Burton Snowboards

Who owns Burton Snowboards?
Donna Carpenter owns Burton Snowboards and chairs its board. Her sons serve as directors, and son George works in the business. The company has been family-owned since Jake Burton Carpenter founded it in 1977.

Is Burton Snowboards publicly traded?
No. It is privately held, a Vermont Benefit Corporation, and a certified B Corporation. It does not publish financial results.

Where is Burton Snowboards headquartered?
Burlington, Vermont, where about 350 people work at its campus including the Craigs R&D center. Offices also operate in Austria, Japan, Australia, Canada, and China.

How many employees does Burton have?
Roughly 800 to 1,000 worldwide including its China joint venture, with about 350 in Vermont.

What is Burton's relationship to the B Corp movement?
In 2019 Burton became the first snowboard company to earn B Corporation certification, after converting to a Vermont Benefit Corporation legal structure that requires balancing profit with employee, community, and environmental interests.

Does Burton only make snowboards?
No. While boards, boots, and bindings are the core, it also makes technical outerwear, helmets and goggles under the anon label, apparel, and accessories.

Jake Burton Carpenter left a New York investment job in 1977 and moved to Londonderry, Vermont, to build better versions of the Snurfer, the toy board he had ridden as a kid. Working alone in a barn, he shaped, laminated, and sold his first Burton Backhill boards for around $88, struggling through years when sales barely covered costs.

The early 1980s brought the team's formation and the push that defined the company: convincing ski resorts to allow snowboarders on their lifts. Burton sponsored riders, organized early competitions, and relentlessly lobbied resort managers. Donna Gaston became Jake's wife in 1982 and a central figure in the company, later running European operations from Austria.

Growth followed the sport's own boom. Burton moved to Burlington, expanded into boots and bindings so riders could buy a complete system, opened offices in Austria and Japan, and by the 1990s was the global category leader. Snowboarding's inclusion in the 1998 Nagano Olympics, where Burton riders competed, cemented the brand's position at the center of the sport.

Through the 2000s and 2010s Burton added outerwear, helmets, and goggles under the anon label, built flagship stores, and signed era-defining riders including Shaun White and Chloe Kim. Jake Carpenter died of cancer on November 20, 2019, and Donna Carpenter assumed ownership and the chair role.

The company's recent era mixes values with pressure. In 2019 it became a Vermont Benefit Corporation and the first B Corp-certified snowboard company. In 2025 it testified publicly that new US tariffs threatened its cost structure, since China and Vietnam supply most of its manufacturing. Vermont honored Donna Carpenter with the 2025 Sen. Patrick Leahy Trailblazer Legacy Award for the company's economic contribution to the state.

Burton's sustainability program is unusually developed for a private mid-size company. As a B Corp and Vermont Benefit Corporation it submits to external verification of social and environmental performance. It has set science-aligned targets to reduce operational emissions 42 percent and to cut its larger supply chain footprint, which matters more given that most production sits in Asian factories.

The company publicly advocates on climate policy, frames tariff policy in worker terms, and runs the Chill Foundation for underserved youth. Supply chain responsibility programs audit its overseas manufacturing partners, and product initiatives emphasize durability, repairability, and responsible materials.

Donna Carpenter received the 2025 Sen. Patrick Leahy Trailblazer Legacy Award from the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance for the company's economic contribution to the state. Burton itself is consistently rated among the most influential outdoor brands, and Jake Burton Carpenter's founding story is canonical in sports business history. Its B Corp certification marked a first for the snowboard industry.

Burton's controversies are modest for its profile. It has faced supply chain scrutiny common to outdoor brands manufacturing in Asia, and workforce reductions during industry downturns drew local coverage. The 2025 tariff fight put it in a visible political position, testifying that import duties threatened its Vermont employment, a stance that attracted both support and criticism in the trade debate.