Can you believe that it actually took this long for someone to give Nicolas a board with his name on it? Well today the world is a better place, because we can all finally get our hands on our national treasure’s signature shred stick. There are just 300 boards in shops worldwide, thanks to a surprise “pre release”, so you might want to move quickly if you want to feel some Müllair under your feet this season. We checked in with Nicolas to find out a bit more…
We just got a first look at the your new Müllair. Can you tell us a little about the technology involved in that board?
Yes for sure, so as of now there’s a limited early release Müllair up for grabs. It is of course environmentally built with recycled UHMW sidewalls, bio beans top material, renewable cellulose bio fibers, low VOC epoxy resin and an FSC certified aspen core. It’s got my dream specs with directional C3 BTX and pop for days. Anyway, look here for more tech talk.
How about the artwork? Who did that?
The art is done by my friend Lain, @lainone. I recommend checking it out some of his work.
Ah yes, Mr. Amateur. That’s an amazing mag!
Can you tell us a little about the design process? How did you guys decide on the images? Was it mostly your ideas or did you work together?
We met a couple times and bounced some ideas back and forth while having a coffee or a little skate session. So most of the symbols are his interpretations of my thoughts. But I can’t really remember if all of it grew on my shit. ( haha swiss german saying )
It seems like there’s a lot of symbolism and a few subtle and strange details. Care to share some of the concepts explored through the design?
Yeahh so the Yin & Yang for example. I had the urge to have something that stands for balance on the board so he came up with the mountain Yin & Yang. Other symbols like the Gnu and the Mt. Weird are obvious. The handshake of the mountains and the tree stand for togetherness and the little bunny holding the clover comes from the thought: Luck favours the prepared.
There’s also a nice shout-out to your movie project Fruition. Can you tell us a little more about that?
Fruition is on its way. I wanted to make sure to have the most current stuff on the Müllair and some things need more time. Expected time of arrival is Fall 16.
You haven’t really had a “traditional” pro model till now. Why do you think that lots of brands got away from it these past few years?
I think most brands became afraid to give a Pro too much attention because of fear of losing their own identity. But if the brand itself is the Pro it becomes hard to tell a true story. Then the world believes that snowboarding is what you see at the Olympics and on Red Bull TV, which is rad but not even half the story of why we ride.
Are pro models important? Do you think we need more of that again in snowboarding?
Yes, what is snowboarding without great snowboarders? Imagine a world where the young ones have no one to look up to, no role models or older ones to guide them. If you have done lots for the culture of snowboarding you deserve a pro model.
If you could give a pro model to any of the younger Swiss snowboarders, who would it be?
If Max Buri continues to put out video parts I could see him on a pro model somewhere down the road.
Cheers to that! Can’t get enough Max Buri. By the way we’ll be exclusively releasing his Absinthe part right here in a a few weeks, so be sure to check back in for that…
Anyway, thanks so much for your time Nicolas! Can’t wait to ride that board and see your movie. Any last words?
Thank you, everybody and all the souls who made it possible for us to snowboard like we do.
