The story of TSA begins, like a typical British winter, at the Earl’s Court Ski Show. It was 1989, and Sladen – a dirtbag graduate of the dryslope scene now hawking boards for Sims – had persuaded the owners of the UK’s oldest and most respected alpine ski shop to let him try selling a few from the side of their stand. During the 10 day show, he sold six or seven snowboards; a modest start, sure, but proof that there was a nascent market out there.

“Being part of the scene – driving it, even – was as much the goal as selling snowboards”

Soon after, Bob and Ellis Brigham committed to creating a space for snowboarding in their proper stores, starting with Covent Garden in London and Castlefield in Manchester. Like the ski show operation, it needed to be separated from the race skis and climbing jackets. It needed to feel legit.

“We wanted to give it that look and feel,” says Bob’s son Rob, now Managing Director. “It could be our own thing.”

The fledgling shop initially planned to take its name from The Snowboard Academy in Aviemore, but a planned tie-in went south and they were forced to scramble for a new moniker, having already produced a bunch of marketing around the acronym ‘TSA’. Someone suggested ‘The Snowboard Asylum’ and the rest, as they say, is history.

From the start, the idea was to stay true to snowboarding’s counter-culture roots. The 90s years, recall Jez, were “fucking brilliant. It was just a bit loose.” There were trips to Board X, The Brits, and plenty of TSA-sponsored parties. The guys developed a reputation for booking great music; Simon from Bonobo DJ’d at one event, and their infamous Hacienda bash featured a line-up worthy of the Glasto dance tent. Being part of the scene – driving it, even – was as much the goal as selling snowboards.

“I left a really well paid job to sleep in the back of a Citroen for three years because I loved snowboarding and I wanted to be involved”

“We wanted to retain that ethos of what snowboarding was – and still is to me – but bring a level of professionalism and customer service,” explains Jez. “Everybody aspires to something. Nobody really aspires to the mainstream; they aspire to be part of something. So creating this brand and family around TSA, that riders and consumers could be part of, was what I wanted to bring to this. To build a community around the sport.”

That open and inclusive atmosphere was in contrast to some of the other core stores at the time. Across town in Manchester, the dungeon-like Split Skates was the only other place to buy a snowboard – if you were cool enough. They did, however, boast local legends Chris Moran and Steve Bailey as staff. Both were enticed to join TSA instead, becoming the first of a who’s who of UK riders to have operated the tills in their time. Jenny Jones once worked in the Bristol branch; James Stentiford worked at Tamworth; Jamie Nicholls did his work experience at the Castleford XScape store; the list goes on. When the dome scene blew up in the early noughties, the stores there were crewed by the same people pushing the park set-ups and organising events, while plenty of current media folk served their apprenticeship on the shop floor, including Looking Sideways podcaster Matt Barr (“he was pestering us for a cup of tea every five minutes at the ski show stand”) and various WL editors including Andrew Duthie, Rob McCreath, Joy Dutch and yours truly.

“I’ve always wanted to develop the guys that work in the shop, because they’re not going to stay with you forever,” says Jez. “I think it’s really good that a lot of them go on to do other things in the snowboard industry. It comes back to this family ethos. Hopefully we give them the tools to do that – it’s a really important part of what we’ve done over the years.”

Whatever your background or ambitions, a central lesson every TSA staff member learns is respect for the customer. “With the riders, I always had this idea that if someone’s getting free kit then they need to have an understanding of why,” argues Jez. “They need to talk to the people who are in real terms paying for their new kit. It was a two-way street. It gave the riders money to go away and do seasons, and it gave us credibility. But more importantly, it introduced them to the consumer and stopped them being aloof arseholes.”

Not that anyone could stop customers from occasionally being starstruck. “We used to have the Steve Bailey-ometer,” recalls Jez. “It was a swing tag and it went from ‘OH MY GOD IT’S STEVE BAILEY!’ to ‘WHO?’”

“Why do you have a snowboard shop if you’re not gonna get involved in the progression of the sport and champion this new technology?”

