The Burlington Free Press reports this morning: Burton Snowboards will shutter its South Burlington manufacturing facility in June, forcing 43 Vermonters from their jobs. The decision means the company born three decades ago in a Londonderry barn and which sponsors U.S. Olympians will no longer manufacture boards in the United States, aside from a relatively small number of prototypes.
All right, Crappy Economy. I’ve had enough.
I was okay after losing two jobs to you in one year.
I can handle my lack of health insurance.
I don’t mind riding a board that’s a few years old with a cracked edge and peeling topsheet.
But this: yesterday’s announcement of the closing of the Burton Snowboards manufacturing plant in Burlington, Vermont… You’ve gone too far, Crappy Economy.
Dude riding a snurfer at the very first Burton US Open in 1982. (photo compliments of Burton)
Snowboarding was born in Vermont. It’s where Jake Burton Carpenter started building wooden prototypes in a garage. It’s where the US Open of Snowboarding has been held every year since 1982. It’s where Olympians like Kelly Clark and Hannah Teter grew up. Vermont is snowboarding.
And now you’re taking away our version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory – the beautiful dance of man and machine at the world’s biggest snowboard company’s last local manufacturing plant.
Kill the Burton Manufacturing Center? Why don’t you take all our cows and maple trees and dirt roads and the University of Vermont and french fries with gravy while you’re at it.
You’ve made it nearly impossible, Crappy Economy, for a pioneering corporation to operate in my beloved state. That is unforgivable.
Okay, Luke. Calm Down.
Our fearless leader here at Vermont Ski Areas Association is right. “At the end of the day, the important part of the news is that Burton Snowboards — the company and the brand — remain in Vermont, with its world headquarters here,” said Parker Riehle, VSAA’s president. Thank you for keeping it in perspective, Parker. It’s true, the headquarters, including research and development, aren’t going anywhere. And it’s true that the majority of Burton’s snowboards have been made in Austria and Asia for decades now (only if you have a high-end board like the Vapor, or if you’re Shaun White, are you likely to own a board actually produced in Vermont).
But it’s the symbolism involved. The BMC was the guts of it. It’s where the real Vermonters put wood to band saw — Vermonters who ride Stowe all winter and chill at the Huntington Gorge swimming hole all summer. It’s where a dreamy design idea, thunk up in the offices next door, could be realized. There’s real history in that building.
You’ve won this time, Crappy Economy. And I’m angry. But don’t worry – us sideways riders will avenge this death. We will fill the void with new snowboard-industry jobs in the technology sector.
And I guarantee you, Crappy Economny, that somewhere in this state there is a talented young person in a garage, designing the next big thing.
-Luke
