The rise, near collapse, and salvation of the

The rise, near collapse, and salvation of the
legendary snowboarding brands.
By Brad Farmer
The Forum crew in Germany at what was
perhaps the peak of Four Star’s glory years.
Courtesy Steve Ruff
“The Joint” at the HARD Rock Casino in Las Vegas was dark,
smoky, and packed with hundreds of restless industry heads. A strange
uneasiness filled the infamous amphitheater. I’ve never felt such discontent
at a party, especially one that was supposed to be the party of the tradeshow.
It was shocking that some of snowboarding’s most influential brands were
not going to have a booth, here, at the most important industry tradeshow.
However, Four Star Distribution and the associated snow brands’ decision to
instead throw a huge bash for the release of Video Gangs seemed somehow
fitting for their now rowdy image.
The rumored $2 million Video Gangs movie project had been cleverly
marketed almost like a brand in and of itself but in reality it was intended
to be a post Mack Dawg follow up to team movies The Resistance and
True Life. The popularity of these movies along
with several other bold marketing moves had
propelled the Forum brand to one of the most
wanted in the nation despite serious product
quality issues in their first couple of years.
I remember in the fall of 2003, I ventured
down the mountain from Big Bear to the industry
premier of Video Gangs, which was held at a small
downtown theater in San Clemente, California.
About three times as many people as the place
would hold showed up. Once the crowd learned
that most of them would not get in…they literally
tried to storm the theater. Just about every available police officer in the
area had to be brought in to control the situation. Now this was a movie
premier!
On the Monday night of SIA 2004, I walked into Four Star’s party
expecting something similar to the chaos of the previous premier but
what I found was a rather subdued crowd. Show headliner 50 Cent turned
out to be an SIA no-show along with Four Star. Rumors were running
rampant that the company was up for sale, in serious financial trouble,
and numerous personnel departures and position changes had basically
confirmed it. Just over six months later the sale of Four Star brands
including Special Blend, Foursquare, Forum, and Jeenyus to Burton
would be finalized.
This is a story about the rise, near collapse,
and eventual sale of one of the most important
conglomerates in snowboarding’s brief history: the
Four Star Distribution brands (with a focus on Forum
Snowboards). This is a story that has never been told
and it is a story that was incredibly difficult to get:
Some of the main players seemed relieved to talk,
some were reluctant, while others refused and were
downright furious with me for pursuing it. Peter Line,
Mike McEntire (Mack Dawg), Greg Dileo, Steve Ruff,
Niko Achtipes, and Travis Wood agreed to interviews.
Raul Reis and Markus Bohi declined to comment.
The Origin of the Four Star Brands
Around 1990, Raul Ray Reis Sr., who was a pastor and one of the founders
of the Calvary Chapel in the Inland Empire, invested in a mountain bike
gear company called Switchbacks along with a few other members of his
church. According to Travis Wood, the company didn’t have much success
and eventually Raul Reis Sr. came to an agreement with his son Raul Reis
Jr. to try and make something out of the brand. “I was working at a shop
called Hot Skates in Orange and Raul [Reis] would come in with these
prototype snowboard pants with the Switchbacks name on them,” said
Wood. He further explained that it was around 1992 when Raul dropped
the mountain bike products and decided to go completely into snowboard
outerwear. Shortly after that the name was changed to SB before finally
becoming Special Blend.
Around 1993, Travis Wood, Steve Ruff, Brian Thien, Marc Morisset,
and Jason Bump were team riders for Special Blend outerwear. Wood
says, “After Switchbacks made the transformation to Special Blend,
they created a whole new style of outerwear completely aside from
skiing in a more urban fashion direction.” As it turned out a denim
line was what really blew it up for them. Niko Achtipes was brought
onboard by Reis to help start an image ad campaign that he believed
would make the company. “Raul loved all of the image ads I was doing
for Droors at the time. He was like, ‘Well let’s just do what you are
doing for Droors but do it for snow.’” Achtipes’ efforts helped create
the all-important image of the brand. “My favorite ad ever was a shot
of Brian Thien standing in the middle of this wheat field, on a pool
table, putting a golf ball. It had nothing to do with snowboarding at all
and yet it caught everyone’s attention,” said Wood.
Weather he knew it or not, Raul Reis was in the midst of starting what
would become one of the most influential companies in snowboarding.