As TSA entered the millennium, they continued to host events around the country and provide support to local movie projects including the Broken Thumbs Tour and the Gendle/Warwood series of Lockdown films – the latter providing an annual excuse to throw a lavish premiere in Tamworth. To their credit, the Brigham brothers just let them get on with it.

“We were market leaders in terms of the volume we were selling. It was almost our duty to promote snowboarding as a whole and everything around it, rather than just sit back and take the money,” says Jez. “Having that mindset was really important: it wasn’t about taking, it was about putting back into it as well. I left a really well paid job to sleep in the back of a Citroen for three years because I loved snowboarding and I wanted to be involved.”

“We were doing it for the love of it, and the industry was fun,” agrees Rob. “We were selling that dream. There’s no fun in just standing in a shop shifting units. There was a party scene attached and we could share it with the people who enjoyed it. There was never any question of not doing that. This is what snowboarding is.”

That approach helps explain TSA’s strong support for NOW bindings and Bataleon, both of which combine innovative design with strong personalities (“Danny Kiebert came over to do a presentation, and half of it consisted of him going through his family tree to trace his lineage back to Osama Bin Laden. Haha!”). But while Jez (as the main buyer) is happy to pioneer new tech, he needs to be convinced by the science – something reverse camber failed to do, which is why he stayed off the Skate Banana bandwagon.

Likewise, at the height of Nicolas Müller and Heikki Sorsa’s popularity it would have been easy to sell a Burton Custom to almost every customer that requested one, but “It’s never been about selling the most expensive things, it’s about selling the right equipment – the product that’s right for them, that’s gonna grow their snowboarding. I’m not interested in people’s vanity projects. If you wanna buy a board to look cool, go to someone else’s store; our job’s to sell you the equipment that will make you a better rider.”

“These days, an increasing number of those customers are coming to the TSA online, where it’s hard to replicate that level of service”

Chris Shannon, TSA’s Marketing Manager, agrees: “By being honest you’re probably getting a customer for life, rather than trashing their first experience of snowboarding.”

These days, an increasing number of those customers are coming to the TSA online, where it’s hard to replicate that level of service. The team’s solution is to put a lot of effort into producing in-depth product descriptions and exhaustive video reviews. Things have certainly come a long way since they built the first primitive website.

“It lived on a server that was a box in the middle of the room in Wellington Mill where the website was designed,” recalls Rob. “It was about the size of a couple of drawers, and it was on wheels. I was in the office next door looking at the website and all of a sudden I was like, ‘Shit, it’s gone down! The website’s gone!’ I went running in telling the guys and they were like, ‘We know! We know! We dunno what the fuck’s happened!’ Everyone’s thinking we need to do something clever – ‘HTTP slash slash’ – and try to diagnose it. At that point a cleaner left the room and was like ‘See you tomorrow lads!’ We were like, ‘Ah it’s much better now that hoover noise has stopped.’ And then it dawned on us: she’d unplugged the internet.”

Like many companies, the TSA found Covid accelerated its online business. In lockdown, even while people couldn’t ride they were still ordering boards from the website – spending that season train ticket money while working from home. With so much more choice online, and prices (and margins) driven constantly lower, it’s tempting to wonder if there’s much of a future for physical shops?

“Coming out of Covid, you realise the importance of the store as that community hub, that touchpoint for everything.”

“Bricks and mortar will always be important to what we do,” argues Shannnon. “Coming out of Covid, you realise the importance of the store as that community hub, that touchpoint for everything.”

Indeed. While our media consumption has changed a lot since the 90s, and snowboarders aren’t the “scum of the earth” they used to be (a badge Jez still wears with pride), the buzz of connecting with fellow riders – maybe even one you follow on instagram – hasn’t changed since I bought a Sessions cap off Steve Bailey all those moons ago.

“People still get really stoked coming into the store,” says Shannon, “especially early in the season and seeing that board wall. It’s like a gallery. The sales people have all actually ridden them, so they can really describe what they’re like, and it’s really hard to emulate that advice digitally. Their enthusiasm is infectious.”