K2 Snowboarding has been working to strike a balance of speaking to a more broad, diverse audience. With the introduction of its White Wave campaign, which rolls up into the brand’s overall motto of “Seek and Enjoy,” K2 is hoping to encourage a healthy approachability and attainability factor to the brand that is sometimes hard to find within snowboarding’s extremely niche, exclusive community.
“If you are a family, or somebody who used to snowboard, or you might be on the edge of getting more interested in something else— fat bikes or SUP boards, or something—we want to be always advocating for the sport in an approachable way, so that audience who doesn’t necessarily live the lifestyle but they still enjoy snowboarding, we are still involved with them.”
At the same time, Waldron says the brand has still been able to maintain a core energy and mentality by working closely with its team and the snowboard community. Part of that stems from the brand’s dedication to constantly refining and developing new products.
Innovation at K2 starts with the brand’s facility, explains Waldron. “We have this machine shop that is fairly open to anybody who works there. We have a lot of people who tinker on their own.” The shop lends itself well to that mentality, allowing K2’s employees to make boards from start to finish, piece together bindings from different parts, and slightly modify boots.
“We’ve got a lot of capabilities and a lot of employees who are DIY snowboard enthusiast,” Waldron says. “The designers are always running around with something that’s hacked or pieced together, so [there’s] a lot of self-motivated innovation in our personnel, but also from the top down it’s a key initiative. Our brand has always been based on this quirky scientist vibe. The history of K2 has always been product oriented and kind of science-nerdy. We love that element and will continue to push it.”
Get a look at everything K2 is working on in the above interview with Waldron.