How it started
History
Mike Olson built his first snowboard in 1977, and by 1984 had dropped out of Pacific Lutheran University, to begin making snowboards full-time. Mervin Manufacturing's headquarters were set up in an "old racehorse barn," where Olson worked for two years, paying rent by mowing the lawn and cleaning the gutters for the barn's owner. Olson was quickly joined in his efforts by Pete Saari, and the two began producing small orders for members of the nascent snowboard community. Mike Olson’s first snowboards were called Slope Tools. In the early 80’s the GNU snowboard brand was started and was forced out of business by a controversial distribution deal with Wind line out of Seattle. Mike Olson and Pete Saari owned the factory and decided to start the Lib Technologies snowboard brand. Gnu snowboards was then reacquired from the bank a couple years later.
From Wikipedia’s article on Lib Technologies, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2