Shift'D Mittens

We've been a t-shirt and apparel brand now for almost 3 years.  It's been pretty damn fun being creative and producing apparel that relates to the Action sports industry, especially snowboarding.  Being an Action Sports apparel brand is cool and all but we want to move into more.  We really want to design and perfect some really killer gloves for the snow sports.  Since we are always Ripping the Rockies (RTR) we have the perfect lab to make the best gloves.  We also want to provide those $100+ gloves for far less than $100!  So here's a pair of Mittens that we've been designing and testing this Winter.  We want to have an all leather pair of mittens in our line up and we feel that these will fit the bill:

Here's the details on these bad boys:

• 100% all natural Grade 'A' Cowhide leather outshell with dual layers at palm and fingertips for added protection and durability.
• Hipora insert for waterproofing that will block water out but let your hands breathe. 
• 200gm thermolation laminated inside with black micro fleece polyester fabric for the liner.
• Additional 100gm thermolation padding behind the back palm, perfect for intense fist bumps!
• Neoprene cuff with velco strap to provide a secure fit and much needed moisture resistance traditional cuffs can't provide. 

These things are extremely light, tough, and warm! The inside has individual finger compartments so no need to wear glove liners with these.
A pair of gloves like these would easily sell for $100 but we will not be asking this much.  We know that you will like the price we ask when they become available for purchase, on shiftdunion.com .  But for now, the price has yet to be determined.  (Probably somewhere in the $60 range...)

For now we are still trying to decide on a name but we are leaning on Brownies.  If you have a name suggestion leave a comment here on this blog post or tweet us @shiftdunion.  If we love your name suggestion & go with it, you will get a FREE pair!

As always, thanks for checking in with us.  Peace!

We're Hiring!

Is the Action Sports industry and the personal style that comes with it something you are passionate about?  Are you an avid action sports nut (snowboarder, skater, surfer, etc.) who loves to rock out or bump beats and live this lifestyle that so many dream about?  If so then we may have a great opportunity for you, and yes, you can make money here.  Here's the skinny: 

We currently are looking for up to 5 people who want to work with Shift'D Union and be a Shift'D Ambassador.  We are looking for 1 person on the West Coast, 1 in the PNW, 1 In Colorado, 1 in the Midwest, and 1 on the East Coast.  The person from each of these locations must meet the following:

• You must be at least 18 yrs old and have solid knowledge in the action sports industry. (we may consider 16 yrs but you need to really convince us you have what it takes).
• Must be knowledgeable with Social Media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, You Tube) & post regularly.
• Must snowboard and/or skate or some other action sport and be active in it.
• Has a core group of friends that can really help push the brand.
• Retail and sales experience preferred.
• Friendly and outgoing who can talk to anyone at anytime.  Not a douchey sales person, just someone who can speak with confidence and really showcase their knowledge and passion! 

Why you must meet the above criteria??  We are looking for these people to help spread our brand and be a VOICE for us.  We've been around for nearly 3 years now and we are starting to grow into more than just a t-shirt brand.  Our passion is snowboarding in the Winter and biking and skating in the Summer.  We are going to start branding custom gloves for snow sports and possibly board shorts in the Summer but we need help with these efforts.  We need to bring in as many people as possible, people who are willing to purchase from our website and be down for the core of the sports we're involved with.  This is where YOU, our Shift'D Ambassador comes in.
We have currently pulled out of retail stores so that we can keep our prices low and affordable for customers.  We also want to connect with our customers on a more personal level through our packaging and shipments.  Our products sitting on a shelf in a store doesn't do this.  Word of mouth will always be more powerful than anything.

Here's where you get hooked up & make $$$: 

• All Shift'D Ambassadors will get 50% off anything on shiftdunion.com through their own private promo code that is assigned to them.  Our prices are already extremely low so the additional 50% will be lower than what you'd find anywhere else.  It'll basically cover the cost of shipping the goods to you.  
• You will also get a another 15% off discount code that you will be allowed to give out to your homies so they can get a discount when they purchase from our website.
• We can see when your homie discount code is used.  For every purchase that your friends or contacts make using your homie code, you'll get 20% of the sales.  Ex.) If your buddy spends $65, you get $13 of that.
• We pay out via PayPal every month so you'll need to create your own PayPal account.

