Signal’s twice-yearly drop allows them to cater to both customers, while also building based on their customer numbers, and not retail projections. Because of this many customers have been conditioned to wait until after the holidays for the inevitable sales. Most brands spend a whole year developing a new line that drops in August-and then has effectively four months to sell through in order to make a profit. To further shake things up, Signal recently began releasing boards throughout the winter, instead of just in the fall like the rest of the snowboard industry (and ski) industry. By working closely with feedback from the 50 odd beta subscribers, Lee fine tuned the concept and in fall 2016 launched what is now Signal’s hallmark product, the Signal Subscription Service. And after some tinkering Signal launched a Beta test just three years ago. Before Birch Box was even around, another health-food centric subscription service caught Lee’s eye. It just gave us the freedom to try new things.”įrom this freethinking philosophy came the subscription service approach, another first in the snowboard industry. “It definitely taught me that you can look at business in a different way and find different avenues for revenue, and that you can find different ways to connect with people. “We were making more money on content then we were snowboards,” says Lee. And as a result, the series began to float the brand, instead of the other way around. The videos garnered a sizable following on YouTube, where Signal found an audience not in the core, endemic snowboard community looking to see the latest tricks, but more with more casual enthusiasts and generally curious onlookers wowed by the creativity and ingenuity of it all. They even test the boards on hill to see real world applications of the experimental builds. Think recycled skateboards, glass, 3D printed carbon powder-some seriously zany stuff. Each video installment follows a wild and crazy snowboard concept as it rapidly moves from sketch to prototype within Signal’s Huntington Beach-based factory.

Dave lee signal snowboards