Several reports said 12 snowboarders have died over the past month in the western United States alone. Others consider the sport still too dangerous. At least three ski resorts in the United States still ban snowboarding. While it seems that snowboarding has won the hearts of winter athletes, the sport still has not won over all critics. And if there's fresh powder on the nearest mountain, no one's expected at work in the morning. At Burton headquarters in Burlington, Vt., dogs are welcome, suits are not. It's serious revenue for a not-so-typical company. While his company is private and does not release financial or sales figures, Burton Snowboards grosses around $700 million a year, by some market estimates. His gear has been worn and designed by celebrity athletes such as Olympic snowboarding champion Shaun White. His name is now synonymous with some of the most popular events at the Winter Olympics and X-Games. Boards come with such names as Bullet, Joystick and Meateaters Road Soda, and retail from around $300 to $1,500, for custom boards. Today, Burton snowboards still have a hardwood core but are coated in laters of fibreglass and finished off with steel edges and acrylic graphics. In 1981, a wooden Burton Back Hill board sold for around $115. Three decades later, Burton now helms a snowboarding mega-brand. But the following year, sales doubled and a craze was born. His goal was to sell 50 snowboards a day in that first year, but at the end of it, he had sold only 300. Twice the router shot boards out, and they went into a wall. "I had this little woodworking shop, and I had developed this really small router to make boards. "I can remember sort of developing a board and trying to figure out how to make them," Burton said. That year, Burton dropped everything, moved to Londonderry, Vt., and blew his $100,000 inheritance to create his first crude snowboard and found his own company. And that idea was still that there was a sport there." It was a little different back then, but I wasn't very happy. "I guess you could call it investment banking. "So I graduate from college in '77, and I had a pretty good job in New York City," he said. The Snurfer was a passing fad in the 1960s to nearly everyone except Burton, and his hobby soon grew into an obsession. It was made by a bowling company, Brunswick, and it was not marketed as a sport. "I always thought that there was a sport there. "From the minute I got on it I was into it," he said.
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