Thursday, October 23, 2014

Ruroc Now Sell Magic Snowboards!

 
The most inexplicable brand in snowboarding is back with another questionable product...

In our most recent Whitelines article we took an in-depth look at the entirely vapid topic of British snowboarding celebrities. One of the results from that scientific experiment is that we found that Simon Pegg is one of Britain's biggest snowboarding celebrities. A great snowboarding celebrity for the UK to have, the only downside being his strange penchant for wearing Ruroc helmets. We'd always given him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he wore them to enjoy some brief moments of celebrity anonymity (it was the only reason we could think of for anyone to wear one).

Actual picture of Simon Pegg

But it seems Simon Pegg might actually be sponsored by Ruroc, he could well be their entire sponsored snowboarding team, and now they're now also supplying his snowboards. This tweet just popped up in my Twitter feed.


The 'Viper Cascade' snowboard. How about that for some classic 90's snowboard naming. Snake Avalanche! 

I visited the Ruroc site to find out more and was directed by their homepage to a review on the Natives site. The Natives article features a video of a man you can't hear, who doesn't do any snowboarding...


But sensing that was a pointless exercise, they've also provided a written review which starts off by saying; "A real nice all-mountain board, solid enough to handle deep pow". You really have to question how the fuck they know that from riding it in a dome, but they're really adamant about its powder riding abilities because later they talk more about it remaining "really responsive in deeper snow or when venturing off piste due to the carbon compression running through the whole body".

It sound suspiciously like they're just making this shit up and seeing as the reviewer isn't the world's greatest snowboarder I'm not sure anyone should really take this at all seriously even if it was somehow tested properly.

So none the wiser I went back to the Ruroc site to take a look at what they had to say, and unfortunately it was mostly jargony bullshit...

"The legend continues. First Ruroc revolutionised helmets, now we're moving from head to toe into the world's first never wax snowboard! These True Twin Snowboards not only never need waxing they also outstrip the top snowboards made by some of the biggest brands across the world! With Carbon Compression Couplings, 3AX Fibres™,  TES Structure™, Razor Rockwell 48 edges, Isosport Sintered 7700 base, Mirrored wood core and a Stone Ground Base you'll wish you could have ridden Ruroc all along!"

A never wax snowboard, interesting, how does that work?

"This combined with a product that can't be named protects your base from the need to wax!"

Oh, magic then. Sounds legit, count me in, here's my £380.

They've got two shapes of snowboards each available in two different mouthwash colours and strangely they all have the same specification.

Here's their only promotional video, which like the Natives review also includes an impressive lack of snowboarding...


This was the most interesting thing about the video...

:|


A snowboard that doesn't need waxing sounds like a really interesting idea, but if Ruroc have really developed that you'd hope that they could show a little more proof by the time it comes to selling production versions. If nothing else, it would significantly improve their ability to sell more of them so there's a big incentive for them to do simple things like; run comparison tests with other snowboard bases, share some insight into the development process, allow some serious snowboarders test them out, or tell people how long it will last and guarantee their new invention. The lack of these things, or any other proof they could have supplied, really is strange and it makes us question the claims they're making.


So here are the 5 things we've learned from this situation:

1. Somehow Ruroc are selling enough silly helmets that they're not only still in business, but they've got enough leftover cash to branch out.

2. They're investing that cash in a famous millionaire and some magic snowboards.

3. They can't tell you how the magic snowboards work, there's no proof and there's no mention of any sort of guarantee, so you're going to have to hand over your £380 and trust Ruroc.

4. You'll be trusting a snowboard company where the official spokespeople are quite happy to announce publicly that they have quit snowboarding.

5. And finally you'll also have to trust a company that we caught telling magnificent porky pies just a few months ago. Here was the lie and here was the second lie to excuse the first lie.





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The final article from Misplaced Person which was a charming rant on the decline of Natives and coincidentally also included a link between Ruroc and Natives.

Honest Snowboard Brand Slogans

3 comments:

  1. So apparently 80% of their sales demographic are snowboarders. Can you guys shed any light on that stat?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very nice Snowboard..
    see Our site:
    http://www.shopconcretewave.com/collections/snowboards

    ReplyDelete

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