Randa: Board testing with Ride Snowboards

Randa Shahin

Ride snowboards has recently launched a plan to really step up the level of the products available for women.  In the spring they held a session with a handful of women who are strongly involved in the snowboard industry.  Attendees included athletes, buyers from snowboard shops, and other influential women. We spend three days discussing women’s snowboards, boots, bindings, and outerwear, including consumer wants and what athletes think are important features in their products.  One of the key elements we requested was technology that is developed specifically for women and not just carried over from men’s equipment.  Ride is going the extra mile to make sure their products are as specific to women as they can be.

On July 28th and 29th, Ride snowboards conducted a women’s specific product testing session at Mount Hood.  They asked a few team riders to be there as well as Molly Hawkins and Emily Kaelin.  Molly handles the marketing for Evo, an online shop based out of Seattle.  She is very passionate about the development of women in the actions sports,  so it was great having her there.  Emily is an important part of the design team for Ride.  It was really nice to see her shredding and hanging out with the ladies outside of the office.  The team members that were there included pros Hana Beaman, Megan Ginter, and Silvia Mittermuller, plus myself and young up-and-coming shredders Jessika Jenson and Rainey Pogue. 

Our board engineers, Doug and Paul, were there to mediate the testing session.


This testing session was a blind test. They provided us with eight boards that were 2011\2012 prototypes with 2010 graphics on them.  All of the boards looked exactly the same.  Four of the boards were park specific and four were all-mountain.  Even though all of the boards looked exactly the same, they all rode completely different, allowing us to make unbiased comments about the boards.  The engineers are really passionate about using the right combinations of technology to develop the best boards for women.

The engineers asked us ahead of time to not share our opinions with each other until the testing was all complete and to take the exact same run every time. We took full runs from the top of Palmer to the bottom of the Mile.  This gave us a chance to take lots of turns and test the boards on the way down to the public park, where we could jump and jib to test the park abilities of the boards.

Each run we stopped at the picnic tables at the top of the Mile chair, where we would take the time to fill out some questionnaires and swap out our bindings onto the next testing board.  The questionnaires were really specific about what they wanted us to determine about the boards and in each category we were asked to rank from 1 to 5.

In the end one all mountain board was voted 8 for 8, a clear winner.  The board is amazing and I would recommend that everyone give it a chance in
the future.  There wasn’t as clear of a park board winner, but I think that is because we all have very different expectations of our park boards.  Some like a softer board to jib, some like a stiffer board for stability on large kickers.

Overall the testing experience was amazing.  Spending more time with the team was great.  All of the girls on the team have amazing personalities and are all very kind and interesting.

It is an honor to be a part of a project that has so much potential and really cares about women.  Being able to have such a significant influence in the development of women’s products is a rare opportunity.  In a male-dominated sport, Ride snowboards is really focused on supporting and developing the Women’s side of snowboarding.

Thank you to Paul and Doug for putting so much love into our boards.  Also, big thanks to Casey Raymer, Ride global marketing manager, for really supporting the movement to develop our women’s industry.

Posted by Diana Sciandra on 08/28