POGO-HISTORY

Martin Sammet and Yogi März are the founders of the brand POGO Snowboards and POGO Longboards. They built their first snowboards in 1983 after they met at university. By the end of 1987, they passed a diploma in Mechanical Engineering. It was the the first diploma about the production of snowboards. Parts of the studies were done at the FH Heilbronn(Productional Engineering), Germany, other parts at the IUT d'Annecy (Mechanical Engineering), France. Both had been working for ski factories in France and Swizerland, where they devellopped the shapes of snowboards and where they gathered their ski production know-how. Yogi developed one of the first patented Softboot Bindings for Ski Duret, France. The outbuilding of the workshop and the brand registration was done during their studies in 1987.
In the beginning POGO made it's name mainly in the production of prototypes for racers. The series in the beginning were limited around 10-50 boards a year before 1987. Then the quantity generally varied between 400 and 800 boards per year, not only due to market reasons, but also to the varying "boarding time" of the founders, for example 1998, Martin took a year off for a "surf around the planet" trip.

To date, both of the founders as well as the rest of the POGO-Gang go surfing, snowboarding and longboard-skateboarding as much as they possibly can. They have competed in numerous snowboard races and still compete in skateboard downhill races. (European Championships, World Championships and World Cups), they have done a lot of sky-diving, climbed mountains up to almost 7000 meters, and took part in films for the "Multiglisse" and "Nuit de la glisse" tour.



FLASHBACK: REMEMBER 1983... ?

We met this bloke named Werner Früh in the waves at Canos. He showed us a surfer magazine with the photo of Tom Sims holding that snow-surfer in his hands. At that time, we didn't know that was our future.

Since then we have travelled a lot with that old split-screen VW-van, and other cheap means. Now we are 20 years older. We don't think we have changed a lot, but the times are over when we hitch-hiked to the Alps with our snowboards, slept in a bivouac-tent on the glacier or on the roof of the heated toilet container, and collected leftovers from restaurant plates and put them in the microwaves they have in most of the mountain huts; when we hitched a ride up a steep mountain road to snag the first tracks into the powder beside it; when we waited in front of the Red Cross room to buy a used Day Pass for nothing; the times when we stood on the wrong side of the bar in the evening just to earn the dough for the next day.

Gone for good are the Pioneer Snowboard Days of storm and stress, rage and fury that lasted from 1983 to 87. For all who had the chance to live them, they will stay in memory. These were the Sixties of the Snowboard Generation. Nobody knew how to judge us, as the awe-struck personnel respectfully let us take the T-bar with our fin equipped Hellmachines. After the first Official World Championship in St.Moritz,Switzerland 1986, the sport slowly became known. However, the Ski Industry laughed at it. In the early 90s, a group of beginners fell out of the draglifts, derailing the cables. Now the heads of the Lift Organizations had no choice but to confront this new population: Snowboarders. Also the Ski Associations began to see the enemy in us, pulling their youth to our pot smoking camp of longhaired RAF terrorists. It was a time of prejudices and guerrilla war between the Ski Associations, trying to make Snowboarding a discipline of Skiing, and the real Snowboard Associations trying to guard the true spirit of Snowboarding by condemning the word discipline in any way. The Snowboarders were discriminated against by being denied the right to take draglifts, some chairlifts and cabins. Self appointed Safety gurus and shysters dribbled off hairraising crap in Ski Magazines and other media about the dangers of Snowboarding.
But the successful mass-marketing of this fabuluos sport to a fashionfucktrendbullshitshortlivinglifestylefartbubblegumwithchocolateandcreamdressing was inevitable. The Lift Managers soon caught the drift that a lot of kids gave a shit about Skiing and revised their prohibitions for Snowboarders. The few Ski Factories that were not conservative enough to die in honor, began to produce Snowboards.
Only the concrete-heads of the Ski Associations needed some more years to comprehend.

We all know the rest of the story. Mainstream will soon attack other trends and the people who just stick to snowboarding because it is "in", will drop off. Then snowboarding will shrink back to a nice healthy core sport, and the sun will shine again. After all, Flower Power had the same fate. Jimi Hendrix, Ché Guevara, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin died for a Nirvana on earth, only Tom Sims survived. There are some funny parallels between the idealists of the Woodstock days and those of the snowboard pionneer times. Has that rebel spirit in us died as well, or is it maybe that by now we have all learned that we don't have to change the world because it is just perfect as it is ...and as it always was!