That's it.  We will help you out in any way we can but this is basically all on you and your drive to make some cash and grow with us.  You rock the gear and talk about it, you'll sell.
Are focus is to not really focus on the big name athletes in the industry.  Our focus is on the core people who live the life, the people like you and me.  We are all in this together so why not unite and take over.  Now's the time to get with this, join Shift'D Union!

If you are down to be a Shift'D Ambassador then please send your Resume or any other info to shiftdunion@gmail.com.  Please be sure to include your Instagram and Twitter handles in your email.
Sell yourself to us so send over anything that you think will help your case and be creative.  Show your personality and just be yourself.

Good luck.

Handcrafted Boards

This past September we attended Snowboard on the Block in Denver as regular attendees and not vendors.  It was fun to just browse around and see all of the dope brands showing off their cool shit.  Watching the rail jam, drinking beers, and just mingling with all of the good people who are just as involved in the snowboard industry as we are.

One brand that I personally have been keeping my eye on over the past couple of years is Colorado brand OZ Snowboards, who happened to have a booth set up at the Block Party.

I was stoked to be able to get up close and see their boards first hand.  I had heard how incredibly light they were and obviously I had seen how pretty their boards are through Facebook or Instagram.  They lay down the sickest wood veneer topsheets I have ever seen!  I also got to meet Adam Browning, owner of OZ.  Real cool dude who definitely knows his shit.  He gave me some run downs on their boards and yes, I was impressed!  If you don't know about OZ then I will let them explain.  This directly from their site:

The OZ snowboard Company is a Colorado based cutting edge snowboard manufacturer. Our feather weight snowboards are made from aerospace grade tri-axial carbon fiber, honeycomb kevlar and full length laminated poplar core. We use bio-renewable epoxies, recycled sidewall materials and our factory is 100% powered by the wind. We are the future of snowboard design, environmental responsibility and domestically produced snowboards.

Impressive to read but even more impressive to see!  From their site they look to have a park and pipe board, an all mountain board, and two different types of splits.  What's super cool is that when you order your board online they give you the opportunity to pick one of their top sheet designs or you can even customize your own.  

Let me just get to it and attach a bunch of images of their beautifully hand crafted "Wood Veneer" boards and let you formulate your own opinion.

They're not just all veneer boards either.  They also have a pretty solid line up of printed top sheets by talented artists.  Check these out.

NOTE: If you think you have what it takes to throw down a sick design like one of these, email your portfolio to: buildmyboard@ozsnowboards.com and maybe we'll see your work on an OZ board.

So which one would you ride, a wood veneer top sheet or one of the artist driven designs?  They are all so sick it would be a tough choice for us, but all we know is that it'll be a good time getting our feet on one of these gems. Let us know your choice by commenting here on the blog.

Keep up the great work OZ Snowboards.  You do Colorado proud!

 

Fuck Outside Magazine

I am sure you may have already seen this sticker from Rome Snowboards, you know, the one that says "FUCK OUTSIDE MAGAZINE"??  Well I recently came across this sticker and it instantly caught my attention.  I mean, it says the word "FUCK".  That'll do it every time.  To me the word "FUCK" is like using an exclamation point at the end of the sentence.  It's such a meaningful word, I FUCKING love it.  It just makes the conversation peice more intense like I am not bull shitting when I drop the F Bomb.  FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

Ok, so now that I got that off my chest let me get back to this sticker that Rome posted on Facebook.  I for one don't read Outside Magazine because I am usually outside snowboarding or working on designing new prints/clothes, or whatever.  So of course curiosity won me over and I decided to see what the stink was all about.  Rome had posted the pic and provided a link to the magazine where some dude by the name of Marc Peruzzi had written an article on Jan. 27th titling it, "Can Snowboarding Be Saved?"  My first thought was, oh great, another stupid article about how snowboarding is on the outs.  Blah blah blah.  I have heard this before and I was about to close out and not even read it but then I thought, maybe I should read it.  After all, Rome went out of their way to create a sticker about this mag.  Maybe there is some shit in here I should see.

