The Mint - About Us The Mint Board Sports was founded in 1995 by Mark Gabriel. Mark realized the passion young kids had for the board sports and wanted to create something very special. For young kids who wanted a new movemint, the movemint was all about crossing over from one board to another without switching brands. The sideways sports movemint had arrived in full fashion and so had The Mint Board Sports. After partner issues in other ventures, The Mint Board Sports was put on hold for a few years. The Mint refocused it's energy in opening The Mint Gallery, which features surf art as well as fine art. The Mint has several of California's up & coming surf artists and fine artists under The Mint umbrella. The Mint puts kids 1st, where they deserve to be. If The Mint can be a part of kids progressing and pushing limits in any way through sports and art, that's where you'll find us. Because sports are one of the finest forms of art out there. See you at the top Mark Gabriel Building a Goldmine: An Interview with The Mint    Interview by: SURF BUSINESS The Mint, a hardgoods company based in San Clemente, CA. is one of a unique but growing breed of action sports companies that targets the boarder, whether they ride on the mountain, in the ocean or on a lake. Surfboards, skateboards, snowboards, wakeboards, skimboards - take your pick - The Mint makes them all. The Mint's founder and sole owner, Mark Gabriel, 29, started the company after selling his interest in the snowboard company, Purged Sled, to Fort Lauderdale-based Madison Sports and Entertainment. Gabriel recently spoke with SURF BUSINESS about his newest endeavor.

• SB: When did you develop this idea?
• MG: About a year and a half ago. About two months before the SIA (Ski Industry America) show last year in Vegas.
      
• SB: Are you the sole owner?
• MG: Yep.
    
• SB: Did you win the lotto or something?
• MG: Nope, I just saved up money. Every piece of change that came my way I was dumping into my company. I started out with Purged Sled Co., but then we sold it to {Madison Sports and Entertainment} in Florida. That was a nightmare. I started it from day one and basically did all the work. I started PBS Bindings too. My dad and I own that.
       
• SB: Where did you debut?
• MG: The first place we showed everything was at ASR in Long Beach. We had three booths and the show went off for us. The next spot we did was the Santa Ana (regional rep) show. That went really well and then we went to Vegas, to SIA, where we showed our snowboard line. {The Boards} are made in Irvine, CA, at CTI, the knee-brace company that does awesome research and development. They're going to be making my skimboards, wakeboards and snowboards because they have a brand new snowboard factory. I'm working with them to design my stuff.
    
• SB: Why did you decide to make so many different kinds of boards?
• MG: I come from a surfing background and I've snowboarded, skated and wakeboarded. I felt there was a need for a boardsport company because of the way the industry was starting to grow. I felt that a real board company needed to be started to cover all the sports. Our whole objective is to be a complete boardsports company and to have all the best boards, the actual product to do the sport no matter what.
    
• SB: How have retailers responded?
• MG: We've had nothing but awesome response from every single person we've talked to. We haven't really been selling to shops yet, except for going to a few shows. We're establishing our accounts right now. We figured out what accounts we want and we have about 75 percent of them locked in. Now it's just a matter of shipping them by June 1, for summer.
    
• SB: What types of accounts are you selling to?
• MG: Hopefully, Emeral City [in San Diego, CA]. We just opened Stormriders [at Mammoth Mountain, CA] yesterday. It's one of the best image shops in California. We're hopefully going to be in Val Surf [Thousand Oaks, CA] and Jack's Surfboards [in Huntington Beach, CA]. We have six wakeboard shops in South Florida that are really killer.
    
• SB: Do you have to approach shops from a different angle depending on what type they are?
• MG: Pretty much, except for the surf, skate and snow shops here in California. They know about all three, but you have to educate them on wakeboarding and skimboarding. They want to know about it and are getting into it.
    
• SB: What's the plan for your showroom?
• MG: I've had it for about six months. I've been building the sample line here for the past year. There are so many distributors around here that distribute to other countries that we're going to utilize it this summer and set up appointment for people to come down and check out our stuff in a comfortable place.
    
• SB: Are you giving your boards any media support?
• MG: We've been advertising in Plow, Wave Action and Snowrider. We have a full campaign that we've been working on - 12 ads that we're going to release. We are working on getting an inverstor to take control of 20 percent of the company so we can commit to all these advertisers for the next year.

J.H.