About Us
We are a few guys who love snowboarding, and we love making amazing snowboards.
We strive to create premium high performance freestyle and freeriding snowboards. We do so on our own in a small shop in New Jersey. We use the industry's best materials, and proven processes. Grinders, CNC, "Aerospace-Grade-Composites"; yea, we got all of that. What we do with it is make boards that kick butt.
Doug: I learned to ski in 1980. My first experience on a real snowboard was at Vernon Valley ski area in 1988. I rented 5 times that year, and for my birthday the following summer I got my first snowboard. I never looked back.
The desire to have my own brand, or my own board building operation, or both, fueled a 'reboot' of my education; and in 2007 I got a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. During that time I was struggling to land a solid internship. I luckily scored a job at a snowboard factory in VT. I learned many aspects of board building during that time. I met Dave around the same time and we were shredding alot and hanging out. I built a deck on my own at home (with very crude equipment) and I showed it to Dave. Alot of it is a blur now but we had many conversations about starting this whole thing up. We founded Blak Sheep in 2007 and made it an official company in 2008. We acquired a press, grinders, many hand and small power tools, created a workshop and set to work. 2 years of R&D and we had the Gnarly State Park Stik ready for the 2010-11 season. Over the next couple seasons we refined the design with better materials and flex profiles. We have learned so many things together about what and what not to do. The end result being some amazing snowboards, and some amazing snowboarding experiences.
The YT-1350 Superstretch (the Millenium Falcon - like board) was my favorite build to date. It was born on a sketch pad, and you can find a blog post about its details. We made four of these while all our equipment was packed in storage, and it rivals the best boards that the best factories can produce. I am still riding one as my go to board. :)
Dave: content coming soon