So I proceeded to read this article and right at the start Marc says:
 "I was a state college kid the first and only time I rode a snowboard. This was in the 1980s and snowboarding was still illegal at New Hampshire's ski resorts. A classmate from New York City named after Dylan Thomas (and who called everybody he didn't like a chucklehead) brought a board to campus after the winter break. It was a Burton Woody. Skegs on the base. No edges. You just strapped your Sorels in and went."
Right there I thought to myself, why is this dude talking about snowboarding when he isn't even intimately involved in snowboarding??  This dude is a skier.  He doesn't know about boarding, yet he seems to think he knows everything about the sport, the lifestyle.  Anyways, right there I knew I was reading something by someone who had NO right discussing the topic at hand.

I continued on with this article and this Marc character proceeds to say how much he has helped snowboarding.  His words:
"Still, I supported my friends in the fight to open resorts to the fledgling sport, hired snowboarders to run nascent board departments in 50-year-old ski shops, helped Olympic snowboard racers figure out their stance angles and tuning, ran photos and profiles of snowboarders in a magazine about skiing, chased powder with snowboarders, climbed and descended Mount Rainier with snowboarders, and cracked many an après beer with snowboarders."
This guy right here, this guy is the shit!  He's hired snowboarders and even showed Olympic boarders the proper stance angles and how to tune a board, or should I say, he helped them "figure" it out.  Well, I guess all of us boarders owe this dude huh?

More reading and some laughing at the contradictory BS I was seeing and then this comes up:  "Many a destination resort will admit privately that snowboarding now accounts for less than 15 percent of total revenue. Others have seen snowboard visits cut in half. Sales of snowboarding gear are down dramatically, too, a whopping 29 percent over the past six years. Where did all the snowboarders go? Many are skiing. Others simply quit."
Oh yeah, the infamous statistics of how snowboarding is on the outs.  15% total rev, sales cut in half.  Notice he says "Many destination resort" and "privately"?  Who are these resort(s) and if they're so private about their stats how do you know?  Where are these figures coming from?  I sure as hell don't see it when I am riding Keystone, Breck, Vail, ABay.  In fact, "Many of times", I see more boarders on the mountain than I do skiers.  What does that mean?  I don't know and I don't care.  Yes, there's a mix but I'm sure as hell not counting boarders to skiers.  Ain't nobody got time for dat!  But I am not seeing the numbers drop like these "privately kept" statistics and I really never feel outnumbered by skiers when I'm riding; at least here in Colorado.

More reading and this part really screams BULLSHIT!:  "The sport was invented by humble folk in the Midwest (by a friend's father) and Vermont (by some older classmates of my wife), but it was adopted by Southern California. Actually it was more of an alien rendition than an adoption. Most snowboarders in places like Maine, Montana, and Colorado have little affiliation with the carefully cultivated image of "action sports." Then there's the ageism. Over 30 years old but still get out and shred? The industry lives in absolute dread of you."
So I'm going to break this statement up in 3 parts.
1) first of all do you like how he throws in parentheses to show his credibility?  He's basically saying that he knows people who knows people therefore the shit must be true!  Fuck you asshole!  Let the dispute carry on with snowboarders and Gapers like you get the fuck outta here.  Your dumb ass is obviously talking about Jake Burton Carpenter and Tom Sims and the dude (Sherman Poppen) who created the Snurfer.  Burton claims he's the man, Tom claims he was (RIP Tom).  If you want the real story click HERE or watch We Ride, The Story of Snowboarding below.  It's a must see!:


