AN ARKADE RETROSPECTIVE with CAPITA

Randy Vannurden

Photo by Andrew Miller

Words by Daniel Cochrane

Contributions by Ephraim Chui & Mark Dangler

Brand identity. For many businesses, brand identity is a carefully curated and detailed experience. An excruciatingly documented road map of processes meant to guide and further a company as they seek to achieve their place within a respective community. In an industry such as snowboarding, where image is everything, and consumers' whims can change quickly, brand identity can lead to a company's success or failure in only a few seasons. CAPiTA is undisputedly a leader within the snowboarding industry but ask for its identity as a brand, and you can get several responses; artsy, trendy, weirdoes. However, ask from within the walls of THE MOTHERSHIP, and you get a completely different vibe; family, creativity, and, most crucial, authenticity.

At Arkade, we have enjoyed an excellent relationship (some might call it a crush) with CAPiTA for many years. Their riders have graced our covers more than any other company, and we continuously geek out over the CAPiTA catalog when we can get a copy in our grubby little hands during trade show season. We really believed it appropriate to celebrate CAPiTA's launch into a third decade by deep diving into what exactly makes the brand tick, commemorate some of those covers, past ads, and of course, hear how they managed to pull it all off with such style and grace.

Ephraim Chui has been a part of the CAPiTA family in a design capacity from its earliest inception. For the first two seasons, Ephraim describes his involvement as "loose" as most creative processes were done by Jason Brown and the HUMAN5 crew (Simon Redekop, Mike Swaney, Jared Penner, and Tyler Lepore). However, it is worth noting that in those first days that Ephraim created the original B.S.O.D. graphic/logo that is still used to this day. Since 2004 he has been the company's Art Director, guiding many players' artistic endeavors to create a cohesive identity. Few people can speak to the inner workings and the creation and cultivation of the CAPiTA brand as Ephraim, and so we sat down for a little back and forth about it all.

Ephraim emphasizes two things about those early days; an unlimited and relentless drive to cultivate a place of expression and creativity and practically zero plan as to how that would be achieved.

On art; "We were all putting our energy out there as young people, trying to build something meaningful that we can pour our creativity into. None of us really understood there were boundaries per se. What boundaries could there be for a little indie snowboard company? We were definitely determined to create things that we were hyped on. It was really more about how far we could push ourselves, and CAPiTA became the platform that we had to do it. And if that happened to fuck shit up, then it happens. Everything cool in snowboarding at the time was so exclusive. We weren't really feeling that and wanted to create a more open and welcoming space. There was a palpable anti-corporate sentiment, but our vibe was more pro-independent, pro-creation, we're just gonna figure it out ourselves than it was anti-anything, really. Our name CAPiTA came from "per capita," which by definition means "by and for the people."

And on the business "plan"; "CAPiTA conventionally speaking, has terrible brand discipline. We have a million logos, wordmarks, and tag lines. Reps complained that we change logos and direction every year, and no one could keep up. We should really be a case study for how not to do branding. Chalk that up to making it up as we go along. But it ended up working out because it freed us to do what felt right.

Most brands start with an ideal form in mind and build towards it, setting down rules, molding the brand into a preconceived shape from the very beginning. We didn't know how to do any of that. We were operating for a long time as a bundle of energy, ideas, and inside jokes. Our only guide was whether or not we believed in it.

Yet undeniably, CAPiTA is CAPiTA. There's no mistaking us for something else. It's a feeling that's singularly CAPiTA and cannot be dissected into parts or replicated. In any given marketplace, you can compete by either being the best at looking like everyone else, or you can be like nothing else. By just sticking to our ethos about making what we believe in, CAPiTA has become like nothing else. We are free to create whatever we want as long as it feels like CAPiTA.

From a brand standpoint, I think when you set out to do something that feels true to yourself, there's bound to be some misinterpretation and, as a result, backlash. Maybe over the years, we expected people to understand us without much explanation because we were in these conversations every day, and it formed an echo chamber of stoke. After a few years, we knew that people thought of us as a weirdo company and that some shops wouldn't carry our stuff, but I think the creative crew was largely shielded from its impact on the company financially.

