Sean Tedore Surf The Snow

In his Neoproto days Sean Tedore blended style with creativity, was known for his explosive riding and also the equally explosive slams. While Tedore lived the pro snowboarder life, he also worked towards a mechanical engineering degree that would ultimately shape his career. Tedore put in his time as a Product Development Engineer for K2, Marketing Manager & Product Development Manager for CAPiTA and today works as the Global Brand Director for RIDE Snowboards where he breathes new life and excitement into one of snowboarding’s revered brands.

Originally featured in Snowboard Mag Volume 11, Issue 1 | The Product Collection
Portrait by Tim Peare

RIDE Snowboards: Global Brand Director
Home: Seattle, WA
Snowboarding since: 1990

What drew you to accepting the job at RIDE?
Just the opportunity to work with a company with so much history. I’ve looked up to RIDE ever since I first started snowboarding as a little kid. To have the opportunity to get in there and make it a badass company again is what I’m super excited about.

Sean Tedore Surf The Snow

Jackson Hole, photo: Kyle McCoy

You came from CAPiTA, can you speak to the history there?
Yeah. Blue and I are super good friends, been friends forever. He came to me when I was working at K2 and was like, let’s do this. So he hired me on to design all the boards and to also take on a marketing role. I worked as team manager, did marketing with Blue and then all of the board shapes and designs for the past three years.

You also helped out Corey Smith with the Spring Break boards.
Yeah, the Spring Break boards are awesome. Corey came to us with this super cool concept that he’s been doing. I got to go ride with him in Tahoe and ride his boards, which are really fun and you can ride really low-pitch. And then he came to us to do a collab, to make boards. So we talked it through and then I did all of the shapes, they turned out super cool, I’m really excited about them.

Of all the boards that you’ve been riding, what’s your favorite board for powder right now?
Well, there’s a bunch and obviously all the stuff I designed I’m pretty stoked on. RIDE’s got a board called the Alter Ego that is pretty badass. I’ve fallen in love with it lately. It’s got a split tail so you can either ride it clipped, which makes it super stable on hardpack, or you can pop the clip and can get a really soft, flexing tail that gives you a loose feel in powder. It’s really fun.

Sean Tedore Surf The Snow

Jackson Hole, photo: Kyle McCoy

There are a lot of trends happening across the board in shape and design. What are your thoughts on that and why do you think that is happening?
Snowboarding is going through this phase of creativity. All of these different shapes are pretty awesome. We’re seeing a lot of surfboard-like shapes that give you a different experience or feel. You can go in your backyard on some really low-pitch hill and get a totally different experience than riding hardpack with a freestyle or cambered board. For example, I’ve got really bad knees, so to be able to go out and ride a board that I can have a super fun experience on hardpack, slush or whatever and have one of the best days just turning is pretty cool. To see that coming into snowboarding is a great thing. Plus, you get personality with the shapes: pointy noses, blunt noses, swallowtails, whatever it is, your personality comes through with the shape.

What’s the benefit for the average snowboarder to have a powder board in their collection?
When you’re learning to snowboard you hear about powder days, you hear that they are the best days ever, but my first powder day was completely terrible! I fell all over, couldn’t stand up, couldn’t do anything. But you get these boards now that are specifically designed to ride powder and you can become decent at riding powder very quickly, and in my opinion it makes riding powder so much more fun and the learning curve so much shorter.

Watch more episodes of Surf The Snow: Smartwool and Slash’s Alex Pashley, Flow’s Dale Rehberg and Christenson Surfboards’ Chris Christenson.

Subscribe to Snowboard Mag here.

Find more information on JH Pow Wow here.

Check out Jackson Hole Mountain Resort here.