Josh Skiles, co-owner of Marhar Snowboards, started doing business with Nathan Morse years ago to explore a new, adventurous path in their lives. But the young business owners could never have imagined what selling their snowboards would eventually become.

            Before they built the business, they built and tested their very first snowboard. Skiles and Morse decided their board was marketable, when Morse told his friend it was the best board he’d ever been on. Holding Nathan as a trustworthy snowboarding veteran, Josh knew he could sell that board. “And I think that moment, that was the excitement, like we actually had something,” he said.

            Skiles explained how the pandemic became the reason the company built a retail center into its factory facility. “Because of COVID, we just didn’t know how or what the retail was going to look like,” Skiles said, “so we turned [our office] into a retail center, and that way we started doing boots and bindings and snowboards.”

            Having a retail center joined to the Marhar factory on Airline Road gives customers the ability to see the process that goes into making the snowboards they buy. “We’ve sort of created an atmosphere where we can give people an experience to show how you’re spending money,” said Skiles. Snowboards can range from about $400 to more than $900, because they are handmade and taken through lots of different steps of development. But each board is a quality product, giving people a good experience snowboarding on it. “Start to finish,” said Skiles, “you know that your snowboard is made right here.”

            The retail center’s location also increases the speed of delivery. “In our old building, if you ordered a board on Monday, the fastest we could get it to you would be Thursday,” explained Skiles. “Now, if you order a board at eight o’clock in the morning, we potentially could have it out by noon.”

            But COVID-19 hit the snowboard industry hard. “Because everything was shut down but skiing and snowboarding [were] outside, we, as an industry, couldn’t support all the new people wanting to experience it and have new equipment,” Skiles said.

            “Now, we’re seeing kinda similar things, but on the raw goods end,” Skiles continued. “In the normal year, we might have one or two material changes. Now it seems we have to make material substitutions all the time… now it’s, ‘How do we source material?’ And I think that’s the biggest challenge COVID’s hit our industry [with].”

            On top of making and selling quality snowboards, Marhar specializes in giving customers an online snowboard customizer. Skiles said that out of all the snowboard companies in the United States, Marhar is the only one customers can actually go on the website, upload their graphic, and see what their design is going to look like. “So, if somebody doesn’t like our stock graphics, they can spend a little bit more money and get whatever they want on it,” he added.

            Skiles and Morse gained another co-owner when one of Morse’s brothers, Andrew, joined Marhar Custom Snowboards after he got out of college.

            Even while weathering the storm of COVID-19, Marhar Snowboards is still a popular brand, selling through the company’s store and through other major snowboard retailers. Their fan favorite is the Lumberjack, a men’s snowboard they call the ‘Swiss Army Knife of Snowboards’. And for women who want the versatility of the Lumberjack, Marhar has the Lumberjill.

            Whether the Marhar team goes snowboarding around the U.S., or whether they receive feedback from other snowboarders, they feel great about finding their brand-name snowboards all over the country. “That’s wild,” Skiles declared.

            Visit Marhar Custom Snowboards at 5693 Airline Road; on their website, www.marharsnowboards.com; on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Or you can give Marhar a call at (616) 432-3104 or (231) 638-6165, or email at josh@marharsnowboards.com.

by Kate and Calvin Holtrop: Published in the Fruitport Area News, 2021, November Issue, page 11