Inside evo

What began as an online shop in 2001, evo then expanded to become a brick and mortar shop with a retail location in Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington where they bring a venue, retail space and art gallery into one building seamlessly.  Years later they continue to offer their services online or in person with quality products and services.  They aren’t your typical snowboard shop and it’s clear once you step into the doors of evo that you’ve entered into a shop where the employees work as a team and the company believes in building a community around sport and art.

evo was my snowboard shop when I lived in Seattle and despite moving thousands of miles away, they continue to be a shop I support because of the people behind the company and the personality they bring to snowboarding.  They bring as much community involvement to their events and galleries that you wish you could fly out just to be part of it.

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Outside of the store is the billboard that evo uses to update on events, sales and general store info for passer-by’s.

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A view from above inside evo, directly across the hall is the offices and below is the retail space

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Just above the retail space of evo is where all the magic happens behind the business side.  It’s where customer server, buyers, designers, everyone who works at evo doing the business side has their work space.  I started off the tour there since it’s the unseen portion of evo and what makes this company work goes on up there.

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The walls of the evo offices are lined with everything from autographed posters to the story of evo, here’s the evo story from the ground up as they designed the retail shop space.

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When you first enter the offices, you are looking at the buyers desks.  Buyers decide what products evo will carry and each person has their niche that they buy for, whether it’s snowboard products or accessories or ski gear.

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The web guys who help design and get the website working properly

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The wall of claim for employees was the best one I’ve seen and some really funny ones to claim.

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Just feet away from the owners and buyers desks is the wall for the Kaizen newspaper basically the room for improvement and how to fix issues that have come up make this wall.

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Staff meeting at evo was taking place during my tour

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This side of the room handles customer service for evo and I must say they have it made, the beer on the counter and the employee walking a ski flick during the visit made it quite the job of the office.

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Typical work office place except the cabinets on the right house catalogs for thousands of ski/snowboard products that evo might be selling

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The IT department working hard to make sure things run smoothly for the company

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The office fish is named Pyrex and there’s no way to forget the name

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The web content team working on updating images and products for evogear.com

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The evo cafeteria/lunchroom

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Beyond the lunchroom, you start to loop around to the backstock rooms for evo.  They also have a distribution center that handles the online sales so this backstock is just for the store and most of the products are always on the floor.

evo buyer Gorio in the backstock room showing off the northwest t-shirts

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Just off of the tuning shop and warehouse is the desk of the man who handles the warehouse

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Backstock of sizes and inventory

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A room set up for product and photo shoots when they need it and currently housing the nitro artwork

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The tuning shop area for evo, handling all the waxes and fixes for busted/broken gear that might come in.

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Snowboards and skis waiting to get tuned up in the tuning shop

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From the tuning shop you can see into the retail side of the store

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A glimpse into evo snowboard shop what the retail space looks like

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The retail floor portion of the tour is just like your typical snowboard shop, stacks of boards line the walls so customers have a wide range of boards to choose from.

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The snowboard boot and binding section with benches for easy sitting and trying on time.

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After taking the tour for myself (first time being in the office portion) I stopped around to see what products were there and I had eye’d up that some stuff online that I wanted to get while in town.  I ended up walking away with my favorite sitka brand hoodie and a new 686 shirt for warmer days on the mountain.  Despite me living thousands of miles away, evo continues to be one of those stores I support and try to buy from first.

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Presentation is key to evo and it’s the only store that I’ve ever walked into that is constantly making sure the appearance of the clothing they carry is 100% looking good.  Here’s one of the employees steaming a button up shirt.

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Upstairs above the retail space is the ski section of the store, here’s a customer trying on ski boots

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If someone comes in and purchases boots, they can custom fit those boots to help fit the customer better

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evo has a firm place in the culture of snowboarding and of the community they are a part of so they have their own gallery on site just off from the retail space and below the evo offices with showings from various artists in the industry and community.  During my visit it was the Better Friends collection that appeared on the walls.

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Some of the Better Friends Artwork

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Anytime you see the opening for the gallery exhibits at evo they place is packed and the artwork goes quick.

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A huge thanks to Gorio for showing me evo and being able to meet more of the staff that help run the company.