Skiboarding Lifestyle's Interview with Jason Levinthal

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Interview with Jason Levinthal
Skiboarding Lifestyle: What was your inspiration to create such a radical design of skis?
Jason Levinthal: "Well, I was snowboarding and in-line skating, but I always loved skiing the most. And, the best aspects of the two sports I was missing on my long skis. And I couldn't ride backwards like I could on my snowboard. And do a lot of those tricks, and I couldn't carve as well as I could with my snowboard. And then I also didn't have any manuverability like I did on my in-line skates. Where it was really easy to do technical tricks. So I took snowboarding and skating and put it on my favorite sport, which was skiing, and kind of adapted those two, the best parts of those two sports. I knew that they had to be shorter and twin-tipped like a snowboard. Then I took technology I knew from skis, like wood cores and the sidecut and I didn't have plans to make a toy, because, before that, it was just the "Big Feet", and those weren't even worth riding. I wanted something that I could use in the park and do the same things I could do on my snowboard. I didn't want to be held back at all, if anything I wanted to do more."
SL: Your first model that you designed in college, which model, if it still exists, was the original design?
JL: "It was actually more of a prototype. From there, I made 50 - 100 totally different models. From the first one I made in college to making them in my parents garage. When I got out of college I was making them different, every single one and my friends and I, like Mike Nick, he was a high school friend, and some other people, we would just go riding and see what we liked and then the first real production model was really, really wide. There weren't many of them, but they were what we thought as being the best of the time. That was at the time, I don't know what you would call it, it was kind of like a 70's design. They ended up being half the length of a ski and half the width of a snowboard. I was basing it more on snowboard width, it was really, really wide. And the tips weren't that high, but somehow we ripped on them. There's stuff still on our website which is really old in the videos still from those boards, Mike (Nick) was pulling misty flips on them, somehow, I don't know. Now I can't ride them, but back then we thought they were the best things in the world."
SL: What gave you the confidence to manufacture the skiboard?
JL: "I knew that no ski company could do it because every time I would get into a new sport the product would suck. The sport was cool, but the companies that made the gear always did a shitty job. Like my roller blades, my snowboards, and my skis, would always break. There's simple little designs in them that were really bad. I would always modify them myself by drilling holes and putting new bolts in them. I thought, if I don't make this, some big company is going to come along and make some shitty version of it. So, I knew that my knowlege and experience of riding on the product, I knew that no matter what the big companies did, I always knew the most about it. Because, I was right there on the snow using it. And I was just confident that if I learned how to build them, they would be the best ones. I am also a perfectionist and very mechanical, I used to build decks and houses in the summer for a job. I don't know, maybe I was just crazy! (General Laughter)"
SL: What is the process you use to design a new skiboard?
JL: "Well we take a board that we have and we actually never really look at anyone else's because we have already come to the conclusion that what we're doing is the best direction possible. So we'll take the boards we had from last year and just throughout the year I'll make up little things, like I wish this was narrower, or this was higher, a little less sidecut, softer, and all my riders do the same thing. About fall this year is when we start prototyping for not this winter, but the following winter. So we're one winter ahead. So all this coming winter we'll be testing boards for the following. All last year we were riding this coming winter's product. So, throughout the winter we'll think of things we want to change, me and my riders, and then I'll just sit down with a pen and just say ok, let's try this much narrower, or this much different here and there, and we'll make one prototype with maybe two changes, so we can feel what's different, and say is that better or worse, just trial and error, pure trial and error. There's no magic formula, you've gotta make it, ride it, change it, make it, ride it, change it, and that's how you come to the best product. Sometimes, you make a mistake that ends up being really good."
SL: The Line FreeFlex binding is definetly the best in the world, what does it do that other bindings don't?
JL: "The number one thing is that it holds your boot tighter than any other binding in the world. What that does is give you more control of your boards. The only control you get to your boards is through the binding. So, when your boot goes edge to edge, there's no play in the binding. It instantly reacts, if you move an 8th of an inch, the binding moves an 8th of an inch, so your board moves. A lot of bindings out there, there's a lot of play. When you put a lot of force on them when your traveling down hill, landing jumps, if you looked at it in slow motion, you'd see the boot wobbling all over the place in the binding, and with ours, the binding holds it so rigidly tight, that you just get maximum control. The other thing we did, was we were the first to use a four-hole pattern, where there's only four screws in the center holding it to the board, and we use t-nuts so the bindings don't rip out. The only spot on the length of the board that doesn't flex is the little four hole pattern underneath it. Most other bindings don't allow the board to flex because the binding doesn't flex. Our binding lets the board flex underneath it. There's also rubber under the entire length, so if the board want's to flex, it will, and the binding won't restrict it."
SL: The Line 1260 and the Chris Ostness Dragon skis were prototyped last year. What made Line add skis to its arsenal?
JL: "I actually didn't decide to add skis. I always planned on making long, twin-tipped skis, but it was going to take a lot longer for people to buy them and believe that they were doable. Years ago, I though I wanted to make a twin-tipped 190, because I used to ride 203's, and I started doing 180's on them before I made the skiboard, and even two years ago, nobody would have believed twin-tipped skis would have worked. It was difficult enough to convince people they wanted twin-tipped skiboards. The market just wasn't ready for twin-tipped skis, but I always knew that the company that I wanted to own would be a ski company, but the word ski wouldn't mean what it means today. It may still be called skiing, but the style and the product has radically changed. It's gonna be boards from 80 cm to 190 cm. Just depending on your style of riding. I've always wanted to do it, it's just a matter of it being the right time, with more and more big companies doing it, I've had more and more skiers calling me up saying they want long twin-tips."
SL: Last year the first ever skiboard movie SB1 was filmed, what was that like for Line and skiboarding in general?
JL: "It was Huge for both! It was definetly. Movies are everything. Movies are how you understand what's going on in the rest of the world. Because before that, there was no way of knowing what a good trick was, or a bad trick. It really informed a lot of people about the sport. And a lot of riders understood where they were in the sport, and what were the next tricks to be trying."