This is something that's significant to CAPiTA's D.N.A. and the brand's development. Blue has always been the most vocal advocate of the work and decisions of CAPiTA's artists/designers and team riders. As long as you can convince him that it's true to CAPiTA and that YOU believed in it, he'll go to war for you. In that sense, he's the first Defender of Awesome."

Plan or not, CAPiTA definitely struck a chord within the snowboarding world, and soon the company found itself trading in its "small upstart" status for industry acceptance, even if it still contained a dose of bewildered amusement. After navigating their first few seasons, CAPiTA, though successful, still had a perilous route to find their way through. Ephraim explains, "As a small company, the tiniest piece of debris can knock you off course and cause you to crash and burn. And since we've always flown in uncharted territories, the debris field is thick. Throughout our 20 years, there have been many times, whether as a group or individually, people have pulled off herculean efforts to save the day.

Our sales team has always had a significant impact. People like Sweaty, who has repp'd CAPiTA in the Northwest for all twenty years, Emmett and Graves that came shortly after that, year two or three, and Wilmoth and the rest of the reps have been huge contributors. Johan Malkoski is the ringleader in that area, and together, they've been fighting in the front lines for all of us, believing that beyond the sale, there's something more we're giving back to snowboarding. Bob and Bruce's support at C3 in Seattle has been tremendous, and that's just on the North American side. We distribute in 42 countries and have exceptional people contributing to a common purpose in all. Our Italian connection has always been strong, with G.P. and Martino flexing their brains and experience to tow us through rough waters. It kinda blows my mind every time how we're able to come together and pull off these miracle saves."

Of course, while rough and full of uncertainty, the first few years can still feel like the salad days compared to the minefield that comes with growing into one of the industry's giants. In a typical business model, meetings would be held, and phrases such as "relevance" and "market share" would be passed around. Even worse would be an insistence to stay the course, keep doing what's working, and go into autopilot. A tactic that inevitably leads to a company losing what made them unique in the first place. For CAPiTA, this challenge came, but, truly was conquered without the boardroom doublespeak. Ephraim addresses how CAPiTA has successfully avoided both; "Trying to stay fresh and relevant is probably the first nail in the coffin. The younger you are, the easier it is for you to see what's inauthentic and pandering. It just smells off, and you cringe. We just do us. That's enough since we're continually evolving as people also. All of us live interesting lives and are open-minded enough to gain new insights through our own personal experiences; this, in turn, drives what CAPiTA becomes. You only become irrelevant when you try to be something you're not because then you're nothing. It's hard to go on autopilot when the whole time it feels like we're a little spaceship hurtling through space at a ludicrous speed. Going so fast, our hull is creaking and threatening to break apart. But the crew's all in, and we're doing repairs and upgrades on the fly, just holding it together. It's crazy all of the people who've joined the ride; everyone's pitching in to keep this spaceship going. All the crafts-people and number-flexors at The Mothership, the ownership group, our reps and distributors, buyers and shop kids, and people who read through our entire catalog. It's crazy to think that we come from so many different paths but are bonded by a shared love of snowboarding and that magical fucking feeling when you're on top of the mountain, looking down at the endless possibilities of where you can go. Naturally, there have been many challenges over the last 20 years, but none of us could have anticipated them that early on or knew how big they would become. When CAPiTA started, one thought was that it would be a sleeveless inside-out T-shirt company. So fast forward to creating The Mothership–literally building the world's first clean energy snowboard production facility from the ground up–it's just something we could not have even imagined early on. CAPiTA's energy is the real vetting process. If you're down with our vibe, then whatever you do just makes the fire burn brighter. "

From the group here at Arkade, it has been beautiful to witness CAPiTA reinvent what a snowboarding brand can be or even become. From having Blue return to S.L.C. for the world premiere of D.O.A. to trade show debauchery at several CAPiTA after parties, and run-ins with Corey Smith in hotel halls (we still randomly quote him "I think I overshot the landing last night") CAPiTA has always been more than a snowboarding company for all of us. We wish the countless people behind the scenes many more decades of successfully Defending Awesome.

Cale Zima Feature // Issue 6.3