Well I guess its not breaking news, but it is official as about a week ago, Burton is restructuring the company and axing their skate programs. This means that Analog will striclty be a snowboard outerwear company as it was from the beginning. Gravis will become an Asian-only lifestyle brand with its headquarters moving to Tokyo, which means unless you wanna go to Japan to Gravis shoes, you will not find them anywhere in North America, Europe or even the southern hemisphere. They are also getting rid of Forum, Foursquare and Special, but who gives a shit about those companies, they've always sucked.
And what happens to the surfers and skateboarders riding for these companies? Burton will work with each team rider individually on an exit plan to transition them out of the brands. Basically saying your fired and go fuck yourself, find someone else to ride for.
Now I'm all for companies getting back to their roots and doing what they do best, but the recent decision of Burton to restructure the company is most definitely a blow to the skate community. For the past couple years Analog and Gravis have seemingly become companies that have represented skateboarding as cool core brands, especially the team members chosen to ride for the brands.
But what can you do? Obviously Jake Burton doesn't give two shits about skateboarding, I mean why should he, he's a fuckin snowboarder. The question I have is, why spend years building these brands and skate teams and then say fuck it? Doesn't make any sense to me, but maybe Gravis and Analog were becoming "cooler" and more popular brands than Burton and Jake didn't like that so he decided to give them the axe.
Who knows why Burton decided to restructure its lame company, the only thing I know is that I'm not going to Japan anytime soon, so that means I wont be able to skate in fuckin Filters anymore. God dammit!
You can read the full article here.
The Big Burton Restructure