The people that Reis would bring together over the next several years
would be the key to its success. “Here is my explanation of Raul,”
says Antipes. “He is really good at recognizing what he’s not good
at and surrounding himself with good people. He has decent taste in
that he knows whose taste to copy. I was Raul’s taste for 10 years.”
Achtipes went on to say, “Most people that I know who run shit are
A.D.D. [Attention Deficit Disorder]. Raul is A.D.D. They have selective
hearing, selective memory, they barely graduate high school, but they
run shit and that’s what they’re good at…And that is what Raul is good
at. He surrounds himself with the right people and he gets them to do
what needs to get done.”
In 1995, two of the biggest names in snowboarding were Peter Line
and Ingemar Backman. “Raul was always good with timing and getting
the right guys on the program and he wanted Peter Line,” said Wood.
Raul looked to his friend and then president of Division 23, Greg Dileo
to connect with Peter Line.
“I was riding for Division 23 when Raul and I first talked and he told me
that Ingemar and I could hold an outerwear line on our own,” said Line.
He went on to explain that the first year he designed a jacket and pant
and subsequently put together several pieces. Line says, “At first we just
had a logo that I designed with four squares stacked together—Raul later
staggered the squares. We really didn’t have a name the first year—we
just called it The Clothing Company Designed by Peter and Ingemar, before
it became Foursquare.”
Special Blend and Foursquare quickly became successful with
the help of Line and his edgy designs, the solid marketing effort by
Raul, and the creative direction of Niko Achtipes. Line says, “Raul
wanted to keep Special Blend as a more urban core brand while I
helped take Foursquare in a more tech direction.” Line maintained
the lead designer role for the first three or four years until the
brands became too big and his new role with Forum Snowboards
took more of his time.
As a Four Star rider, Peter Line
defined himself as one of the elite
snowboarders of all time.
Photo: Niko Achtipes
The Rise of Forum Snowboards
and Four Star Distribution
Even while Foursquare was under development, Greg Dileo, Peter
Line, and Mike “Mack Dawg” McEntire were discussing the creation
of a new snowboard company. “Greg Dileo was really the one who put
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JANUARY 2007
Peter Line is infamous for
classic shots like this huge
method at Snow Summit.
Photo: Jon Foster
JP Walker was submerged in mealworms for a
bugs ad shot that ultimatly went to Peter Line.
Photo: Niko Achtipes
it all together. He and Peter were still with Division 23 but looking to try
something different,” said Mack Dawg. The consolidation of the industry
suggested to the three friends that the time was right to start something
fresh and new. At the same time, Reis and partner Markus Bohi were
looking to add a snowboard brand to compliment Special Blend and
Foursquare’s success. “The original core of Forum was the three of us,”
says Dileo. “We knew we had the right formula. Peter was the talent and
on top of his game, Mike was the finest filmmaker at the time, and I was
going to handle marketing and board design. I went and talked with Raul
and Markus because they had the missing ingredients—management,
financial backing, and distribution.”
“Raul arranged a meeting at which time we discussed creating the
brand and came to an agreement,” says Mack Dawg. He also explained
that himself, Peter Line, Greg Dileo, Raul Reis, and Markus Bohi were
basically equal partners. “Forum was under the newly created Four Star
Distribution umbrella but it was to be treated as a separate entity from
the other brands that Raul and Markus owned,” added Dileo.
Mack Dawg had some serious demands of the driection of the brand
from the beginning. He told STN that he made it absolutely clear to all of
the partners that he had no interest in being a part of a company that was
after the raging partier image. “Our goal was to create a company where
the riding was what mattered,” he said.
The Making and Marketing of the Team
“Peter and I started putting the team together and then Ruff was brought
in to help. We got the guys that agreed with our philosophy for the brand’s
image,” said Mack Dawg. Steve Ruff was Reis’s cousin and had been the
team manger for Dragon when he was hired to manage the Forum team.
The first rider brought onto the team was Bjorn Leines followed by Chris
Dufficy, and JP Walker. “We decided early on that we wanted to have a
small tight team of only the top riders. We didn’t want to have any scrap
at all,” said Dileo.
“From the beginning, the riders were on a mission to push themselves and
progress at every session…all of the time,” adds Mack Dawg. With the first
few riders onboard and the rest to follow shortly, they set out to dominate
the snowboarding media. “One thing Raul did really well was take care of the
riders,” offered Wood.
According to Mack Dawg, their marketing wasn’t groundbreaking, just
using what works: “I’d seen it work for skate companies like Powell, H-Street,
and Plan B. I was shocked that it had not been done before in snowboarding.”
