Rome SDS

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Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate

Type of Company	Private
Founded	2001
Headquarters	Waterbury, VT, USA
Industry	Sporting Goods
Products	Snowboards, Bindings, Apparel
Revenue	Less than $4 million (estimated by industry analysts in late 2005)
Employees	12 (2005)
Website	www.romesnowboards.com

Rome Snowboards (or Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate (SDS)) is a relatively new snowboard manufacturer located in Waterbury, VT. It was founded in 2001 by Josh Reid and Paul Maravetz.

1 Company Information
2 External links

[edit] Company Information

Rome SDS was founded by Josh Reid and Paul Maravetz. Reid and Maravetz are college pals who worked together in marketing and product development at Burton. They felt the need to start their own company when they began to feel that the snowboard industry was putting out too many mediocre products that sold only because they were used by an Olympic snowboarder and marketed heavily. The two felt that companies had stopped caring about snowboarding. Thus, in late 2001, the two launched Rome SDS.

Rome SDS has been geared to be a brand that ties into the "cultural foundation" of snowboarding. Unlike most other snowboard makers, Rome SDS is not a spin off of a ski company and does not see snowboarding as a subculture of skiing. Both co-founders believe that snowboarding continues to be "rooted in the counterculture," if not to the same extent it was ten years ago and that as a result the "philosophical aspects of the brand are more important than in other industries."

What they mean is that they see a market of snowboarders who choose to snowboard and choose what kind of snowboard to ride by thinking more of just participating in a sport, and who believe and participate in the culture (or anti-culture) of snowboarding itself. Those people are Rome's target customer.

[edit] Ideology

Similar to how snowboarders in the early days of the sport had an almost anti-establishment ideology, Rome SDS is the same. Having stayed away from some of the more conventional marketing techniques, they provide downloadable posters on their website with writings such as, "Corrosion of the Corporate", "Deft, Defect, Disrupt", and "You can't reform snowboarding" (an obvious reference to the more rebel days of early snowboarding).

[edit] Pro Riders

Tired of seeing only Olympic Snowboarders being sponsored by snowboarding companies, Reid and Maravetz decided to team up with snowboarders like Jonaven Moore, whose edgy stunts are popular with hard-core snowboarders, Marius Otterstad, Bjorn Leines, Casey Neefus, Jesse Fox, and Jussi Tarvainen.