Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25123
are, cause were all aware of it. BLUE: There are a lot of people out there who must be envious of your ability to make a dream lifestyle work, and creating a business at the same time. How did you do it? TGR: I think that the main ingredient to our success is that we've all put our heads together and said, "Hey let's do this, let's be passionate, let's not compromise the desire and fashion behind it." We also bring a really professional element to this and deal with all our clients and people on an honest, super-professional level. But on the same note, we haven't lost touch with why we started it. And I think that it shows in our product. We get fan letters and feedback like: "God, that's great, the soul and energy." We'll sit here until four AM to make sure that everything is exactly the way we want it to be and that the message that we deliver is good. I think that with any company, if somebody's really into something, it's gonna come through in the product. And if it's not, then it becomes more translucent and people are going to see that. It makes your product flat because it doesn't have that innocent energy that makes you able to tell that the people behind the company are really into it. That it's real. BLUE: Was there a price you had to pay to get where you are? TODD: Our lives are a lot faster now! I wouldn't say we do any less of the things we're passionate about, but we work endless hours. We stretch our days from eight-hour days to 16-hour days. So we definitely give up a lot of our time. But we're getting a lot of rewards along the way. We keep getting the chance to come back and put more into it. So yeah, I think we've definitely given up a piece in that sense. CORY: To elaborate on that, we've kinda nurtured TGR from the base up. We're really emotionally attached to it and nobody goes home at night and just turns off the lights and goes to bed. I've had sleepless nights and there's a lot of stress. We don't just look at it as a business, it goes a lot deeper than that. Everybody has sacrificed massive amounts of time and been really financially stretched out, trying to maintain the lifestyle and going, "Holy shit, there's no money to pay for this!" BLUE: Can you think of a worst moment? TGR: Last night (ha ha hal! It's just a constant roller coaster. There is no worst moment. Our whole thing from the beginning was that we're not going out just to make a ski film, we're not going out just to make a clothing line. We're going out to take advantage of the talent of all our friends, using Jackson Hole as a platform, and make a real fuckin' team to go forward! We knew what the big goal was. I'm not going to tell you that we knew about the Internet, or that we knew a ton about this and that. We're not MBAs, the four of us, obviously. But we did have a fairly good vision that gravity sports would eclipse where they were when we started this company. I mean, who knew about the X-Games, or Gravity Games, or outdoor footage being on broadcast TV, or all the magazines? We kinda got lucky to be in this space at this time, but our goal from the beginning was to have a real team and a family here and be around for each other. To put aside monetary and worldly values for a while and see if we couldn't make this something special that no one had done. I'm not trying to give away any of our secrets, but there are a lot of brands out there that would kill to have what we have as a family. And that's the product of having a larger vision from day one.