The idea really wasn’t that complicated—employ the best riders, shoot and
produce the most insane films, and make it so damn easy for the magazines
that all of the Four Star riders would end up on every other page…or more.
At the time Forum and Burton were the only companies that employeed their
own staff photographers who flooded the magazines with images.
“We only wanted to have the best riders in the sport on the team and
in turn those riders would work together as a unit pushing each other
and the boundaries of the sport—this showed in the movies and the
magazines,” said Dileo.
In 1996, Achtipes headed up the creative development of one of the
most famous Forum ad campaigns, better know as the bug ads. “We
set up a shoot in L.A. and nothing good was really coming out of it…At
the end of the night, I shit you not, a cockroach ran by my foot and I was
like, ‘Alright, there are our ads,’” says Achtipes. “A week or two later
we hired a bug wrangler and brought the team in to shoot the bug ads.”
When the ads came out, JP Walker appeared with scorpions, Peter Line
A young Jeremy Jones might have been
using stickers to help keep his board intact,
but he slayed it nontheless
Photo: Niko Achtipes
with mealworms, Chris Dufficy with tarantulas, and Bjorn Leines with
cockroaches. “I’m all about turn the page shock value,” said Achtipes.
“With a team that everyone in our industry already knows kills it, why
show them snowboarding? We wanted to show their personalities. All our
guys had personality, all had style, all were quirky in their own way. Some
were hip hop, some were fresh, and some were a little bit of everything.
Peter was his own little alien self. We love him. Everybody loves him.”
Raul and Niko’s instincts were correct and the Forum ads became the
new indusry standard.
The Forum Product Debacle
“From the beginning the product was a really big problem for the
company,” said Dileo. He further explained that Reis and Bohi picked the
first factory where the boards were to be produced based on previous
relationships they had. “I didn’t agree with the factory choice because
they didn’t have a good track record,” says Dileo. It turned out that Dileo’s
belief was correct: “I was brought into an emergency meeting and found
out that it wasn’t going to happen. At that point, I had to scramble to
try and find a new factory and this was December…we had to have our
samples for the tradeshows.” Dileo went on to say that most of the real
legitimate factories such as Elan were booked up already so they ended
up choosing a factory located in San Diego. “Of the open factories, they
seemed to have the best product at the time. It ended up not being good
product and it was a constant one and a half to two year struggle with that
factory to get anything out of it.”
According to Mack Dawg, Dileo started having Forum boards made
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JANUARY 2007
Jones—getting it done on the brand defining lime
green Forum snowboard.
Photo: Niko Achtipes
at this place called Rocket Science by some crazy engineer guy from
England. “The boards were strong and light but they could not figure out
how to finish one at all,” says Mack Dawg. “I’d be out at shoots with riders
and we would pull the boards out of the bags and they would look like they
almost had a texture on the bottom…you could not even ride it. So, I’d go
down there and I’d bring a good board to show them how it’s supposed to
be done. They didn’t even have a good grinder or anything so I helped them
get the stuff they needed and they tried to do it right, but they could never
really pull if off. They tried to do these die-cuts but they didn’t put them in
right, so they would actually pop out. It was insane…you’d be riding down
the mountain and then all of sudden it would be like an anchor dropped
and you’d go flipping over the bars [Laughs].” He went on: “I remember
talking with JP [Walker] and Jeremy [Jones]…they came off riding for Rev
which was making some of the best boards at the time. They couldn’t even
ride the boards. They’d be like, ‘What do you want me to do? I can’t even
ride this.’ I can’t believe that Ruff even kept those guys on the program
because the product they were riding was so compromised. It’s amazing
that they were able to get such good video parts.”
Mack Dawg further explained that Dileo was convinced that Rocket Science
would be able to pull it off in the second year (apparently making snowboards
really was rocket science). “I went down there and started pulling boards
out of the bags and they were just like the first year…they were unrideable.
I started throwing boards around and I was like ‘What the hell are you guys
doing? These boards can’t ship.’ Every board had to come out, the wax has to
be taken off to redo them…it was a bad scene. We basically had to shift gears
and that’s when Greg’s job came in jeopardy.”
“I was in a position that I shouldn’t have been in and didn’t really care
to be in,” says Dileo. “I had to do it in the beginning because I was the only
person who understood the process of board production. If I were to go to
them and say we need to bring in an engineer—I would have discounted
my own position. The way Raul and Markus manage is if you even begin
to deem yourself ineffective you’re gone­—that’s it—there was no loyalty.
