Small Business Snapshot: Store Your Board

Our Small Business Snapshot series features photos that represent, in just one image, what the small businesses we feature are all about. Josh Gordon, founder and president of StoreYourBoard, explains how this image represents his business.

I founded StoreYourBoard in the time-honored tradition of both seeing a need and recognizing a lack of solutions. It was 2009; I was a couple years out of college, and working as a mechanical engineer. My weekends were spent doing what I love most; getting outdoors to wakeboard, ski, ride my bike, paddle and hike. I'd purchased a small townhouse and it wasn't long before it felt cramped by my gear. 

So I put my engineering skills to use, designing and building my first rack, aiming for something both functional and attractive. Initially I had no plans to manufacture and sell the rack, but what I created was something I knew a lot of people needed, so selling a few racks seemed like a logical next step. 

Equipment storage and display — think surfboards adorning a living room wall — were almost entirely ignored by the major players. Today, StoreYourBoard is the major player in this niche. 

Since starting the website and selling my first racks, StoreYourBoard has grown tremendously.  My team and I have worked very hard to source and aggregate equipment storage solutions from dozens of makers, both large and small. We now sell over 1,500 individual products on our site (with help from BigCommerce), managed from our office and warehouse location in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Even with a thriving, demanding business I still spend a nice chunk of my week outdoors. It's something of a hallmark of the larger outdoor industry, this balance between work and play. And it's definitely something I strive to foster at StoreYourBoard.

In a symbolic sense I hope the accompanying image represents this attitude.  The best parts of life occur when you're doing what you most enjoy.  But life isn't all about those moments--there's a lot of time or sacrifice or money behind the scenes that propels you to those points. StoreYourBoard is an outdoor company with a recreational mindset that creates and sells products for our customers to benefit from when they return home.