Regardless of who actually created the first real snowboard, Tom Simms created and founded style for snowboarding.  He brought the part of snowboarding that everyone today models after, which is that fun factor.  He founded the lifestyle!  If style and fun is an "alien rendition" then I guess all snowboarders are aliens.  I mean, GNU is fucking weird...
2) The second part of that statement that bugs me out is where he says that Maine, Montana, and Colorado have little affiliation with action sports.  I almost don't have words here.... I can't speak for Maine and Montana, but Shift'D Union is from Colorado.  This clothing brand is a shred threads clothing brand rooted so deep to action sports it's ridiculous!  
Snowboarding is a lifestyle and we embrace the lifestyle fully!  MEMO Marc Peruzzi: Action sports does not only take place in SoCal!  It's everywhere people can get down with sports at an action packed level.  In the Rockies we board in the Winter, we downhill bike in the Summer amongst many other activities.  We skate all over the city of Denver.  Colorado has no affiliation to action sports huh??  
3) In the third part he says that anyone over 30 is not about that shred life.  I guess I haven't grown up then because my late blooming ass is 34 years old and I'm all about the shred life.  Guess I should leave it to the tweens and hang up my boots because a suit and tie is best for me...  Fuck that!  I'm in the prime of my life and can shred every day of the week.  Test me bitch, I will shred all over your face!

Well, I could go on breaking this piece of shit article a part but I will let you do that.  He basically goes on to say all brands target teens but then mainstream snowboarding has changed the dynamic of it all by making it lose it's "mojo", therefore the destruction of the sport.  Older boarders move onto back country and leave the park (which that part is true for me), but whatever, here's the link CLICK HERE.  Read for yourself and see where your opinions lie.  Also don't be shy to leave a comment.  After all, us snowboarders are almost extinct...

So now I see why Rome created the sticker and I applaud them for standing up for snowboarding.  Thank you Rome Snowboards for being awesome and taking a stand.  Also, if you want this sticker for free email Rome at FOM@romesnowboards.com and put "Fuck Outside Magazine" in the subject line.

And, if you want to share your thoughts with the editor of the magazine, send him an email:
smoulton@outsidemag.com (Sam Moulton). Let him know he's a dick!

Stand up for snowboarding and live the shred life folks! 

Shred on,
Brandon Bettes
Owner of Shift'D Union Clothing Co.
  

Denver Weed Map

The next time you're visiting Denver and you are looking for a shop to score some weed peep the Weed Map! Or, if you want a more complete list of locations CLICK HERE!

We Salute you!

Pittie Love

We just released a new design that was hand drawn and hand lettered of an animal that we are very proud to have as pets and as friends, the Pit Bull.
Here in Colorado this loving breed has a bad rap as the cities of Aurora and Denver have bans on Pitties.  Yes, they discriminate these animals as they feel that it's the breed itself that is bad.  I know I know, people are still very misinformed and sadly only believe what they hear from the news and what's on TV.  But, all Pittie owners know the truth about these dogs and know that they are farrrrrr from what the media hypes them up to be.  So, we decided to create a design that accurately portrays the Pit Bull Terrier.  You may have seen this from our earlier post regarding Goals for 2014 but here it is again:

 From sketch to digital rendering:

Hand Printed on a Ladies ultra comfy tee:

 Printed on a Men's T-shirt: (The response we got for Men's tees was awesome so here it is)

 Close up pic of the screen print:

  
What we are planning to do is donate $10 of every shirt that sells to a Colorado Pit Bull rescue.  We've been looking around for reputable places to offer donations and two look to be promising.  They are:

1) Peanuts Place: http://peanutsplacebullyrescue.org/
2) Colorado Pit Bull Rescue: http://pitbull.rescueme.org/Colorado

If you are a Pittie lover and want to help then you can buy a Pittie Love tee for just $15.99 right from our web store.  For Ladies Click Here.  Also, after such a great response by people we've decided to move forward with printing this on Men's tees.  Now available HERE.

As Pit Bull owners ourselves, we personally want to thank you for your support of this amazing breed and remember, keep spreading the positive word about these dogs!

Much love,
Andee, Brandon, Ellee (black dog), and Griff (Grey Dog).

