Adidas Snowboarding: What Led To Its Demise

Adidas quietly discontinued its snowboarding gear, and while most of the world was dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, we snowboarders waited to see if the three stripes would live another year. We never really got an explanation, aside from some YouTubers talking about it in a video that had way too much headroom.

It was truly fun while it lasted. There are varying reviews of the boots and the gear, but Adidas put out some of my favorite video projects of all time, including 3:00 A.M. The brand had a stranglehold on me.

Now, we have some answers.

Alex Sherman was a pro rider for Adidas who had some hammer clips in 3:00 A.M., and eventually became the brand's team manager. He was asked about the three-stripe demise on his recent Bomb Hole episode and said that everything started to fall apart when the brand changed departments.

Adidas snowboarding sat under the Adidas Originals department, alongside its skateboarding program. Shortly after the film Buzzcut came out, it was moved to Adidas Outdoor and housed under the Adidas Terrex umbrella. Mountaineering, trail running, mountain biking, and rock climbing all sat under this umbrella.  

“In the beginning it was like, yo, this could be really rad. They have amazing products, their margins are better, we can work with top-notch quality. The stuff that we were making was definitely like not the most waterproof,” Sherman said. “And so I was like, damn, this could be rad, they have this really sustainable collection. We can implement that in the boots. They have three-layer Gore pro. And so it shifted. With that shift, it seemed like there was a little bit of a game of telephone that didn’t go quite right, and it all had to do with the budget.”

The snowboarding program was big, though. Sherman managed a budget that paid riders more than $1 million collectively. The team was very street-heavy, which didn’t vibe with its new shift under the guidance of Adidas Outdoor. The higher-ups wanted everyone riding for the team to wear Adidas head-to-toe, and then eventually floated the idea of eliminating its boots program and sticking with outerwear.

“I was like, ‘All right, like that's crazy. We're a footwear brand. We make great snowboard boots,” Sherman said. “It took a while to get them here. We got the Lexicon. We got the Tactical ADV. Some people are switching from Burton Ions to these boots…We have a great product, why are we getting rid of it?”

You can listen to the entire explanation here in the video below:

A shift was coming, and Sherman was all of a sudden educating executives in Europe as to why it was important to keep the program.

Then one day, the business model changed. Adidas decided that they wanted athletes that were more horizontal. In other words, people who snowboard, but also rock climb or trail run. People who had influence in their local community. People who would be seen rocking Adidas gear at resorts.

“Straight up, I was like, ‘So, you mean influencers?’” Sherman said.