Thu, 01/21/2010 - 5:00pmBrand focus: Westbeach

Who are your favourite Canadian northerners?

We caught up with the good folk at Westbeach to find out the beef for a quick round up of this hallmark Canadian brand.

So what is Westbeach?
Westbeach is one of, if not the only, original snowboarding brand still independently owned and run by snowboarders.

How was the company started?
The company started back in 1979 in Calgary, Alberta. Chip Wilson and Scott Sibley opened up a store and began making surf shorts inspired by the surf culture of California, which is where the heritage three-surfer logo began. This then developed into snowboard outerwear.

What pivotal moments have shaped the company's story?
There have been so many pivotal moments throughout Westbeach’s history. Some have been good and some have been bad but all have made us what we are today. Probably the most pivotal moment was way back in the early 80s when snowboarding first started to make its mark on the mountains in BC. This was when the focus of the brand changed from making their iconic surf shorts to making the quality outerwear we still produce today.

What was the core appeal of the brand?
The core is, and was, to make the best snowboarding outerwear to keep people shredding on the hill.  It has never changed right from the start.

How difficult is it to make your mark as an outerwear brand?
Having been involved since the start, Westbeach has always been synonymous with snowboarding. It’s more a situation that, as the sport became more popular, bigger brands came in with no love but loads of money. This means the difficulty is not making your mark, it’s competing against the multi-nationals.

What's the process of taking an idea for a jacket into actual production?
It’s a lengthy process: designers come up with inspiration from diverse sources; they then work with suppliers, creating prototypes for testing; it’s then all about the research and development of those prototypes until we are happy. Once we are happy with the sample, we take those samples, sell to our distributors, sell to our retailers, forecast all our sales for the following season and put the orders into production! The whole process is so far ahead, for example, right now we have winter 09/10 in stores, we are selling 10/11 and the designers are working on 11/12!

What role does the UK and international team play in that?
We try to include the team riders in the whole process as much as possible and value their feedback and ideas massively. They are super-important for the testing of the product and even though we all ride, they keep us in touch with the grass roots of the sport wherever they are from.  We have our UK and Canadian team and then each distributor has their own teams from their own countries. It’s important to get the feedback from all these guys as there are different nuances in different areas of the world; Halifax on a rainy night is world apart from backcountry BC. In the UK Laura Berry, Andy Nudds, John Weatherly, Will Smith, Matt Macwhirter and Billy Morgan are representing for us.

How much influence did/does Danny Wheeler have on the design of his
signature series of outerwear?
Danny has been one of the family for his entire career and what he has achieved is remarkable. He has always been an important part of our decision-making unit and his opinion and feedback is invaluable. The Maverick in white for this season is totally Danny’s inspiration. He took this idea and worked through with Cherie, our head designer, to achieve the look they needed to make it the banger it is. Despite his recent retirement we continue to have a strong relationship with him and hope to continue to have his creative input in the future.

Where does your support of the Snowflex Freestyle Series come from? What is the appeal of dryslope?
Just three years ago Wayne Taylor of AKA Snowskate in Halifax approached us with the idea of a series of competitions for the following summer. Being dryslope inclined, it seemed like a no-brainer to me. There are a lot of competitions out there and things had started to become too serious, missing out on the fun side of competing: riding with your mates, getting everyone together and pushing each other. The series seemed like the perfect thing for us to get involved in at a grass roots level, hopefully helping keep dryslope alive and helping to produce an amazing level of riders. There is definitely a place for the more serious comps but we need to keep the chilled side of competing alive.

What can we expect over the next season?
Well, we’ll continue celebrating our 30th anniversary with various – look our for limited edition pieces on www.westbeach.com.  We have also just opened our new store in Vancouver so if you’re in town pop in! With regards to the team, you can expect the usual monthly installment of airtimes from our Canadian riders but for the first time ever we will be introducing air times from our UK team too. There should be some funny films being produced with some super steezy riding so keep an eye out!

Check the Westbeach team in action out in Morzine, France

Watch John Weatherly killing it all over the globe