LIB TECH SNOWBOARDS F/W 2025/26 PREVIEW

Retail Buyers Guide: Snowboard Bindings F/W 2025/26 Retail Buyer’s Guide
Brand: Lib Tech
Interviewee: Pete Saari VP of Creativity

How was last season in the snowboard market?
We have fun every year and are grateful for the opportunity to build boards for ourselves and great riders like Travis, Jamie, Austen, Phil, E Jack, Katie, Brandon, Ras and crew. For a worst global snow in decades it was a pretty damn good year. We have lots of new ideas for boards and builds and are excited about this season.

With the recent overall price increases, have there been any positive developments in manufacturing, sourcing, or logistics?
We brought in “Double Barrel” Daryl our new material acquisitions and logistics specialist to compliment Mike Olson’s incredible late night internet sourcing and Anthony Derroco’s business acumen / spread sheet pivot wizardry and the results have been straight hockey stick. We have doubled the number of meetings and dashboard reports and as a result have been able to build and deliver to shops on time and even early setting up the win.

What are the major trends you’re seeing with product pricing in the snowboard market?
We are seeing material costs go up up and up but with efficiency improvements at the factory and a desire to get great snowboards on hard working class heros we are cut cut cutting prices. Check out the new DPR early rise camber directional freeride perfection that gives you everything you could want in a snowboard for less…Handcrafted in the USA near Canada at Mervin Manufacturing!

E-commerce Vs. physical retail, how are you balancing both channels?
We love core shops and build the vast majority of our boards for them so I wouldn’t say we balance the channels. We are passionate about boards and have quite a few shapes / designs in the line so we don’t expect dealers to bring in every model… E Com is a great place for unique models and odd sizes to live and be available to the unique or hyper frothy shredders.

How are you supporting retailers to sell this category?
We have an inhouse Mervin Made Media MMMedia team led by Jesse Burtner and Legendary lensmen Tim Zimmerman w filmers Sean Lucy and Tim “Tanny” Stanford that recognizes “content is king” and is constantly creating edits, film projects and social content to bring each board and rider to life. Travis and Austen are their own content creation machines and have big outside and inside the box plans for next fall.

What unique brand messages are you focusing on for the 2025/2026 snowboard season?
We lean on the longtime pillars of our brand; Rippers, Artists, Craftsmen, Technology, Environmental. to create “Dream Boards”. We are a radically unique brand…there is no one out there with more experience or more involved in hands on board building than we are. We work directly with riders, material suppliers, our in house engineering and fabrication crew, artists and passionate craftspeople to constantly innovate and push manufacturing process, outside the box material experimentation and create magical board performance. We build our lives around our factory and board building and riding we love our high tech toy making playground and bringing shred dreams to life.

SNOWBOARD SPECIFIC

What trends or developments are you seeing with regards to board construction, shapes, and general innovation? How is this shaping your 25/26 range?
We are seeing a surge in very large boards being sold in Japan with our 195 dough boy shredder aggressively taking over entire shops and mountains. We are seeing strong and continued interest in Travis’s strategically “pressure mapped” C2 hybrid contour on the T Rice pro that maximizes efficiency, ease of use and performance in everyday resort conditions and blows minds on pow days. Austen Sweeten’s streamlined camber perfection on the Rig has built a cult following and continues to leave a trail of perfection. Matt Biolos brings his Mammoth Mountain top to bottom performance surf mindset to our Lib X Mayhem line up with the team favorit Rad Ripper twin Freestyle model the hardcarving resort AtV Rocket and an all new Austen Sweetin colab Sweet Fish surf minded pow slashing hard carving swallow tail.

Anything new concerning sustainability and related products or construction you would like to highlight?
We have focused on environmentally friendly manufacturing, minimal material waste and sustainability at our factory all our lives. It’s built into our daily decision making process and we control every aspect of what goes into and comes out of our facctory. Mike Olson is constantly sourcing lighter stronger more sustainable materials for our experimental team to test and implement. We have our own unique water based sublimation process that is solvent free. We recycle our sawdust into soil in a unique composting program. We use a low VOC plant based epoxy resin system. Travis is constantly pushing us further on the technology front which is exiting and always yields results. We are very excited about our new board finishing facility with a state of the art water filtration system, all new air purification and all new finishing line that sets up a cleaner work environment for the crafty crew and elevates our base finish and steel polish. We power the factory with 94% renewable / hydroelectric energy.

Are you using any new materials in your hardware for 25/26? If so, what and why? We’re interested in anything new in inserts / edges / cores / sidewalls / glue / resin/ wood types / base material / top sheet / wax / etc..
More innovations even we don’t understand cooking right now…

Any new design or pattern approaches in your 25/26 gear? Any collabs on the line?
Our Lib X Mayhem Collection continues to evolve blending high tech ultra refined precision shapes with classic radial progressive sidecuts and cambers. Each board in his line is absolute perfection from the twin freestyle Rad Ripper to the hard carving easy floating Rocket resort ripping machine to an all new Austen X Matt Sweetfish pow minded swallow tail that is more than resort ready. This is the 30^th anniversary of working with our longtime friend, team rider and artist Mike Parillo and he did an incredible Dynmo graphic that also is part of our Bent Metal x Lib Technologies binding co-lab on the Transfer model. Travis is celebrating his 20^th year pro model and has created a masterpiece that incorporates every graphic he has ever done into one year of the Snake graphic on his T Rice pro.

Are you planning to focus on a special product range or type of customers? What’s your newest range?
We focus on core shredders and anyone who wants a high quality, high tech artistically handcrafted high performance snowboard under their feet. We are are excited to bring to life our new DPR directional twin all mountain early rise camber freestyle stick to life. The DPR disappears under your feet and free’s your mind body and board to travel deep into shred flow state everything you want in a snowboard at a price that reminds us of the 90s.

Key Products:

Travis’ 20yr T Rice pro:
The all new DPR directional twin all mountain early rise camber brings camber performance to a new level of ease and comfort at a price that is hard to beat. Travis’ 20yr T Rice pro has a new shape and the perfect resort hybrid contour.

LTRice-Pro

The new Sweetfish Lib X Mayhem X Sweeten:
The all new Son of Birdman directonal camber is ready to float your mind and spirit on that cat trip or rip that cat track wall hit. The new Sweetfish Lib X Mayhem X Sweeten is too lovely and shred ready not to wall hang after you make some memories with it.

dPr

Katie Kennedy’s Two Time:
Is freestyle ready and the Glider featuring Giana Andrews artwork is the ultimate easy rider top end performer.

Glider