Jake Burton Carpenter: A Sports Pioneer
Jake Burton Carpenter didn’t just build a brand — he built a sport and an industry. Charismatic, unaffected and individualistic, Burton spent his entire adult life championing a sport that early naysayers repeatedly tried to write off as a fad. Carpenter, 65, died Wednesday at the University of Vermont Medical Center. The cause of death was due to complications from recurring testicular cancer, a Burton spokeswoman said Thursday. What started in 1977 as a business built from a Vermont barn has evolved into a global business with 1,050 employees at its headquarters and 64 freestanding stores. Carpenter truly lived the brand, wear testing as many products as possible, and trying to snowboard more than 100 days each year. He not only supported riders with products and endorsement deals, but he and wife Donna Carpenter introduced instructional programs as well. In a WWD interview in 1999, when his $300 million company controlled about 40 percent of the snowboarding market, Burton said, “What you learn from watching other companies’ mistakes is that you can’t be too humble. Your biggest threat is your ego. I’m reminded of that all the time. Fortunately, not in a catastrophic way.” With 7.56 million participants in the U.S. last year, snowboarding’s domestic base
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