I’ve always been a marketing and a branding person and I was pushed into
the role of product development and engineer guy which I’m not.”
Dileo, the person who originally came up with the idea for Forum, was
let go. “When it all went down with Greg, I was the only one who said
anything. I was like, ‘Greg has to get something out of this’ and no one said
anything. I was like, ‘Man, that’s harsh,’” said Mack Dawg.
According to Dileo, after some serious legal wrangling, Raul and
Markus finally agreed to pay him out roughly $100,000 for his shares in
Forum.
“When I lived with Dano [Pendygrasse] in Whistler,” says Colin Whyte,
now editor of FSM, “he was shooting for Forum and I was handling all
of the warranty repairs for Forum’s Canadian distributor out of our
basement—solo. I remember one time, Bjorn [Leines] and Peter [Line]
were hanging out on our couch after a hard day in the backcountry. I had
to move these legends’ boots drying by our fire in order to get some heat
on giant delams I was fixing some of their pro models returned by shops.
One of the boards had like eight C-clamps on it. It was pretty funny but
none of us really said anything... Early on, it seems like the boards were
as bad as the team was good but it seems like now Forum makes some of
the best boards out there.”
After Dileo’s departure, Jason Kanes was brought in to help solve
the product problem. According to Mack Dawg, the temporary fix to the
problem was moving production to a Canadian factory. The improvement
to the product was tremendous but ultimately the costs were too high.
The manufacturing was finally moved to the Elan factory in Switzerland
where the focus continued to be on board quality.
The Forum 8 and The Marketing Juggernaut
Despite the product problems, the marketing force that was Forum and
Four Star didn’t skip a beat. “The craziest thing about Forum is that we
were basically able to sell the shittiest boards ever made,” said Mack
Dawg. The reason why they were able to sell terrible product might have
been a result of the state of the sport at that time. Snowboarders were
much more core in that they wanted to ride the board that their favorite
shredder rode even if there were quality questions. The explosion of the
team and the success of the marketing effort managed to make up for any
product shortcomings in the first couple of years.
The focus of Forum’s ad campaigns continued to be on the image of
the team riders. Achtipes says, “These guys ride, everyone knows they
can ride. We don’t really have to show them riding. I was more about,
‘Let’s sell these guys because they are going to be in Mack Dawg’s movie
anyway—killing it.’” They actually pulled back from advertising after
the bugs ads because they were so dominant on the editorial side of the
magazines they didn’t even need it.
The Forum team was quickly solidified in 1998, bringing on Jeremy
Jones, Wille Yli-Luoma, Joni Malmi, and Devun Walsh. The eight-man
roster was one of the best, if not the best at the time and the marketing
effort based on them continued to gain dominance.
Travis Wood made the transition from Special Blend
team rider to marketing and promotions manager for
the Four Star brands and he recalls how the Forum team
riders became known as the legendary Forum 8. “We had
gotten word that Burton was starting a new program
In 1999, a switch method gap jump was the height
of progresion. Devun Walsh, Mt. Seymour.
Photo: Dano
called Seven,” he said. “It was Burton’s attempt to be a little more core
at the time…they were starting this program to get back to their roots
and into the specialty core shop’s mode of thinking.”
Achtipes added, “For some odd reason they told us they were
going to do Seven. We were much smaller than Burton and could
turn things around quicker so Greg and Raul came into the office
and in one night we bang out the first ad with the silhouette of all
the riders and we put it in the last issue of that year to preview next
year. We felt that Seven was an attempt by Burton to come after us
and so we beat them to the punch. It’s just ironic and funny as hell
that we happened to have eight guys on the team and it became the
Forum 8.”
Mack Dawg’s movies, including The Resistance and True Life, were
absolutely the most groundbreaking movies of their time, propelling the
riders to stardom. Wood says, “Mike [Mack Dawg] is very clear about what
he wants and how it all fits together from start to finish. He demanded a
lot of commitment from his riders and it showed in the progression of the
sport. They were on another level, they had a job to do, and if that meant
being up at 5 a.m. to accomplish it—they were up and ready to work.”
“Working with riders of that caliber, that closely, and having them
be that motivated, that was the best thing ever,” said Mack Dawg. “For
me as a filmmaker trying to push the sport of snowboarding, that was
all-time. We were on exactly the same page.”