5 Goals for 2014

Well Happy New Year folks!  Here we go again, a new year, a new number.  I hope that you were able to ring in the New Year with your family or homies.  No matter if it was some BUCK party or just laying low on the couch, as long as it was with the people that matter most to you.  And if it was with yourself, that's ok too. 

To start the list of 5 goals for 2014 I for surely will not go into some stupid resolution on how I am going to change the world or some other ridiculous wish.  I have never been one to throw out some over the top New Year's resolution since I would never follow it; and I am sure 99% of you out there would do the same.  I do however like to create a goal(s) for myself for whatever it is I am striving to do.  So for this case I want to put together a list of 5 goals that I already incorporate into my life or will want to push forward with through out this year.  I hope that maybe you too will find these points helpful.

1.  Be a dog.  What do I mean by this??  Be nice, loving, forgiving, everything a dog is.  Think of it like this.  Everyone loves their dog.  Dogs are so nice and loving and they forgive in ways humans never do.  They are always there for you, support you and always are happy to see you.  I am not saying you can always be happy (I am sure you will have your bad days just like everyone else) but try to remember why dogs are considered a man's best friend.  Everyone loves dogs because it's the love they give that will always remain supreme.  If you are having struggles, simply ask yourself "how would my dog approach this"?
*And, if you are saying my dog sucks then try walking him.  (see #2).

2.  Get fit.  I know I know, this is probably the #1 NY Resolution but the problem with this is that people quit.  They last about 2 weeks and then they find excuses to not workout.  You should be living a healthy lifestyle for one reason only; YOU WILL FEEL BETTER!  Make it a point to workout at least 4 times a week.  Make it a point to eat clean.  Don't drink those sodas and energy drinks that you see all the celebs drinking because they aren't drinking them.  Those energy drinks are full of water.  Trust me.  Live a healthy lifestyle and you will live a better lifestyle.   If you aren't down with a traditional gym then look into other areas of workout like Boxing, Biking, Jiu Jitsu, Skating, Snowboarding, Walking.  Find an activity that is fun and it won't be working out.
*From #1, walk your dog as exercise.  They need it too and will behave better if they get it, trust me!

3.  Don't Judge.  With the internet at our fingertips and social media being the #1 past time hobby, it's easy to see things and people and pass judgment onto them.  Don't judge these people.  You aren't any better than them.  Let them be them and you be you.  If someone is judging you in a negative light, oh well.  They are obviously threatened by you or something.  Brush it off and continue living your life and follow your own path!

4.  Donate.  Clean out your closets and drawers.  If you aren't using it let it go and give to someone who will use it.  It really isn't hard to go through your old stuff and toss out what is collecting dust.  Find a charitable organization that works for you and donate.  Plus, once you de-clutter your closet you will find that your personal fashion style will get better since you can now see what it is you want to wear and will be able to put together those bomb fits!  I personally use the VVA (Vietnam Veterans of America) since they are a non-profit organization that help out the Veterans of all ages.  They give back in a major way.  Also, do your research on Charities and know which one is legit.  Here's an article on the 10 worst just in case you were searching.

5.  Limit Social Media.  Stop getting on all of the Social Media platforms like Facebook / Instagram / Twitter so much!  Interact with people face to face or make a phone call!  People these days are losing their ability to socially interact with one another.  Awkwardness is at an all time high people and we need to get back to being social via face to face interaction, not through our phones or computers.   I also truly feel that kids these days are losing the sense of reality since their entire existence is built up in some social media platforms.  Real is the world outside, the people who are walking, breathing, talking, doing.  Get out there and partake in the real world!
*This will definitely be one goal I will work on more so!

*6.  BONUS goal.  Get smarter, get sexier.  There are millions of ways to educate yourself and it doesn't even have to cost you a penny.  I strive to always learn and grow.  An educated person is a sexy person. ;)  Ashton nailed it with this video.  A must watch.


So those are just 5 (with the bonus goal) that I live by and want to improve on.  I hope these too will help you better yourself or at least get you thinking.  I could easily throw out 5 more but no need to overload, there is always next year.  Cheers!

Brandon Bettes aka @Gnar_Nasty