Spark R&D - Part 2

GEAR:30

BLISTER

Arts, Design, Skiing, Snow, Snowboarding, Sports, Outdoors, Bike, Technology, Gear

4.9 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last week we talked to Will Ritter, the founder of the biggest splitboard binding company in the world, Spark R&D, about the origin story of Spark R&D, and some of the milestones and setbacks that the company has achieved — and survived — along the way.

This week we’re running Part 2 of our conversation, and Will and I discuss some of Spark R&D’s current products, discuss the old hard boots vs. soft boots debate, talk collaborating with companies like CAST Touring and 22 Designs, and using solar power at the Spark R&D factory.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Sparks’ new "Pro Series" of bindings (1:05)
Should we expect any drastic changes in Spark's splitboard interface? (4:43)
Thoughts on Karakoram’s new interface? (14:02)
Hard boots vs. soft boots (15:48)
Will the next biggest innovation be in bindings, splitboards or boots? (21:30)
Spark's collaborations with CAST Touring, 22 Designs, Phantom, etc. (29:31)
What’s the best question I haven't asked you? (35:54)
Using solar power at Spark R&D (38:45)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Gear 30 on the Blister podcast network. I'm Jonathan Ellsworth, the founder of Blister, and you can check out all the stuff we're doing and reviewing over at blisterreview.com.
0:18.8	Last week I talked to Will Ritter, the founder of the biggest splitboard binding company in the
0:23.8	world, SparkR&D, about the origin story of SparkR&D, being based out of Bozeman, Montana, and building
0:31.8	all of their products in Bozeman, and we discussed some of the milestones and setbacks that the
0:36.6	company has achieved and survived along the way.
0:40.2	And this week we're running part two of our conversation, where Will and I take a closer look at some of Spark R&D's current products.
0:47.3	We get into the old hard boots versus soft boots debate, and Will talks about collaborating with other snowboard and ski binding manufacturers
0:55.7	like Cast and 22 designs.
0:59.0	And so, let's go ahead and jump back into it with Spark R&D founder, Will Ritter.
1:07.3	Pick one product, one of the new products to talk about.
1:11.7	So my favorite, you know, thing we have going next year because I'm, you know, I'm not just
1:18.1	the president.
1:18.7	I'm a client, but we have our pro series of bindings coming out for this next year, which
1:23.9	is something that people have asked for over time.
1:27.4	You know, I've, we've always kind of made the best binding for the most number of people,
1:33.3	I feel, you know, or is like the value that you get out of the product.
1:38.3	Like, it's going to work great for almost everybody.
1:40.6	But now with the pro series, we changed out about, you know, close to 20 different
1:46.6	components on the bindings for that high-end user. And so, you know, it's the first time
1:53.9	we're doing something that's at, you know, a premium price that has all the premium materials
2:00.6	and so on in it.
2:01.7	So it was kind of an interesting exercise to go through as far as like just looking at
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BLISTER, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BLISTER and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.