Snowboarding
In 1984, Serge Dupraz discovered snowboarding. The amazing thrills of riding won him over right away, so he decided to start making his own boards. At the time there were two completely different trends, both from the East Coast of the United States, competing on the market.
On one side are short snowboards with relatively little sidecut and a short nose, characterized by placing the feet towards the back of the board and "sweeping" the rear foot to turn. Two brands represented this trend, Burton and Sims.
The other side is represented by the brand Winterstick, which offers two models that are longer and wider, with much a much more progressive nose. This second trend inspired Serge Dupraz to create his first Hot Snowboards. He launched two models, the Mid and the Expert, the latter being the first board in Europe designed using a long swallow tail.
Artisanal production
The manufacturing technique and the materials chosen are those used in skiing: hot pressing a composite sandwich core between two layers of fiberglass with ski base material below and ABS plastic on top. Materials and supplies come primarily from Lacroix, Duret, and Rossignol. The bindings at the time, made with reinforced rubber, look much like water ski bindings.
Serge Dupraz oversees the production process from start to finish, reaching as far as Canada to procure certain components!
Serge remembers, "For my boards I built a press made with two wood beams put together laterally for width, using heat plates supplied with electricity by a few power packs. I used a boom jack attached to the rafters of my workshop to be able to raise the upper plate, and I applied pressure by using a 19mm nut on a threaded rod…
The two-layer core was made with 32 pieces of ash wood board, obviously glued together with epoxy, the topsheet was made with Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, I used a screen-printed ski base, etc… Not one custom Hot Snowboard from this production series ever busted…
Technical advancements
Although the first snowboards were only capable of riding powder, Serge Dupraz started working on higher-backed bindings equipped with a spoiler that would provide more control and transfer more power to the backside edge. From this, good edge hold on groomed runs became possible. At the same time board shapes advanced allowing snowboarders to ride untracked powder, spring corn, or even icy snow.
The first tests on snow were promising, allowing Serge Dupraz to start working closely with a ski manufacturer in order to shift from artisan to mass production.
Advancements in Hot Snowboard products
Hot products continue to rise in popularity. Following the One-Sixty, the first mass produced model, the Plus 15, a longer model allowing expert snowboarders to ride even faster, takes its rightful place on the market in 1987. The highlight of the following winter is the arrival of the immediately and extremely successful Revolution. This next-generation snowboard allows for carving and a new body position so far into the turn that it was in contact with the snow. This type of turn was named after one of team Hot's riders, Serge Vitelli, who is the first person to carve at such extreme angles. These "Vitelli Turns" ensure the product's phenomenal success while allowing Hot to become one of the most well-known brands on the market.
Carving
The first carving board was thus born years before skiing would adopt the same techniques.
Hot Snowboards then perfected an asymmetrical snowboard, the Logical. The idea was to adapt the snowboard's sidecut to how the rider applies pressure to each edge. Pressure control differs between a frontside and backside turn.
(A fun side note: Jake Burton recently talked about this period in snowboard history, citing Serge and his deep sidecut snowboards, as one of the major advancements in snowboard design. "Hot Snowboards, another pioneering French snowboard manufacturer, designed the One Sixty, a snowboard with a deep parabolic sidecut that marked a turning point in snowboard shapes and had an influence on the entire alpine sports industry, including skiing. Serge Dupraz designed a revolutionary board that was capable of laying a trench in the snow with its six meter radius. Every manufacturer jumped on this brilliant idea… the Hot Pro Team dominated at the time…")
Competition
Early on, Hot chose to sponsor both races and racers. This is how the company won the first French National Championships. Having always had faith in the future and growth of the sport, Serge Dupraz worked hard to provide Hot Snowboards with as strong an image as the top brands at the time, all American. Hot created a stable of professional racers (coached by a former ski instructor trainer at France's legendary ENSA – National School for Skiing and Mountaineering – in Chamonix), which was in total contrast with the more typical laid-back approach at the time to this type of initiative.
The Hot Pro Team, which included two Swiss racers and their coach, worked all year long, and everyone was a Hot Snowboards employee. They were able to harvest the fruits of their labor, racers on team Hot took home national, European, and international titles. The brand image was clear: solid, high-performance, dynamic, and quality beyond reproach. In France and in several other countries, Hot Snowboards dominated the all-mountain and alpine snowboard markets (In France, sales five times higher than Burton, the N°2 brand). The Hot Snowboards brand continued to ride high on this image until 2005.
A temporary break
For a variety of reasons, in 1990 Serge decided to take a break from the snowboard market.
2003: the birth of Dupraz Snowboards
When shaping the first D1 prototypes in the spring of 2003, Serge wanted to put all of his know-how into a high-performance snowboard that would provide the feeling of surfing on snow and challenge the entire notion of versatility. The first prototype was pressed in an artisan workshop and immediately demonstrated a superb ability to hold an edge on firm groomed snow, to remain stable, to accelerate out of the turn, and even to this day to ride powder like no other classically shaped freeride board can.
Since this moment Serge has not stopped improving his products and broadening the range. Loyal to his convictions, the range remains minimalist, with a single model that comes in 3 lengths and 3 flex patterns. The concept of flex, originally developed by Dupraz Snowboards, provides something very close to a custom board.
The birth of the very first D1…
Today
In the long evolution of snowboards since 1980, the D1 is without a doubt the board that best encapsulates every rider's needs. The first powder hounds of the early '80s would have found the D1 perfect for their needs, the alpine riders of the '90s would have likely had more fun with their plate bindings and hard boots on a D1 than with their very narrow prototypes. Today, the D1 has proven itself more than worthy, and is recognized as a standard-setter in terms of versatility. In 2003 this idea went totally against the market trend, which at the time favored products that were too elitist and limited in their range of use: freestyle, jibbing,….
Today, all brands promote both the versatility of their boards and their performance in powder. Many have been inspired by our approach, by the D1 concept, and are busy developing the board shapes of tomorrow.
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