Young snowboard CEO hits new peaks

Looking back, it was probably the sewage pipes that started it.

Shortly after graduating from high school, Quinn Aiello secured a short-term construction job and soon found himself changing outflow pipes, elbow deep in the least glamorous side of working life.

“I remember coming home and absolutely hating my day,” Aiello recalled. “I told my parents I was never going to do that again.”

Fortunately, this was a young man with a plan. Growing up with artist parents, Aiello had inherited a knack for working with his hands and a desire to be the master of his own career. Aiello experienced a Eureka moment while tinkering in his parents’ industrial workshop. “I’d spent a few days messing around with some wood scraps that were lying around, when I realized that I had actually made my first snowboard,” he said.

Holding this tangible product in his hands switched on a light for the teenager. “It made me see that, with time and effort, I could maybe make something out of this,” he said.

Things fell into place quickly after that. Aiello scouted around and quickly decided that Metropolitan State University of Denver offered the best opportunity to hone his design skills. He enrolled in the Industrial Design program, and by that November, he had launched his snowboard company: Kamber Labs.

Passion products

While Aiello was taking his classes, Doug Golenz, lecturer and faculty advisor in Industrial Design, immediately noticed that his snowboarder student brought a particular focus and sense of drive.

“Quinn is really pushing himself to get to where he wants to go with his design abilities,” Golenz said. “He has a healthy mix of curiosity, talent and drive, all of which are great attributes for an entrepreneur.”

When Aiello noticed that the ski industry was trending toward producing more mass-market, lower-quality products, he knew that meant a gap in the market.

“I definitely think we are seeing an increased demand from customers for handcrafted snowboards like ours,” he said. “People want bespoke products that have been made with genuine passion and care.”

Many leading industry players, Aiello said, have lost sight of their core values in the search for greater profits, and that leaves the door wide open for hungry young disrupters such as Kamber Labs.

“Small, locally based companies like ours need to hold the broader industry accountable by our actions,” Aiello said. “If we can keep innovating and pushing the boundaries of the sport, then we know that more customers will come to us.”

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Open slopes

The first three snowboards produced by Kamber Labs were powder surfers — boards without bindings.

Their other distinguishing feature? They’re cheap. And that really matters.

“Many of my childhood friends never got a chance to try winter sports despite living right next to the mountains in Denver,” Aiello said. “I wanted my boards to be accessible to people who can’t afford the usual expensive equipment or ski passes, because such opportunities should be available to everybody.”

Aiello especially loves how powder surfers hark back to the roots of snowboarding, where the focus was simply on getting out with friends and hitting whatever slopes you found.

“You can draw a lot of comparisons between powder surfers and skateboard culture,” he said. “Anybody is welcome, no matter their background, and so long as you have a board and a place to ride, you’re part of that community.”

Bouncing ideas

Last year, Aiello invited a fellow Industrial Design student at MSU Denver, Chris Hagenau, to join the Kamber Labs team. (The pair met in the program’s Furniture class and immediately bonded over shared design ideas.)

Finding a creative partner who shares his vision and passion for winter sports has been a game-changer for Aiello. “Having Chris on board has taken the design and manufacturing of our products to the next level,” he said.

As with most successful partnerships, there’s a distinct yin-yang aspect to their working relationship. “Chris comes from a different background than mine and has varied industry experience,” Aiello said, “which means we’re constantly bouncing new ideas off each other. It works really well.”

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Although he has big plans, Aiello is soaking up all the instruction offered in the Industrial Design program, which prides itself on lifting the academic hood to examine the whole design process in detail.

“We teach our students to use all the elements of design to create products that people actually want,” Golenz said. “We cover everything, including user research, manufacturing process, production costs and how to bring final products to the market at a good rate for the customer.”

Golenz believes his young business-owning student should soon be poised for a successful and innovative career.

“Once Quinn completes this course,” he said, “I’m confident he will have a very good idea of how to build a sustainable and profitable business.”