His mom called him the walking billboard. He was a teenage athlete with a company sponsor.
Today Annandale native and snowboarder Tommy Kronquist is back in the billboard business, but with one striking difference.
He’s not simply advertising a fashion or a logo. This time he’s promoting art.
Kronquist has started a company called Medium Control that will put out a line of sports clothing this winter featuring all of his own artwork. The clothing, which is designed to appeal to snowboarders, skateboarders and surfers, will appear in stores around St. Cloud, the Twin Cities and nationwide Dec. 1.
“The concept is to carry my art one step further,” Kronquist said. “It’s not just to promote a company logo.”
The 1997 Annandale High School graduate and art student puts a lot of thought and inspiration into his creations.
Each T-shirt, long sleeve tee and hooded sweatshirt features its own story.
For instance, the design he calls “Gateway Drug,” uses drawings of Kimball’s Powder Ridge Winter Recreation Area and the famous Breckenridge, Colo., to show the migration of the professional snowboarder. The theme is that everybody starts out small.
Another design targets the skateboarder. It shows a kid bent over his father’s knee with the words “no more skate boarding son. You must play basketball, football, baseball” printed below.
-Art and snowboarding
Kronquist began to imagine Medium Control last summer while still a student at the University of Minnesota. After working several years in the graphic design business, he wanted to find something that would combine his two loves: art and snowboarding.
On Aug. 1, his wish came true.
That was the day Medium Control became an official business.
“He’s always been artsy, every since he was a tiny tot,” said his mom, Margi Kronquist. “He was never bored, always drawing and developing things with his Legos.”
Though Kronquist could still be considered “artsy,” he graduated a long time ago from Legos. Now his mediums include design, photography and print.
A series of his photographs in fact are on display at In Hot Water in Annandale. He has had several shows there thanks to the coffee house’s support of local artists.
As for snowboarding, the seeds of that love were planted when he was just three years old, hurling himself down the Zonker at Powder Ridge.
“I brought him out when he was 3,” said Margi, who worked at the ski hill at the time. “He just kept coming back.”
He switched to snowboard as soon as he knew what it was, started competing and began attracting sponsors like Burton Snowboards and Volcom Clothing.
-Slow progress
Things progressed slowly, he said: a new snowboard here, half price on his sponsor’s clothing there. Eventually he became a national rider, then a contract rider and he was hooked up with full apparel.
“We became a pretty tight-knit group of people,” he said, referring to his fellow snowboarders and their families; Kronquist’s mom, Margi, and dad, Kevin, followed him all over the country to watch him compete.
Today, Kronquist relies a lot on that network of old friends and contacts.
“While I went to college, a lot of my friends turned pro and split up all over the United States. A lot still work in the industry. That has given me a foot in the door,” he said.
But not everyone left. Some of his friends stuck around Minnesota and now own area sporting stores. Two weeks ago, he put a trial run of clothing in several local shops including Youth Shelter Supply in St. Cloud, The Hut in Wayzata, Cal–Surf near Lake Calhoun and Alternative Bike and Board on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis.
Customers can also shop at his web site, www.mediumcontrol.com and place orders through e-mail.
But even with the contacts, starting a company is a not easy, especially when you have to work full-time designing web sites for a motorcycle and dirt bike shop to pay for it, and go to school.
– Full-time job
“Medium Control itself is a full-time job. I don’t get a lot of sleep,” Kronquist said.
But sleep isn’t his number one priority. Neither is television or the internet. Kronquist’s goal is to immerse himself in his artwork. Television and the internet he describes as “anti-inspirations.”
Many of his ideas come from his own photography and his love of travel, which he does as often as he can. He has visited countries like France, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands.
But the true inspiration for Medium Control was the companies like Burton Snowboarding and Valcom Clothing that sponsored him as a kid.
Kronquist calls it going back to his roots.
“I’m really catering to kids like myself. And there is so much creative freedom in making my own clothes,” he said.
The name Medium Control was inspired by his three favorite mediums, photography, design and print, and his desire to take control of them in a new fashion.
But MC also stands for moderation.
“It’s not just about the company. It’s about having fun in life,” Kronquist said.
He intends to practice what he preaches and take to the slopes as often as he can.
“This is a fun industry,” he said, “where I don’t have to tuck in my shirt every day.”