About Us

Alta is New Zealand's award winning premier snowboard & skate retailer.

Retailers of snowboard & skate hardware, casual wear and footwear. Alta also operates snowboard rental and workshop facilities.

Alta has twice been a finalist at the New Zealand Tourism awards and has been voted Snowboard Retailer of the Year in 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005 & 2006.

Stores are currently located in Newmarket, Auckland and Queenstown.

History

In the beginning (1995)

It all started with myself Andrew (Cookie) and Vic, the two owners and the only two staff! We rented one small cottage on the edge of Queenstown and bought in from The States a fleet of 20 rental boards from WFO. Our retail consisted of sunscreen, gloves, googles and beanies. Built ourselves a workshop bench, a counter and a couple of shop fittings and gave ourselves the piss taking name.... 'Steep & Cheap'

Winter season number two came along (1996) and we thought we better get ourselves an employee rather than work ourselves in to the ground. Just as we were thinking this in wandered Brent Spillane offering his services. Experience nil, but hey thats all we had a year ago! He then proved himself in a rigorous job interview conducted over several hours mostly at The Red Rock and a few other bars around town. Hired!

The late nineties

1998 saw an interesting shuffle around town. Two doors down the street and in an actual store, 'Totally Board' owned by Russell Riddel moved round the corner to Shotover St. Since the current Steep & Cheap cottage was about to get shipped out on a truck Vic and I decided we may as well take 2 steps to the left and take over Totally Board's premises. Flash new shop and an abbreviated sign S&C... after all weren't really as cheap as the early days!

Matt ' Fingers' Finnigan joined us early 1999. Charged with pushing our very limited retail program forward we developed a sales incentive scheme for him. Partially due to working some ridiculous hours but also thanks to solid sales skills he blitzed it!!

Later that year we were joined by our next most historical figure! Jamie Bassett had been introduced to us the previous year by Martin Jones from Sportive Agencies when passing through town. He was the new kid riding for K2. He moved to Queenstown to lift his snowboarding game and we gave him a job even though had some previous rough experiences with groms (dont want to mention any names, gus). Must have done something right cause he's still here 9 years later running the QT shop floor! He would probably claim he works far too hard and has no fun but we all know he's spends most of his time focused on the activities below!