10 MINUTES: With Nico Melendez
Billy Poole levitating.
|
The stickers are ubiquitous, plastered from Washington State to Hokkaido, Japan, but especially in and around Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon. The symbol is a levitating figure with six outstretched arms, each presumably ready to tackle a different task—filming, photography, clothing design, graphic design, and of course skiing and snowboarding. The stickers, often emblazoned with the words Levitation Project started to appear about two and a half years ago, and at first were somewhat of a mystery. Since then, the layers of secrecy have been peeled away. The Levitation Project, we now know, is a film company. And a clothing company. And a print and digital media company. All of which are the brainchild of Utah native Nico Melendez.
Nico was a local pro snowboarder for about seven year until two blown knees and the realization that he couldn’t continue as a broken down pro rider forever forced him to rethink his career. Interested in health care, he became an EMT, then a paramedic. For about six years, he saved his money. “After a while it got kind of dull,” he says. “I was providing a service, which was cool, but at the end of the day, I still had a boss, still had a manager, still had to deal with it if I was three minutes late on a time card. I never dealt with authority well. And I missed working in the snowboard industry.”
So Nico started the Levitation Project, and figured with the money he saved, he had a budget to operate for two years. In the last few months, as the project starts to come to fruition, interest has spiked. “I went from getting one e-mail from my mom,” he says, “to getting 300-1000 a day.” Most important to Powder readers, Nico expanded his horizons to include skiing, and now boasts an all-star ski team consisting mostly of talent local to Utah. “If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d be working in skiing, and sitting here doing an interview with Powder Magazine, I’d have called bullshit,” he says. Here’s what else he had to say.
I’m not a fan of the ski industry in a lot of ways. So much money and just so corporate. There are so many suits and ties involved and a lot less rider-owned, rider-driven companies. It seems as if every company is run or owned by a bigger company. But skiing in general, like big mountain skiing and backcountry skiing is the shit. I had a new-found respect for skiing. I was looking around the industry and there weren’t a lot of companies that were combining skiing and snowboarding.
At the same time I wanted to do something unique. Everyone has a production company, everyone has a clothing company, but no one was doing it all together.
I blew out my knee one more time, three years ago. I had one more opportunity to psychologically get through this injury. I put all my time into studying small business books. Instead of passing the time with ski and snowboard magazines, I started studying all the businesses, all the branding and marketing behind all the companies. I spent a whole winter doing reahab and studying business.
Without the never-ending moral support from my wife Kelly none of this would be possible.
-- Show Comments --
+ Add Comment