A-Z of Snowboard Brands
A closer look at some of snowboarding's best-loved companies
Mr Neff came up for the idea of an action sport headwear company whilst at Brigham Young University, Utah back in the glory days of 2002. He started off with standard cottage industry production methods by hand knitting all the beanies with Neff embroidered onto the knit. It took a few years of marketing, but he got dropped his first line of product in store during 2011 and in no time found himself at the helm of one of the fastest growing brands in action sports.
He was featured in Forbes Magazine for his innovative marketing technique. He initially approached Nate Bozung with some T-Shirt prototypes, but due to Nate’s existing snowboard sponsors, he couldn’t wear the T-shirts, but Nate mentioned that he didn’t have a hat sponsor. After that Neff went to snowboard athletes across the board (eh!) and asked them to wear his products if they didn’t have a headwear sponsor.
In a marketing ploy that would make Red Bull blush, riders like Travis Rice, Stevie Bell, and Louie Vito were snapped out and about with the headwear, he’s managed to create a hype around a brand that had no product. He finally dropped the product in 2011 in his home state of Utah.
Since then he’s added a stellar roster of riders to the team that are the dominators of park, pipe and everything in-between. They’ve recently expanded into t-shirts, belts and the occasional mitten. Straight up g’thang.
