Never Summer Industries is a

snowboard Snowboards are boards where the user places both feet, usually secured, to the same board. The board itself is wider than most skis, with the ability to glide on snow."snowboarding." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 17 Mar ...

and

apparel Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...

manufacturer based out of Denver, Colorado. Tim and Tracey Canaday founded Never Summer snowboards in 1991. As the company progressed, they began expanding beyond snowboarding, such as a clothing line. All Never Summer merchandise is made in Denver. In 2016 they celebrated their 25-year anniversary by filming a documentary on the culture of the company the Canaday brothers established.

History

It all began in 1983 when Tim and Tracey Canaday founded their first snowboard company named “Swift Snowboards" with their friend Scott Rolfs. The two brothers were originally from

Fort Collins, Colorado Fort Collins is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Larimer County, Colorado Larimer County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 359 ...

. Tim (fourteen at the time) built snowboard shapes in his high school wood shop class. Back when the Swift company was established, the Canadays were working out of their garage. After the company was unsuccessful, the Canaday's took a break from the business and moved to

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. A few years later in 1991, snowboarding became more popular. So Tim and Tracey moved back to Colorado and renamed their company Never Summer, after the

Never Summer Mountains The Never Summer Mountains are a mountain range in the Rocky Mountains in north central Colorado in the United States consisting of seventeen named peaks. The range is located along the northwest border of Rocky Mountain National Park, forming t ...

in Colorado. They are located at the western edge of

Rocky Mountain National Park Rocky Mountain National Park is an American national park located approximately northwest of Denver in north-central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and ...

, extending to Routt and

Arapaho National Forest Arapaho National Forest is a National Forest located in north-central Colorado, United States. The region is managed jointly with the Roosevelt National Forest and the Pawnee National Grassland from the United States Forest Service office in ...

where pockets of snow last year round. In the early stages of Never Summer Industries, it was just the two of them. Tracey drove around and sold the boards out of his

Honda Civic The is a series of automobiles manufactured by Honda since 1972. Since 2000, the Civic has been categorized as a compact car, while previously it occupied the subcompact class. , the Civic is positioned between the Honda Fit/City and Honda Acc ...

while Tim was the creator and designer. After another move to Denver in 1993 to be closer to suppliers, Never Summer took root and developed into a fully operating manufacturer and international distributor. Never Summer is one of the innovators of

P-tex Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE, UHMW) is a subset of the thermoplastic polyethylene. Also known as high-modulus polyethylene, (HMPE), it has extremely long chains, with a molecular mass usually between 3.5 and 7.5 million amu. T ...

sidewalls, now a common feature on the product lines of many manufacturers.

Controversy

Workers in the Never Summer factory precisely hand-make all snowboards, longboards, and skis. Due to the company's high demand back in 2016, they fell extremely far behind in orders according to ''

The Denver Post ''The Denver Post'' is a daily newspaper and website published in Denver, Colorado. As of June 2022, it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 ...

.'' Every day, Never Summer's workers produce 120 snowboards, 50 pairs of skis and 60 longboards. However, this was not enough to keep up with demand.

Notes

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References

* Official Never Summer Industries Catalog
Entrepreneur Magazine "How Never Summer Shredded the Snowboard Industry With Innovation"
Snowboarding companies Sporting goods manufacturers of the United States Manufacturing companies based in Denver