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It Only Looks Easy

He's fought off the little guys by being big and rich, and fought off the big guys by being small and focused.

Burton says he owes it to his company to keep growing, that if you're not trying to get bigger then you're almost certainly going to get smaller. He brushes aside the notion that selling $900 Paul Smith jackets could be read as a sign of arrogance, of a breaking of faith with the kids who actually live snowboarding culture. He had little to do with that venture, but he's fond of it. "I'm definitely in on the strategic side of things," he says. "And I get pretty detail-oriented where I choose."

"What is your title now, anyway?"

"Well, I guess it's, you know, founder, chairman, owner. I think it's the most important thing that I do in the overall scheme of things. You know, versus public ownership, which would be a nightmare, or, you know, being owned by a big corporation."

For a big company, Burton can have a surprisingly small feel. Part of this is the way the company moves merchandise. I had tried to buy a pair of snowboard pants at the store at Eighty. They were brown with light-blue pinstripes, part of the rather avant-garde line inspired (and in part designed) by Shaun White, the 19-year-old who is by far the most famous snowboarder on earth circa now. The store had only one pair, a medium, and I needed a large. There were no other pairs in stock. A clerk called the New York store; New York was also sold out. Later, I asked the public relations person if she could find me a pair. No luck. There wasn't one large in all of America. That's because Burton doesn't make huge numbers of any one product; the line is vast and each item is produced in limited quantities, so that even if every kid on the hill is wearing Burton, there's a decent chance you won't see the same jacket on two of them.

"Scarcity's a principal objective for us strategically," Burton says. "What happens when you don't do it in this seasonal business is you end up stuck with inventory. What we sell preseason, that's what we make. We make a little bit more for reorder, more as just a service to our dealers, but not much. It's like 5 percent. And then we roll out the new stuff. The hot products are going to go really early. But we're going to have more hot products the next year, and we're not going to have the risk associated with overproducing."

Snowboarding is a massive, lucrative, mainstream sport, and yet the counterculture mystique lingers. Jake Burton personifies that exactly.

Somewhere there's a snowboarder saying that real rebels don't wield that kind of business savvy. But it's honestly hard to be cynical about Jake's love of this sport and its unruly image. Looking at the big picture, snowboarding is a massive, lucrative, mainstream sport--it is, remember, now skiing's equal--and yet, somehow, the counterculture mystique lingers. Jake Burton personifies that exactly.

Maybe the thing that makes Jake Burton such a successful leader is that people don't simply want to work for the biggest snowboarding company on earth, they want to work for Jake. And he wants to work with them. Not only because he likes his employees, but because they are the best available. He might attract them with an open-door dog policy and a lift ticket, but he keeps them by making them feel like they're near the beating heart of the sport. And because Burton means opportunity.

"You want to succeed," he says. "In this economy, you do need to grow. I have a hard time with those companies that say, 'Well, why do you have to grow?' That's how you keep good people. People are happier in companies that are growing. It took a long time for me to accept that and to realize that: They're happier and they're motivated, and it's a place where they want to be. So we've just got to accept it, you know what? That's how it is, man. I've accepted that. I don't necessarily have it all dialed in philosophically, but I do understand that."

Burton says that he hasn't really considered what would happen if he were to crash into a tree tomorrow. As many helmets as his company sells, he still doesn't wear one himself. In the short term, his wife would take over. Beyond that, he wants his kids to be set up, but he also doesn't want to put the crushing pressure of this company on their shoulders. He can't imagine selling.

"I just don't really have this appetite for a bunch of cash," he says. "I really love my job and the whole lifestyle, my friends. I mean, I'd become a slug pretty quickly. I'd probably turn into a lush if I were to retire."

Could happen. You certainly can't snowboard 10 hours a day, every day.

"And I really love the job part of it. I mean, I think what's going to be tough is when I feel like I'm at the point where I'm not..." The thought trails off. "I think I'm the best in the world at owning this company. I feel very confident. I don't think anybody could do a better job than I do in that role. You know, when I start to question that, that's when I'll think about giving it up."

Josh Dean wrote about American Apparel and its founder, Dov Charney, for the September 2005 issue.