Regis Rolland is like the proverbial nine-lived cat. Since the heady days of the 1980’s and his pioneering riding career (anyone who hasn’t seen the Apolcalypse movie should check out this snippet right now) the Frenchman has had mixed fortunes in the world of business. First, making the most of the movie’s success, he launched Apocalypse Snowboards. After some early financial hiccups this became A-Boards, one of the biggest brands of the 90s, where the Dave Vincent pro model gave birth to the long-running, trippy mushroom graphic theme.

Then, at the turn of the millenium, A-Boards was acquired by French ski giant Rossignol, who promptly shut it down – leaving Rolland furious. Out of the ashes, however, rose ‘Apo’ snowboards, who are still going today.

With such heritage behind them, we have a bit of a soft spot for Apo – I mean, you gotta have at least one quirky French brand in the market dontcha? As our assistant ed put it, “Bless their little French cotton socks – they’re great at arty-sounding concepts, crazy graphic themes and smoking gauloise, but shit at business.”

We were therefore pleased to hear that following yet more financial strife, Regis Rolland has secured new investers to continue operations.

Here’s the rather short and mysterious official lowdown:

“After a couple of months of rumours, APO Snow is pleased to announce that the French brand has been acquired by a Swiss company.

As its founder, Regis Rolland, stated: ‘After a difficult year of recovery proceedings, I am really proud to have found investors to continue the APOcalypse story.’

Regis founded Apocalypse in 1985, A-snowboards in 1993 and APO in 2003. The APO team will still be part of the new company and we will step-up our efforts in this new era thanks to stronger financial support.

More information will follow early next fall.

The APO team.”