Stagione 1
We are joined by Tom Monterosso a.k.a. T Bird. T Bird spent 13 years at Snowboarder Magazine where he made a name for himself covering some of snowboarding's most iconic stories for the publication. In recent years, T Bird has taken on different types of media-related projects than he had typically done for Snowboarder. He's announced some of the biggest events in snowboarding, and most recently was tasked with writing and directing a documentary called “Rough Around the Edges: 30 years of Ride Snowboards," which will be available on Youtube in the coming months.
We are joined by Jim Ryan, who dropped by the studio during his trip to Boston for the premiere of the new Teton Gravity Research movie, Magic Hour. After Jim blows our minds with a story about a recent ski trip he took in which he found himself bushwhacking through the Chilean jungle with cowboys and horses, we talk to Jim about his massive 2022 season. He spent the year crafting an epic segment for the new TGR movie in which he scoped out, hiked, and ripped on some of Grand Teton National Park's highest peaks.
We are joined in studio by Madison Rose Ostergren who was in Boston with Warren Miller Entertainment premiering their 2022 movie, Daymaker. Madison is a pro skier out of Jackson Hole and has spent the last few seasons emerging onto the scene taking part in a number of badass film projects. Madison gives us some background on how being a ski racer from the midwest turned into landing a two page spread in a ski magazine and ultimately launched her professional ski career to where it’s at today.
We traveled up to Burlington, Vermont, and sat down with Jason Levinthal in his new Intergalactic Headquarters. We get into his early days starting the first company to bring twin tip skis to market, some of the groundbreaking products he introduced with Line Skis, to being bought by K2 Sports and handed the responsibility of creating the Full Tilt boot brand on top of continuing Line, and how that all lead to where he’s at today with J Skis.
We sat down with Kyle Smaine on a video call from the house that he sort of owns in Lake Tahoe. We talk to the former halfpipe world champ about what he's been up to since leaving the competition scene roughly 5 years ago. Kyle talks about how his relationship with his long-time sponsor, Fischer Skis has progressed from just an athlete-brand relationship into a much more involved role on the product development side of things.
We sat down with Neil Soucy, the snowboard buyer here at TSM, to discuss some of the differences that we’re seeing between the ski industry and the snowboard industry right now. We talk about some of the things we see on both sides of the business and compare how they’re done in skiing vs. how they’re done in snowboarding. As a snowboard buyer, Neil provides a strong perspective on what he thinks the snowboard side of the business is doing well and where he thinks things could be done better.
We sat down with Ben Fresco, the Marketing and Product Manager at Elan Skis USA. We get into Ben’s ski industry background, starting off with stories of selling gear to Geraldo Rivera and MLB umpires in Lake Tahoe, to eventually moving back east to get started at Elan. We talk about the rampant success the Elan brand has seen in recent years, specifically in the free ride category with the Ripstick Series. Eric and George recently joined Ben and some members of the Elan team on a trip to their factory right outside Bled, Slovenia, so they were really stoked to be able to recap the trip. The boys discussed their round of golf, Slovenian cowboy parties, and most importantly, the biggest takeaways from seeing Elan’s production process.
For the 10th episode of the Boston Ski Party, we have a very special episode for you. The Ski Monster cofounders George and Eric sit down to give you the full, unfiltered TSM origin story. Starting from their days as ambitious college kids with an idea to start a ski retail site, all the way through the insane twists and turns it’s taken to get TSM to where it’s at today. There has been no shortage of roadblocks and wild stories over the years, so sit back and enjoy the show.
We sat down with Justin Heanue, the National Sales Manager of Blizzard Tecnica USA. We started it off by catching up with Justin and discussing the last time he was in Boston, when he and the Tec/Bliz team joined the TSM crew for an afternoon at America’s most beloved ballpark (Fenway). We then got into how Justin got started in the ski industry and he explained some of the steps he had to take before finding himself in the role he’s in today. Heanue then discussed his current role at Tec/Bliz, while getting into some of the differences between his day-to-day on the ski side with Blizzard, and the boot side with Tecnica. We ended the episode with a massive revelation in regard to the pronunciation of our guest’s last name.
We sat down again with Ethan Korpi, the North American Product Manager of Nordica. Korpi joined us again in studio as our first repeat guest here on the BSP. We picked up where we left off in our last conversation talking about our European adventure with Nordica, but this time focused more on the boots side of production. We get into all things ski boots and end up discussing the new 5th generation Doberman Boot, which you only know about if you listened to the last episode with Korpi, because Eric accidentally leaked it. We go into detail on Nordica’s boot production and testing facility, and talk about some of the structural dynamics of the Tecnica Group’s ownership. George also joined in on the conversation to pick Korpi’s brain in regards to his extensive boot Knowledge.