By: Janik Shannon
DU apparel will now be offered by Tommy and Lefebrve.
It’s not just a company, but a lifestyle. An unreal and gnarly one that is.
Decent Urban Rails or DU Rails will be teaming up with locally owned and operated
sporting goods retail company Tommy and Lefebvre.
Team manager, Carlo Mion, has put together a freestyle skiing team to partake in the upcoming season.
“I just wanted to be able to put my work [out there], make it all myself, start a whole new project and see where it takes me,” said Mion. “Hopefully by next year we can do the same thing and run rail jams with it.”
Hearing about T&L’s interest in putting together a team, small and medium enterprise management student Mion, along with graduate Will Blackwell, teamed up to make this happen.
“Basically with this freestyle ski team I put together they’re about eight to 10 athletes and I’m going to be filming them all season long, following them to their competitions, kind of showcasing everything they’re doing,” said Mion, 19. “I’m going to be putting out two to three edits every month.”
The end of November will mark the beginning of the season and of the first edits (short films).
Focusing more on the business part of it, Mion will have fellow Blackwell and Andrew Robillard take charge of editing the videos and clips.
On their side, T&L will be selling DU merchandise in store. Having met with president Natalie Tommy, sweatpants, shirt, tuques and bracelets will soon be available.
Dating back to 2008, DU has made their mark by offering rail manuals, selling apparel, sponsoring various happenings such as Capitalize the Clocktower and supporting a team of athletes.
“The inspiration for the company began on a trip to Mont Tremblant where my partner Marco and I proposed starting a company which could provide better solutions to backyard extreme skiing,” said Dave Watkins co-founder of DU.
“With the arrival of social media we quickly realized we could be more successful widening our scope to being a lifestyle company.
“This meant promoting skiing as well as other sports, and arts which aligned with our company’s values. It also meant starting an apparel line with similar intentions.”
In DU’s future, the crew wants to eventually do their own rail jam, get their merchandise into other stores such as with T&L, keep sponsoring riders and coming out with new manuals.
“Dave wants to do not just rail but simple manuals for everyday life for different designs he has,” said Marco Mion, 25, co-founder of DU. “Anything from furniture or anything he thinks of pretty much.”
“This winters rails will be inspired by old timber frame connections,” said Watkins, 24.
“Our lines of apparel will continue to diversify and we hope to break into the industrial design market with similar recycled material shared solution design.”
www.durails.com