Union Binding Company

2004–2013

There’s just no way to encapsulate all the work that went into Union. The drives up to Seattle. The flights over to Colico, Italy. Yearly binding sessions with Martino. A skrillion ads with George. Hair-pulling-out with Johan. Wisdom from Gumby Bob. Catalogs. Boxes. Things pressed into plastic. Things embroidered into leather.

It was this incredible time in my life. To be trusted with a brand. To watch it grow. To be part of a team. To be cared for. To be compensated fairly.

I missed my brothers I worked with all those years. George and Martino became family. To see where Union is these days? It kinda moves me to tears. I’m just so proud of how they’ve grown this company into the powerhouse binding company it is today. Proud of my contributions in the first ten years!

Union is coming up on their 20th anniversary. That is so awesome. Congrats to Martino and George and all the crew. Here’s to the next twenty, Food Court Gangsters!

Union Binding Company,
Catalogs and Advertisements

Each year with Union would start with a catalog some eight months before the selling season would kick off. I quickly learned—simply out of necessity—to keep my moves limited and consistent, so I could populate the mess of stuff that quickly started coming down the pike from George and Martino after the annual tradeshow romp was wrapped up.

The binding designs come first. Martino’s designs and line would set the tone. Then you bust out product photography, which goes into a catalog, which gets distributed at the tradeshows by the top brass, rep force and team rats. The catalog informs the advertising. The ads inform all the boxes, guides, stickers, t-shirts and everything else. At the end of the year, hopefully it all feels like one tight collection!

Binding Boxes

Bindings come in boxes. And all the real estate is a big opportunity to tell a cool story about the brand. Plus, you have to remember that the boxes become “Point of Purchase” fixtures, simply by being stacked in snowboard shops. We took the boxed very seriously, and I have just a couple of them in my archives, a bit to my dismay. They turned out so beautiful, and I don’t like that they get buried by the years. So here’s a little archive of the boxes I got to make for Union over the years.