August | 2007 | Larry's Lounge

Solid Reunion/Rebirth SUPERPOST™

11 08 2007

Neil Rankin, Ron Bureta and Kurt Wastell.

What started out as a wild thread on the web site last summer finally came to fruition last weekend with the Solid reunion in Denver and Fairplay, Colorado. Solid Mfg.Co. was one of the original rider owned and operated snowboard companies of the early 1990s, started by a 20-year old snowboarder named Neil Rankin and a close group of friends. With riders like Jeff and Kurt Wastell, Tarquin Robbins, Willie McMillion and a heavily skate influenced image, Solid established itself as one of the most sought after brands of the time. They quickly went from a fledgling start-up to a company with over a million dollars in sales in a matter of months.

With orders for thousands of boards from Japanese distributors and a strong local following the number of employees in the small mountain town went from 10 to over 100 in just a couple years. Even future pros like Mikey LeBlanc spent time pressing boards up in the factory. But with the rapid expansion and inexperience of the young crew, it soon got out of control. Between quality issues, mismanaged funds and investor setbacks, after only three short years, Solid was forced to go out of business. “The growth was so explosive,” Neil recalls. “We knew how to make boards in low numbers but when we went to doing two and three shifts per day, we lost control of the profit. Plus the production on our biggest year started four months late because we had a conflict with one of our partners, and we were forced to play catch up. Eventually it killed us.” Ever since the factory doors closed, Rankin and Wastell have always talked about bringing Solid back to life. That day has finally come.

Kurt, Matt Hale, Jeff Wastell and Rankin.

With so many rumors of what is really going on with Solid, it was time to set the record straight. Amidst deafening gunshots at a campsite in the backwoods of South Park County, I sat down with Neil, Kurt and their new manufacturing partner Ron Bureta to talk about their plans for re-launching the brand.

“Look Public Advisor, you’re a fat lumpy piece of shit,” was Kurt’s response to an Internet user who’s quick to stir up the rumor fire. “The boards are made in California, not China.”

After all this time, Kurt’s taken charge and is ready to get back on a Solid Snowboard. His dedication to the history of the brand is evident by a pair of arm tattoos featuring his early board graphics.

“It’s been in the works for years,” he explains.

“It seems like it’s a really good time for a company like Solid to come back,” adds Ron. “It’s something different. Everyone’s following everybody and Solid was always its own thing.”

Ron Bureta has a long history in the snowboard industry as well, and though not directly involved with Solid in its heyday, he comes from the same era of do-it-yourself snowboard brands. In the past, he rode for companies like Barfoot, Division 23, and Ignition, teammates at the time with a young Matt and Danny Kass.

Kurt Wastell has an equally long history as an accomplished pro rider and industry veteran. After bouncing from board to board since Solid’s demise, first to World Industries, then Sims, and most recently Sapient, Kurt has experienced his fair share of problems with corporate sponsorship.

“It’s all these fuckheads that get a hold of some money and just come in way too hot,” says Kurt. “But they don’t give a shit about anything. They put all this time into riders and then they just get rid of them.

“It’s just a name on a piece of paper,” Neil injects. “Eventually it’s always time to get rid of the expensive pros and bring in some new guys.”

With Kurt’s latest board sponsor Sapient, the disassociation between the riders and company management was the biggest problem.

“I never really talked to them, I don’t even know them,” he explains. “We never even had a team manager. That’s the one thing that I hated about Sapient, they never made an effort to be bros at all. Ever, never once.

Despite a steady stream of published shots, video parts with Absinthe Films movies and respect throughout the industry, Kurt has always had bad luck when it comes to sponsorship support. Aside from the Sapient fallout, he was the latest casualty of Spy Optics after team manager Chris Saydah’s departure.

“Not to dis Canadians [referring to new management at Spy], but I’m over ‘em,” he says. “I mean, look at skaters. Companies are so rad to skaters.”

“It’s more like a family, everybody knows each other, everyone respects each other,” adds Neil. “We’re gonna go back to doing it how we did it originally, which was more of a team that’s a family. Good friends that all respect each other.”

Dave Tuck put on a good slide show of classic team pics.

Jeff Wastell classic Hood method, circa ’94.

Mean Bruce.

Matt Hale.

Dave Tuck fs lien to tail.

Tarquin Robbins lien fs 360.

Ron agrees that the same formula doesn’t apply to the Solid way of thinking. “A lot of people come in with a lot of money and think they can just buy riders and be cool.”

That’s what so many companies have done; some have succeeded, others have failed. But moving forward the Solid program will be on a different path. With little investment capital and only a few samples for now, the Solid team will have to be built from the inside out.

“No one’s getting a huge salary,” says Kurt. “It’s gonna be strictly sales driven. Companies spend so much money on dumb stuff, whereas we can do a lot of the stuff ourselves.”

As far as riders go, besides Kurt of course, they have offered a contract to longtime Summit County local Chad Otterstrom, a good friend of the Solid family. Instead of a traditional salary position, the contract includes royalties of his board sales and percentage of the company’s net profits.

“That way everyone is pushing the company not just promoting themselves,” explains Ron. “We haven’t been pressuring him at all, we just talked to him. There ‘s a contract on the table…that’s it.”

Placer Valley.

Fairplay skatepark.

The old factory.

Whoever the team eventually includes, the Solid formula is not based on slick marketing schemes or big money advertising campaigns. This time around, the boys at Solid are starting out small and staying true to their roots as riders who run their own show. For the time being all three have separate full time jobs and a life outside of snowboarding, with Ron at the power company, Neil at a design firm and Kurt picking up some landscape irrigation work in the summer to supplement his snowboard income.

Jeff Wastell at the Fairplay skatepark, August 5th 2007.

Kurt frontside grind over the bench.

Jeff in the cradel.

“We’re really blue collar, “ says Neil. “We’d like to bring the dirt bag element back into snowboarding.”

“Yeah, I’m doin’ Marlex to make up for Spy,” adds Kurt.

With Ron holding down the majority of the workload up to this point, like coordinating snowboard production samples and preparing to show at the upcoming SIA Tradeshow, the three plan on giving Solid a proper go around one more time. Many people still involved in snowboarding, whether they’re shop owners, pro riders or simply fans of the boards, remember Solid for what it was and hopefully support the idea of another independent brand going up against the corporate big wigs.

“We’re just gonna test the water, see how it goes,” says Kurt. “I’ve been going into shops and had lots of people ask me when they can place an order. I’m direct, you know.”