Batwing. It’s one of snowboarding’s inside jokes. A real “if you know, you know” kind of brand.
And yes, the brand is indeed named after male genitalia.
“Yeah, definitely,” said founder Jack Reid. “I mean, you can see it in the logo, the main bat, the torso is literally a nut sack.”
Photo: Jack Reid
If you’re paying attention to the snowboarding world, you’ve seen Batwing, in some form or another. It pops up in the end credits of Quicksilver’s 2023 film Sequencer, when Miles Fallon has it tattooed on his thigh right below another tattoo that says “Oh s**t this will be here forever.” Jed Sky is wearing a Batwing beanie in the Factotum Cinema movie “Hinterland.” Zeb Powell walks around with Batwing stickers on his board in between the bindings. The logo is even featured on the Dinosaurs Will Die maeTier, a board released in 2024 that features the artwork of artist John Garoutte.
I learned about Batwing in 2022 during an interview with rider Brantley Mullins. I was writing a story about the snowboard scene in North Carolina, and asked if there was a North Carolina-to-Utah pipeline. Oh yeah, she said. So much so, that Jack Reid, the founder of Batwing Headwear, was talking about organizing a group of Brighton Resort riders to travel to North Carolina for an event he was helping with.
I bought a hat, was mailed a sticker, and stuck it on my board. Then I was getting shoutouts. Beech Mountain and Appalachian Ski Mountain in North Carolina. Brighton. “Batwing! Let’s go!” was a rallying cry.
Photo: Jack Reid
The brand got its start around 2017, when Reid started seeing retro Patagonia beanies popping up in the lift lines and around town. He thought they were cool, but it was near impossible to find them to buy
“I was like, those are sick,” he said. “But I couldn't find anywhere to buy one, other than, like eBay. And I was kind of weirded out by buying a used hat.”
So from there, Reid began buying his own fleece and making his version of the hats. He’d sell them out of the trunk of his car at the resort, mostly to friends. At first, there wasn’t even a name for the brand. But the more people who inquired about his hat, the more he knew that had to change.
“I was making 20 or 30 hats, putting them in a box in my truck, or posting them on my personal Instagram and selling them,” Reid said. “And then in 2020, I was living with my buddy Griffin in Utah, and he was like, f**k, man, you got to make a name. This s**t is cool. People want it.”
Photo: Jack Reid
From there, the brand evolved. It collaborated with the brand Modest on a pair of goggles that featured a dirtbiking bat. Later, that concept was spun into the DWD maeTier board, which features the moto riding bat on the topsheet, and a base graphic that can only be described as Where’s Waldo meets the desert.
Photo: Jack Reid
Reid and Sean Genovese, DWD’s co-founder, have known each other for more than 10 years, and with a few exceptions here and there, Reid has almost exclusively ridden their boards. Every year, Genovese does a collaboration board with a company or a crew that he thinks is doing cool stuff. And two years ago, he called upon Batwing to be that company.
“Of course, you're not going to say no,” Reid said. “And I was like, ‘what do you what do you have in mind for the graphic?’ He said, ‘Dude, it's your board, so whatever you want it to be.’
The base features a bunch of finer details: aliens, handsome human Shrek, the grim reaper, Waldo himself, and a bunch of Reid’s friends.
But despite huge opportunities like this, Batwing remains a softgoods company.
Photo: Jack Reid
The beanies are made 100% by hand, and most of the baseball hats are as well. A friend who works in the embroidery and print shop at BDK Board Shop in Oregon helps with the stitching process.
Reid went from selling them out of the trunk of his car, to coordinating drops on the Batwing website, more like a streetwear brand than an action sports brand. Eventually he branched out to local shops that he already had relationships with, like Milo Sport in Salt Lake City, Recess in Boone, and Darkside and Splinters in Vermont.
The Recess drops are one particular example in which you can see the popularity of Batwing. Reid will frequently collaborate with the shop to put out new limited-release merch. Sometimes its beanies featuring the Recess name in front of a bat’s wings. Sometimes it’s a RealTree camouflage shirt. The last one featured a pack of hotdogs with batwings, and a logo strikingly similar to Oscar Meyer’s.
“At Recess, you know, have 50 items, and (owner JP Pardy) is like, ‘Man, I had people line up at the store. And then he’s got a line at 10 a.m. when the shop opens," Reid said. "He’ll be like, ‘yeah, man, it's crazy. Sold them all in an hour or less,’ you know?”
It's something that’s come a long way from the early, logoless, brandless days. But at its core, while it’s gained notoriety and sales have been made across the country, it’s the same grassroots operation as it’s always been. And that’s exactly how Reid wants it to be.
“I'm super busy. I do all sorts of different stuff, like, all the time, so I'm always working on different things,” he said. “And Batwing is just, like, one of those things. So I don't want to go too crazy with it, where I'm swamped with everything, and then trying to keep the quality up, and the originality and all that, you know? Without blowing it out.”
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