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Street Beat: Arbor Collective

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Sep 02, 2010

Photo: Arbor
Arbor President, Bob CarlsonSince day 1, Arbor Collective has been in the action sports business to do right by the planet and have some fun along the way. Established in 1995, Arbor is an OG of the "greening" of the industry. Not only are their skateboards, snowboards and apparel performance-driven, but they're friendlier for the environment. With Arbor, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Bob Carlson, President of Arbor, recently had me over at their company headquarters in Venice Beach. Hearing their company story was truly inspiring. Enjoy!

- Danny Spyra

Photo: Arbor
The Recycled sweatshirt incorporates bamboo material

BNQT - YOU UTILIZE A LOT OF BAMBOO IN YOUR BOARDS AND APPAREL. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING THIS MATERIAL?

Bob - Well, that's a great question. We use it in our skates, snowboards and our apparel. Bamboo is a really unique combination of sustainable, renewable and organic and those three things don't always come together.

But the cool thing for us is the performance benefits of bamboo on a wide range of fronts. There is no material we know of that allows you to produce more environmentally friendly products but also allows you improve upon products at the same time. Bamboo is a solid wood replacement and has more compression strength than steel based on weight. So, in snowboards and skates it provides a tremendous amount of strength and return and pop and energy and allows us to reduce weight at the same time.
Photo: Arbor
The Arbor Hybrid GT skate features artwork by Jeff
Soto
As a material for apparel, the bamboo cellulose fiber is incredibly soft, more breathable than cotton, wicks moisture and has better UV protection. So it ends up being an amazing fabric to make clothing out of. The goal at Arbor is to build environmentally friendly products in a contemporary light that's relevant for today's generation. With bamboo we can add the performance benefits and story that's not hippy.

BNQT - HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN USING BAMBOO?

Bob - On any large scale we are the first to introduce it in snowboards - probably about 9 years ago. We introduced it into skates about 5 years ago and apparel 3 years ago.

Photo: Arbor
Bombing on an Arbor skate

BNQT - ARBOR MANUFACTURES SOME GREAT SKATEBOARDS. CAN YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT SOME OF THEM?

Bob - Longboard skates are now one of the fastest growing segments in skateboards. We've been lucky enough to have four record-setting sales months in a row. We do a wide range of skates. Some specifically for freeriding, downhill freeriding, drop-thrus shaped to get the lowest profile to the ground. We do some hybrids that are good for both hills and skating around town. We do some fun mini skates and we do pool skates as well.

We think our message and how we're using materials and art and bringing it all together can be relevant in a range of categories in skates. The goal for us is to use materials that provide the best amount of durability and performance. So a lot of times we blend materials, for example we blend 7-ply Canadian hard rock maple with bamboo to get the lightweight performance with sustainable bamboo. Our goal when designing a skate is ergonomics, functionality and performance. Built in with every skate we do is collaboration with an artist. That's probably the root of our success on the skate side.

Photo: Arbor
The Arbor Hybrid Bamboo board incorporates artwork
by Arbor Collective member, Dave Kinsey

BNQT - THE PROPER COMPANY NAME IS ARBOR COLLECTIVE. WHO DOES THIS GROUP CONSIST OF?

Bob - That's a great question, I've never had that. The Arbor Collective is how we describe ourselves. The skate brand is Arbor Skateboards, the snowboard brand is Arbor Snowboards and the apparel brand is Arbor Apparel. But the group, the people and the people we associate with is the collective. It's the artists we work with, it's the suppliers we work with, it's the partners we have at different levels in the business that are all coming together to do something that is different, more relevant and more environmentally friendly for the board sports industry. It includes the people that work for us at our headquarters in Venice Beach and all the people we turn to to make the product what it is. These days, it more and more includes our social networking and customers. Our customers are more linked to the company than ever before. The community that is involved with Arbor is very much the heart and soul of Arbor Collective.

Photo: Arbor
Arbor donates at least 5% of net profits to Rock N
Renew

BNQT - ARBOR ANNUALLY DONATES AT LEAST 5% OF THE NET PROFITS TO GROUPS THAT SAVE AND RESTORE THE ENVIRONMENT. WHO IS THE GROUP FOR 2010 AND WHAT DO THEY DO?

Bob - The group is called Rock 'n Renew and they're an education and restoration group that uses today's most popular musicians to turn kids on to things that are going on with the environment. I like this group because they have a relevant approach to the environment. We can support them and their educational efforts - a lot of which take at concerts and music oriented events.

In our case, we're also able to work with them to specifically create a restoration project in Hawaii. The results that our funds are going to are very tangible for us. We can go to Hawaii and see the beginnings of a restoration project that we have been responsible for. I certainly look forward to seeing the finished product.

Photo: Arbor
The Wasteland Dominator surfboard by Firewire

BNQT - IN ADDITION TO PRODUCING SKATEBOARDS AND SNOWBOARDS, ARBOR RECENTLY COLLABORATED WITH FIREWIRE TO MAKE SURFBOARDS. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE KOA DOMINATOR AND WASTELAND DOMINATOR BOARDS?

Bob - We've been doing skates for now going on 11 years and snowboards for 15 years. A large chunk of our customers and us surf as well. So we naturally got the question, "When are you going to produce surfboards?"

Arbor stands for natural, environmentally friendly materials that improve performance and style and Firewire's DNA is very closely linked to ours. We started with bringing their boards into our showrooms, built a relationship with them and it was only natural to do a collaboration. For us, the collaboration is on two fronts:

- The Koa Dominator uses one of our original woods, sustainably sourced Hawaiian Koa wood, which is a great material. We've used it for years on snowboards and skates so it was a natural place to start. So we brought that classic Arbor look to their Dominator, which is their best selling line of boards.

- For the Wasteland, we took our flagship look and feel, which is our inlaid tops, and this year there are 70 different, individual pieces of wood that have been laser-cut and inlaid together where the actual veneer creates the graphic. It created an incredibly powerful graphic where the graphic is actually wood. It is pretty special.

Photo: Arbor
The Jib System

BNQT - TELL US A BIT ABOUT THE ARBOR AWARD-WINNING SNOWBOARD ROCKER - "THE SYSTEM". WHY IS IT THE BEST ROCKER DESIGN YET OFFERED?

Bob - That's a great question. We approach rocker with real skeptical heart. It was something we had started by trying different designs that were out there and were unhappy with the way a lot of them performed. Some performed well but not in all scenarios, conditions and terrains. We wanted to try to find a better balance.

We wanted to try to build a true rocker board with all the benefits of a rocker model but give it enough edge-hold where it could be ridden all-mountain, in the pipes, in the steeps, in speed and you could count on an edge and turn when needed.
Photo: Arbor
The Park System, which incorporates artwork by
Sylvia Ji
So we first developed a parabolic rocker where the curve of the rocker softened as you got to the ends. So as you got up to speed you engaged your outside contact points. Then we unblended our traditional progressive side-cut. We ve always used a tri-radial progressive side-cut that was blended, so you have 3 radiuses next to each other, and you cut off the points that naturally happen when you blend 3 radiuses together. By doing that we brought the points back and we put them directly under foot. By having four contact points, with two of them directly under foot, we're able to re-engage the edge of the board so you can have the edge contact that you needed, the control you needed and the pivot points, but you still have all the benefits of a rocker board. It's loose, fun, jibby, buttery, easy in mixed conditions and an incredibly fun, overall board. We've found that it is the most-ridable, most-usable and most functional rocker system that we believe is out there. The system is a fusion of interdependent technologies that support successful rocker performance.