Ever since 2003, High Society Freeride has been making a name for itself and as long as I can remember, co-founder Jason Flynn has set out to do the same thing. Jason and I grew up about 4 blocks from each other in a quiet northern Michigan town. I caught up with him recently to talk snowboarding and everything High Society Freeride.
MSR: Give us the rundown, when did you start riding and how did you get your start in the snowsports biz?
JFlynn: I started snowboarding in 1994 when a high school buddy invited me to the after school ski program at Crystal Mountain in northwestern Michigan. I went out on a 160 Kemper Rampage and Sorel boots set up goofy foot (I'm regular). I shredded in my Columbia jacket and my gloves and my pants but fell in love instantly.
A couple years after that, I managed to get a job at the ski resort as a rental tech in the brand new snowboard room at Crystal. After two seasons there, I graduated High School and attempted to move to Crested Butte with no money and no place to live. I bounced around Colorado going from Crested Butte to Aspen to Denver and back to Crested Butte. In the big storms during the fall of ‘97 and after being a homeless snowboard bum for 6 weeks, I went home to go to school and work. That’s when I went on to teaching snowboarding at Crystal Mountain while in college at NMC.
In 2002 during a business trip to Denver, I had a couple day layover and visited a friend in Aspen – I decided after the first day, when I got back to Michigan, I would finish out the semester at school, quit my job, pack up my Bravada and move to Aspen. 2001/2002 season was the first ever that snowboarding was allowed on Ajax so my timing was perfect in that respect. I took the first job offered to me at Breeze ski rental at the base of Aspen Mountain. At some point during the season I was transferred to the Snowmass store where I met Jeremy Rungi and Jay Morin, two guys from Connecticut who had been in town a couple seasons already.
At the end of the season, Intrawest, who owned Breeze fired everybody and changed their stores. Jeremy bought into a well known and established snowboard shop called Sidewinder Sports that opened its doors in 1988 and was the first board shop in the Roaring Fork Valley. He hired me as the manager and for the ’02-’03 season I ran that store with him, as well as assisted the development and management of Aspen Mountain’s first ever terrain park and rail riding facility for snowboarders and skiers called Othellos Rail Riders, under long time Aspen local and skate board pro, Othello Clark. It was during that first full season I met Reggie Charles who was a frequent customer of the shop.
One night in the back of the store after hours, while drinking beer- we decided to start our own snowboard brand. We named it after the store and designed 3 sizes of boards to be made in a friends factory in New Zealand. John Malcom Smith of Rib Cage snowboards took our designs back to New Zealand with him that year, and a month later we had 6 boards – 3 to ride and 3 to sell. They sold quick and the response was crazy good so we planned to do more. However, Jeremy’s partner in the shop wanted a cut, or more specifically the entire brand, so Reggie who initially paid for the first run of boards, told the guy to take the boards and "shove them up his ass". Which he did, I think.
That spring, Reggie, Jeremey and I brain stormed on a name for the company and while working in the shop one day watching plastic women get out of shiny Range Rovers with toy dogs, Reggie saw the words High Society in his brain and called me. That was the birth. That fall we had new art from our design artist "The Flex" and 3 boards to release to the world. It went over really really well, and its been on ever since.
Check out Part-2 of 'money can't buy class'. Our interview with High Society Freeride's co-founder Jason Flynn as we continue to talk shop, industry stuff and lame trends!