Artists cruise into board business

Editor's note - This is the last in a series of stories about student entrepreneurs graduating from high school this week.

Skateboarders: The label conjures up all types of clich/ images.

Lazy kids with long hair. Baggy pants. Indefinable terms such as, "Gnarly kick-flip, bro!"

Breaking these stereotypes are two graduating Flathead High School seniors who, in between track practice, art classes and making the academic honor roll, found time to create a thriving business.

Richie Carter and Lindsay Minnich, both 18, melded two of their passions - skateboarding and art - and founded Churd Custom Longboards.

Together they design and construct custom longboard skateboards.

Longboards are, as the name suggests, a longer type of skateboard designed for stability and "cruising."

"I use my board for transportation," said Minnich, who has been skateboarding for two years. "But some people are crazy, going super-fast down hills."

Carter, who has been skateboarding for four years, made his first longboard as a project in his ninth-grade art class. After receiving an "A" on the board, he figured he had something good and decided to go with it.

"It definitely started as an art thing," Carter said. "But now, we are really trying to expand the function aspect."

A year ago, Carter recruited his longtime friend and fellow art junkie, Minnich, to help him with his blossoming business.

Working in the Carter family garage, the two construct each board from a plank of birch plywood.

But it is the artwork on the underside of each board that makes Churd Longboards unique.

To create one-of-a-kind designs, Carter and Minnich sketch out ideas for each client to consider. Using a combination of wood-burning and watercolor paint, the pair illustrate a design unique to each board. Designs have varied from nature scenes of Going-to-the-Sun Road to an homage to the band Pearl Jam.

Working a few hours each day, the pair takes about two weeks to take a board from a piece of plywood to a cruise-worthy finished product.

"You learn something new each time," Carter said of the 10 boards sold so far. "Each board gets a little better."

Currently a Churd Longboard sells for $150, which Carter and Minnich see as a decent price in the custom longboard market.

It's not just Carter and Minnich's customers who have taken notice of the pair's artistic talent. Both students were awarded hefty college scholarships for their involvement in art at Flathead High School.

And though they plan on spending their summer focusing solely on making longboards, Minnich and Carter will end up on opposite ends of the country at college.

Minnich will attend New York University but will spend her first semester studying in Florence, Italy, and Carter will go to Point Loma Nazarene in San Diego.

Both plan to study art.

"These kids break the mold." said Sandy Carter, Richie's mother. "They are both so talented. But even better, they are nice kids."

But as she watched her son "cruise" down the street, she did pause to ask, as only a mother could, "I do wonder what happened with the money I gave him to buy a helmet a few years ago. Because I never saw that helmet!"

Reporter Amy May may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at amay@dailyinterlake.com