In the summer of 2023, our field trip from the Salt Lake City ASM summer teacher camp was to WNDR / Checkerspot.
When the trip was initially described to me, I thought we were going to see how snowboards and skis are made. I'm not a winter sport guy, so I figured it could be interesting but not necessarily my scene.
When we got there, though, I found that WNDR - the winter sports equipment maker and retailer - wasn't the real business. The real business was Checkerspot, a materials company that was producing polymer raw materials from microalgae as a replacement for petroleum sourcing.
That company needed some way to demonstrate the utility of their materials, so they found a consumer-focused industry with high margins and a strong environmental conscience among its consumers. In the Salt Lake City area, skiing and snowboarding made sense for them because the final products - the snowboards and skis themselves - are high users of polymers in their composite materials, and the people who buy tend to be willing to spend a little more to buy environmentally friendly products.
The tour was outstanding, and I highly recommend getting to see their process if you're ever out in Salt Lake City. You can see some of their facility in this next video.
I'll admit that I can't vouch for their final products, having absolutely no clue about skiing or snowboarding, but I can vouch for their B Corp intents where they're trying to replace petroleum-based polymers with algae-sources polymers.
If you want to know more, check out this podcast where one of the co-founders and the chief scientific officer of Checkerspot is interviewed.
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