMER — With its 300,000-plus visitors over a two-week period, the Alaska State Fair is a prime place for a small company to get noticed. For a husband and wife-owned snowboard company based out of the Knik area, the fair has been an essential avenue for getting the word out.

Kevin and Cari Molinaro started Northstar Snowboards out of their Knik home in 2012. With all the production costs being financed, out-of-pocket advertising hasn’t been at the top of the priority list. In fact, the local company has been depending on word of mouth, a website, its Facebook page and friends.

In snowboarding, image and advertising is everything. For the small, upstart board sports company, that has probably been the hardest.

“Everybody wants the coolest thing out there and that is usually the most publicized,” Kevin said. “They don’t know if it is better or worse. They just want it, and that’s probably been the hardest part, to beat out big dogs like Burton and Lib Tech.”

But for a venture without any financial backing, grassroots marketing is the only way they can go, Kevin said.

“We don’t have a choice, really, because it is all out of pocket,” he said. “We can only go as big as we can afford to.”

For any new business, watching the budget is essential. Kevin and Cari agree that when it is financed solely out-of-pocket, the point of failure is always close.

“It’s borderline at any point,” Kevin said. “We’re just trying not to dig to deep.”

That is where Cari comes in. With her business degree, she handles the money side. And for the money she saw the Alaska State Fair as a prime opportunity to let people know about the company. Cari hopes that at least 5 percent of the fair attendees are into snowboarding and will see their booth. That’s 15,000 people who might be potential customers.

Cari sees the fair as a great way to reach the masses.

“We wanted locals to know about us. We wanted Alaskans to know about us, to know that we are here,” she said. “We thought it would be a good starting point.”

Cari said the $1,250 booth fee is inexpensive for the amount of people they have the potential of reaching, not to mention the merchandise they have been able to sell.

Cari said they have sold pretty close to the same amount of merchandise at the fair in the two weeks that they have sold overall since starting in 2012.

“We sold more than I expected. Maybe I set my goals a little low,” she said.

But the main goal has been to spread the word and this year that has paid off. Cari said a lot of people have come in and not known about us. “But that is why we are here, just letting people know who we are and where were at.”

Starting a snowboard company from the ground up isn’t easy. Small companies pop up every year and are gone the next. The trends with the younger generation change so fast, and for the old snowboarders out there, keeping up with those trends can be hard.

“Boards change every year,” Kevin said. “A lot of it is what people want to ride. A lot of people want a soft board, but I prefer a plank because I don’t want it to break.”

Still Kevin is not worried. “I think I am going to set the trends. I won’t have to keep up with it.”

That confidence comes from a long history in the Alaska snowboard world. Kevin has been snowboarding since the 1980s, and he and his wife pretty much live for the winter.

But Kevin will tell you that being into snowboarding and starting a company are two totally different things. For Kevin, learning the manufacturing, design and production has been a huge learning experience.

“The design was a huge learning curve. I had no idea,” he said. “I just bought a graphics program and started figuring it out.”

Kevin said there was also a lot of hands-on testing that went into the production of their first run.

“Between me and two friends, we probably went through 30 or 40 different snowboards from all the different companies,” he said. “Trying to find out what we liked from each board and then went from there.”

Kevin said they looked into actually manufacturing their boards in Alaska, but the cost was too high. Manufacturers need to carry insurance, he said, and at a price $10,000 a month, they just couldn’t afford it. He also said the cost of shipping materials up for production would be expensive.

The ski and snowboard market is saturated and expensive to break into. The manufacturing companies require a minimum order. The molds for each model and size can run in the $8,000 range with no guarantee of how the board will actually ride until it is tested. Still, the Molinaros forged ahead.

Kevin said the company was created for a couple of reasons. First, he wanted to build a board that could take the big mountain riding of Alaska. He also sees Alaska as the next big snowboarding capital.

“I think people are starting to realize we are like the North Shore of snowboarding and I felt there needed to be a company,” he said.

But more importantly, he sees the industry going the wrong direction.

“The fact that everybody is starting to outsource everything to Europe,” he said. “We wanted to be part of the solution.”

That is why Northstar Snowboards are 100 percent made in the USA. Kevin said they are designed in Alaska and manufactured in Utah by Revolution Manufacturing.

“It’s been a struggle,” Kevin said. “But it is just the way I’ve done it my whole life. I enjoy taking the chance. You can sit on the couch and watch TV or take chances.”

Cari agrees.

“It is the first time in our life that we were all in,” she said. “We’ve had a couple of sleepless nights, but if you don’t give it a try you’ll never know what is going to happen. We’d rather look back and say we gave it our best than looking back and saying what if.”

Northstar Snowboards offers four models in sizes 152 to 164 cm. They are hoping to expand to skateboards next year and then maybe surfboards and wakeboards. If you want to learn more, check out their web page at northstarsnowboards.com or on Facebook.