In snowboarding parlance, one might say that Missy Forey shreds the supply chain, intensely and adeptly maneuvering the gnarliest of challenges. As director of global trade and import compliance for Burlington, Vt.-based Burton Snowboards, Forey has successfully dealt with West Coast port congestion concerns and is glad a labor agreement has been forged before her company’s biggest shipping season kicks in. She has lots of reasons to enjoy working for Burton, which is privately owned and has grown from its 1977 founding by Jake Burton into the world’s leading snowboard company, designing and manufacturing industry-leading products for snowboarding and the snowboard lifestyle, including snowboards, boots, bindings, outerwear and layering, as well as year-round apparel, packs/bags and accessories, through 26 Flagship, Partner and Resort stores around the globe, as well as online. The reasons for relishing her job include a late winter ride day when the office closes and she and her Burton co-workers ride the local mountain as one crew, as she revealed in a March 18 interview with the American Journal of Transportation.
Missy Forey can’t help but smile about her wicked epic job as director of global trade and import compliance for Burlington, Vt.-based Burton Corp.
Missy Forey can’t help but smile about her wicked epic job as director of global trade and import compliance for Burlington, Vt.-based Burton Corp.
So now that most of the snow has melted and the 33rd annual Burton U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships are over, is it a sad time for you? No, it’s not, actually, because we had a great winter here in Vermont, and the mountains still have a lot of snow. So it doesn’t feel like the season is coming to an end just yet. We had a great U.S. Open this year [in Colorado], and I was just out riding last week. This Friday, we have our Global Company Ride Day, where our offices close and we all ride together. That’s been an annual tradition for 25 years, and I’m looking forward to that. Really, it’s got to be fun working for Burton Snowboards, isn’t it? It really is. I love my job and the atmosphere. It’s a very casual environment, where people bring their dogs to work, and we have a lot of opportunity to take part in a variety of grassroots communities related to sustainability, women’s leadership and mentoring. And we always find time to be creative and have fun. We work hard, and there are always opportunities to learn something new. So I really enjoy it. Do you have a dog? I do, but I don’t bring my dog in to work. We have a black Lab-shepherd mix, and her name is Billie Jean. Obviously getting not only the boards themselves but also full lines of gear, apparel and bags to consumers in a timely manner must present challenges. What are the biggest challenges you face, and how are you responding? This year, our biggest challenge was the West Coast congestion. We had to monitor every shipment coming into North America, so each day we were making decisions whether to route via the East Coast, Canada or take a chance through Seattle-Tacoma, which is the port we normally go through. I’m very happy that the ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union] and the PMA [Pacific Maritime Association] have reached an agreement. We hope that we’ll start seeing things clear up as we approach our busy time of the year. Which is? Oh, it’s just around the corner. We’ll start seeing product in May, so it will start exporting in April. With the labor and congestion issues, how much did you wind up moving through East Coast ports as opposed to via the West Coast, and do you plan to make some of that shift permanent? We chose alternate routings through the East Coast and Prince Rupert for about 10 percent of our freight over the last year. Fortunately, by October, when the congestion was getting really bad, we had imported the majority of our product. At this point, we are still watching to see how long it will take the ports to get back to normal. We are moving through other ports for anything that is needed for our June 1 and July 1 bag and apparel launches. I don’t know that we will make our shift permanent. If we have the reliability of the transit time and the service, I expect we will continue to use Seattle/Tacoma. How important is customs compliance in this process? Customs compliance is very important in the process. Our goal is to prevent any delays in the supply chain, so making sure that we have accurate information before the shipment is even loaded on the vessel is key. My team works hard to collect all that information they need, far upstream, to accurately classify the line, have accurate vendor and cost information. In addition, my team reviews all the paperwork before sending it over to our broker for customs clearance. Before joining Burton as a trade specialist in 2000, you worked six years with customs broker A.N. Deringer Inc. How did that experience help prepare you for your work at Burton? Working at A.N. Deringer gave me an overview of the business. My father worked there, but I never really knew what a customs broker and freight forwarder was. What started out as a temporary job turned into a career, and I guess it was just in my blood. While I was there, I studied for and obtained my customs brokerage license and, since we’re all in the same business, I still keep in contact with many of the people I started out with there. Besides snowboarding, what might we find you doing during off-work hours? In my free time, you might find me cooking, running or spending time with my family on Lake Champlain in Vermont. Anything in particular you like to cook? In the summer, one of my favorite parts of the weekend is being on the deck, using the grill and enjoying the sunset. It could be salmon, chicken or steak with grilled vegetables. So you’ve got fun stuff to do regardless of the season? Yeah, I do. It’s one of the benefits of being in Vermont and having all four different seasons to enjoy.