FOUNDER STORY
```
Making working people's days off
even richer.
TAIGA YAMADA / FOUNDER
```
Office workers on weekdays, and on weekends, more serious about the mountains than anyone.
```Lehmans is a brand born from completely ordinary working people like that.
Founder Taiga Yamada is one of them. While building his career as a company employee, he has spent most of his days off snowboarding.
"Our days off are limited — that's exactly why we want you riding the best board possible."
That idea gave birth to Lehman Stick, and today it's expanding into Zen Eyewear.
As the brand celebrates its fifth anniversary, here's the story of how we got here and where we're heading next.
```01. Canada changed what I thought snowboarding could be
```Taiga first discovered snowboarding in elementary school.
He rode a snowboard for the first time on a ski trip with his childhood friend's family. Little by little he got hooked, and started heading to the slopes a few times a year.
He really got into it in college.
Once he got his driver's license, he could go to the mountains whenever he wanted. He spent the money from his part-time jobs on snowboarding and went riding all the time.
The friends he met along the way would later become the members of Lehmans.
One of those friends, Kohey, went on a working holiday to Banff, Canada, after meeting Taiga.
Taiga visited Canada to ride with Kohey, and while he was there, he had an experience that completely changed how he saw snowboarding.
"I met a Japanese man there, about 40, who ran a travel business locally. Watching him climb the Canadian Rockies alpine-style was seriously cool.
While I was in Canada, I got a glimpse of the lifestyle of people living in snow towns. Snowboarding was just naturally part of their lives.
It's not that they were trying to make snowboarding the center of their lives. They just rode as a matter of course, the same way you get up every morning and brush your teeth.
For me, someone who'd been spending hours getting from Tokyo to the mountains, seeing people live with a balance between work and snowboarding was a real shock."
People living with snowboarding, surrounded by nature on a scale unlike anything in Japan.
To Taiga back then, it all looked incredibly dynamic.
```
02. Moving to Numata, the spark that started Lehmans
```When Lehmans started, selling snowboards wasn't the goal.
We'd ridden dozens of snowboards over the years, so why not use that experience to make boards we'd truly enjoy, ourselves?
That idea is where it all began.
"I want to make snowboarding part of my everyday life."
He turned that wish into action in November 2020.
As COVID-19 spread, Yahoo! JAPAN, where he worked at the time, switched to fully remote work. He no longer needed to go into the Tokyo head office, and the lease was just ending on the Tokyo apartment he'd been sharing with coworkers for several years.
So he decided to move to Numata in Gunma Prefecture, surrounded by ski resorts.
He'd head to the slopes at 7 a.m. and ride for about two hours. After work, he'd go night riding from 8 p.m. to midnight.
Day after day, that was his routine.
Riding almost every day, he met local snowboarders and learned about Japanese snowboard brands and makers he'd never known about.
"In Gunma there were people making their own wax, and in Shinshu there were people shaping their own boards."
When he learned about them, one thought came naturally.
"I want to make a snowboard too."
The more snowboarding became part of his daily life, the stronger his desire to make a board with his own hands.
He contacted dozens of companies in Japan and overseas himself, and found a factory in China willing to take on contract manufacturing.
At first, all he wanted was to make the board he wanted to ride.
But as development went on, his thinking gradually changed.
"I thought that if other snowboarders could ride the board I think is the best, everyone could be happy."
By skipping retailers and using the e-commerce know-how from his corporate career, he could keep quality high and still offer boards at an accessible price.
Keeping prices down isn't just about selling cheap.
"I want people to get a high-quality snowboard at a reasonable price, and use the money they save to get to the mountains even one more time."
03. Lehmans' dream is to make our friends' dreams come true
```The profits from Lehmans aren't just for growing the brand.
Taiga wants to use them to make the dreams of our members, everyone involved with us, and the future of the snow industry a reality.
"By selling snowboards, we bring happiness to the people who buy them. With those profits, we share happiness with the people around us.
Then, through those members' own activities, that happiness spreads to even more people.
I really think that's how we can create a new world, beyond the one we have now."
Why is he so committed to giving back to his friends and those around him?
Taiga puts it like this:
"Being at the hub of happiness is, for me, the happiest thing of all."
04. A corporate career and the thinking behind it
```The Lehmans philosophy didn't come from snowboarding alone.
After leaving Yahoo! JAPAN, Taiga joined a startup running a direct-trade platform for green coffee beans.
He helped launch its Korean and Taiwanese subsidiaries and led its Asian market business.
Connecting producers and consumers directly and delivering value fairly makes things better for everyone involved.
The thinking he learned there is strongly reflected in Lehmans.
Deliver value fairly,
and everyone involved is happier.
In March 2022 he joined Mercari, working on new business development to promote the reuse of goods around the world.
He has also worked as a contractor for the Ski Association of Japan, contributing to the growth of the snow industry.
IT, e-commerce, new business, international expansion.
The experience he has built up as a company employee feeds into everything Lehmans does: product planning, pricing, manufacturing, sales and international expansion.
```05. Designing richer days off for working people
```"Designing richer days off for working people."
That's the concept Lehmans has stood for since day one.
On weekdays, we each focus on our jobs; on days off, we play harder than anyone.
Our members think about what an ideal day off looks like for them, then turn it into products and services.
Working people have limited time to throw themselves into play.
That's exactly why we want each of those limited days to be as rich as possible.
"Unlike local snowboarders who live near the mountains, office workers in the city can only get to the slopes two days a week at best.
They spend precious days off making the long trip to the mountains. That's why I want them to savor every single run.
By offering gear at the most accessible price we can, I want people to get to the mountains one more time, stay one more night.
It's not about being good or bad at riding — I want people to make the limited time in their lives rich.
If we can be even a small part of that, I'll be happy."
06. Better products from a playground for experiments
```When we launched the brand, just making a single board was a huge challenge.
From there, we went through round after round of prototypes and testing, worked closely with the factory, and gathered feedback from customers.
After five years of building the brand, we finally have an environment where we can try all kinds of designs, materials and shapes.
"After five years, we've finally got something like a playground for experiments.
From here on, I want to push quality as far as it goes and get the best boards to more snowboarders."
Making things never ends.
Check the numbers, test on the mountain, get feedback, improve again.
Through that process, every Lehman Stick board keeps evolving.
```A final word
```Thank you so much for supporting Lehmans for the past five years.
Looking back, Lehman Stick began from a small wish: "I want to make the board I want to ride."
We're grateful that riders all over Japan now ride our boards, and we've started expanding overseas too.
Over five years, the brand's foundation has slowly taken shape, and I feel I'm gradually starting to understand what it means to make snowboards, and what designing them really means.
And in 2027, we'll launch Zen Eyewear.
Going forward, Lehmans wants to make the time we spend on our days off richer through even more products.
Even so, our way of thinking hasn't changed since day one.
What we want to make
isn't just snowboards.
It's a life where you enjoy your days off even more.
Because our days off are limited, we hope you'll treasure every day, every hour, every run.
Lehman Stick, Zen Eyewear and the new products still to come are all ways of bringing that idea to life.
Together with our crew, we'll keep playing for real, making for real and delivering for real.
Making working people's days off even richer.
Lehmans Founder
Taiga Yamada