The team riders were having the time of their lives—traveling
together, shooting together, and more and more often partying together.
“We were all hanging together just like one big family—traveling and
going on team trips to Mexico when the season was over. We were all
super tight and everyone who was not on the team was jealous of what
we had. Other riders would pay their own way to come on trips with us
just to hang out,” said Peter Line.
“Those were the best years of my life—the experiences that we
all had—traveling the world together. I would never take back those
years,” said Ruff. But behind the scenes, on the financial side of the
company, things had not been going well for quite some time.
The shock and awe Forum image ad campaigns set the industry
standard. The pictures below depict three of their bangers.
Joni Malmi
Photo: Niko Achtipes
When Money and the
Party Became a Factor
The first sign of a problem may have been the Forum product issues
but soon “money” exposed the real internal problems. The consensus
among those interviewed seems to be that mismanagement of the
financial side of the company and frivolous spending created a huge drain
on the cash flow. Ruff says, “When money came into the picture it really
changed a lot of people in the company.”
The fast growth of the company also created serious cash crunches.
Wood explained that in his two years in marketing with Four Star they
went from roughly 15 employees to about 70; from having a couple
of small buildings to moving into the former Arnette headquarters;
from “X” amount of dollars coming in to three or four times that; and
from the three snow brands to adding Circa and later C1, Jeenyus, and
Video Gangs to the mix.
The growing pains became apparent to the Forum partners when
the company came up short when financing a board order. “Raul and
Markus got all of us [the Forum partners] together and told us that they
needed to bring a new investor into the company in order to complete
a production run of new boards,” says Mack Dawg. “Markus’s brother
who resided in Switzerland was going to invest the needed money
but that meant that our stock had to be diluted. I think I went from
20 percent owner to less than two percent in about 15 minutes. Then
Peter and I were told that we were going to get equal percentages in
this great umbrella company that was going to cover all of the Four
Star brands…but that never happened.”
While the money issues and divisions between partners mounted,
the party scene and everything Mack Dawg had been against was
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JANUARY 2007
Devun Walsh and Chris Dufficy, Mt. Hood.
Photo: Niko Achtipes
Photo: Niko Achtipes
Photo: Niko Achtipes
Photo: Niko Achtipes
Bjorn Leines at Bear Mountain
Photo: Niko Achtipes
escalating. Mack Dawg says, “It started to go downhill when it became
successful. I told them from the beginning that I was not interested if
once it became successful everyone turned into alcoholics and just
started partying and thinking they’re rock stars.”
“When I met Raul there was…no drinking…
no cussing…and he had a girlfriend but
claimed not to sleep with her. He was his
father’s son [i.e. a pastor’s son]. Raul is an
all-or-nothing guy. He is either going to drink
and be a party guy or he is not. When I met him
he was not but then he became one,” said
Achtipes.
Perhaps one of the most obvious signs
that something was wrong at Four Star
came with the departure of Mack Dawg. “I
was completely not backing the way the whole program was going and
they obviously didn’t want to talk to someone who was destroying the
fun party,” said Mack Dawg. He went on to tell STN about how Raul
wanted Mack Dawg Productions to be part of Four Star and only make
their movies. “I was like, ‘No way, first of all you are totally blowing
it and second of all, why would I do that when my company is its own
thing and has been around for like 12 years already?’”
Reis decided that it was time to start his own film company and brought
on Sean Johnson to team up with Sean Kerns, the creators of Whiskey, to
make the new film. “We meet up to discuss the project after True Life and
they weren’t having the budget and basically declined to do the project,”
says Mack Dawg. “They were pretty smart about it, they had been thinking
Photo: Niko Achtipes
about it for a while. They had written in riders’ contracts that they had to
film for the Forum movie or the Four Star movie. Basically a lot of those
people who I was filming with for years and had basically brought up had
to film for their [Four Star] project. The only person who really denied
that was JP [Walker], he was like, ‘Screw that.’
He didn’t film for their movie. He did what he
wanted to do and filmed with me in Shakedown
and they couldn’t fire him because he’s JP.”
“The team riders didn’t know anything was
going on. They knew Mack Dawg was bummed
on things. But it really didn’t affect the riding.
It was definitely a money thing and a trust
thing,” says Peter Line. “Dawger [Mack Dawg]
just didn’t trust Markus or the direction of the
company. I guess he kind of felt like they [Raul
and Markus] were pitching people out over their ownership.”
