After a lot of debate, and a ton of research over the last few months we’ve decided to move our manufacturing to China. It was a pretty hard decision, but once we saw how much it reduced our costs, it wasnt hard at all! It also saves us a lot work and effort. Now we just place the order for the boards and they show up on our doorstep. Way more time to party!

We spent the last few months touring factories over there to find the one with the right balance of cost, workplace related injuries, child labor, and quality issues. We think we nailed it! Below is a video from one of our tours.

We hope you guys like em and we’ll see you out on the mountain a lot more next year since we wont be designing and building boards, yea!

As Harmony Korine so eliquently put it in the documentary Beautiful Losers, “no one was showing me the types of things I wanted to see..” This is the same notion behind the conception of Owner Operator.

With a passion for snowboarding along side an appreciation for the natural beauty of nature the high-quality technical outwear was more about clean lines and withstanding style as opposed to loud graphics and heinous color-ways. As another company that has made New York’s Garment District home base, Owner Operator is bringing more fuel to the fire under the label “Made in America.” With design and production the owners are able to walk into the sewing facility any time to check in on production, help out with construction details, or run down the block to buy more thread. So next time you go shopping consider the impact of every dollar you spend. Consider what you are supporting with your purchases.

So I havent had to make any major purchases lately. Its a good thing for the wallet but almost makes buying american harder. Its the little things that are most likely made over seas and harder to find made here. Or so I thought.
Read on…