Mack Dawg told STN that he did eventually get paid out the same
amount as Dileo receiving about $100,000, which he equated to roughly
$12,000 per year for his work.
Toward the very end, right in the middle of the Video Gangs project,
Steve Ruff was kicked out of Four Star signaling even more problems
at the top. “With Ruff it was just a clashing of heads I guess. That was
pretty gnarly...He was there from almost the beginning and being Raul’s
cousin and everything…that was the end,” said Line.
The Sale of the Snow Brands
With Four Star on the verge of collapse the only way to save the snow brands
was to sell them off. Achtipes says, “What were the snow brands worth when he sold
it? Do I know numbers? No, but I can speculate. I know what was making money in
the building and it was Circa. By the time he sold the snow brands—from what I was
told—Circa was 70 percent of the income.”
Ruff talked about the day he found out about the sale: “I remember when Raul
called me. He and I weren’t on talking terms too much at that point, but he said
‘Ruff, we sold the snow companies to Burton. You’re the first person I called.’
And I remember saying, ‘Dude, that’s awesome, Raul,’ and kind of thinking
wow it actually happened. I said, ‘Well what does that mean for us [myself and
the riders?]’ He was like, ‘Oh, it’s all-good, I can’t talk about it. We signed
nondisclosure statements so none of us can talk about anything. But when it’s
all closed and finalized, we’re going to sit you guys down…with a lawyer and we’ll
explain to you exactly how the payout is going to work.’ So, sure enough, as soon
as that happened, Peter, JP, Devun, and myself were all on the phone with each
other talking and wondering what was going to happen.”
“This was to be kind of like a day of redemption,” says Ruff. “We were all going to
cash in. When we first started Forum, we were going to sell for millions. All of us
who had ownership were going to be taken care of and never have to work again for
all of our lives. But when the sale was actually going down…we knew the industry
was in a different state, and it wasn’t going to be a matter of, ‘Oh, we’re all getting
millions of dollars,’ but it’s going to be interesting to see what everyone gets.”
“We all got letters in the mail from the attorneys, saying that there was essentially
no money made on the sale…no profit for any of us to have…nobody was getting
any money. I don’t even know how to put it into words what a horrible feeling that
was,” says Ruff. “My best friends JP, Peter, and Devun…those guys gave up so much
financially for so many years to build Forum and for them not to get any sort of
payout at all was heartbreaking.” He further explained that many of the riders could
have had made way more money riding for other companies but they chose to stay
with Four Star because it was something they believed in and many of them were
given shares and promised ownership in return for working to make it happen.
Line said, “I’m bummed. It’s something I helped start and I know it was nothing I
could have helped unless I knew what was happening on the inside but I was just a
kid at the time. So, I had no clue that it was falling apart like that. I still think about
it—like right now—I’m just bummed about everything.”
When all was said and done no one got a dime and that can only be seen as a
tragedy to most of the key players. After years of hard work, people like Peter Line,
Mack Dawg, Steve Ruff, etc. were left with nothing but memories. The harsh reality
in the end is that a percentage of nothing is unfortunately, nothing.
All of the guys I talked with had some regrets but they all also said those were
some of the best days of their lives. They would have all done things differently,
mostly keeping their eyes on the money, but they are grateful for being a part of
something so special. “It was just a unique deal in the history of snowboarding that
will never be duplicated,” said Ruff.
Burton Saves the Brands and Creates The Program
Almost 17 years after Switchbacks started, Burton now owns the former Four Star
snow brands and they have created “The Program” under which Special Blend,
Foursquare, and Forum are marketed and sold. The team is still one of the best and
the product quality rivals any brand on the market.
Jake Burton had the following to say at the time of purchase: “Forum is a company
we have always respected, and it is a brand that needed to stay in the hands of
snowboarders. We will do our best to see that Forum and its sister brands continue
to grow and develop.”
Line says, “Forum is still here, we had a rough time but Burton kind of saved our
asses. Otherwise Forum wouldn’t even be around right now. I’m very fortunate that
that happened…especially having the coolest company in the world buy us.”
“It was pretty awesome that Jake [Burton] stepped up and bought that company
and now those brands have a chance to progress,” said Mack Dawg.
“I’m stoked that Forum is getting back on track. I’m stoked I’m still around. Forum
for life!” says Peter Line.
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JANUARY 2007
JP Walker exemplifies why Forum Snowboards is known
for having one the best pro teams in the history of
snowboarding. Stockholm, Sweden.
Photo: Rob Mathis