Shaun White's Business is Red Hot

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Photograph by Martin Schoeller

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Photograph by Martin Schoeller

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Inside the White House

"We look at everything through a long-term lens," he continues, "and ask, How does this affect us in three years? Five years? Ten years? I look at my job as allowing Shaun to make informed decisions. I give my opinion, but never tell him what to do."

As evidence of White's expanding ambition, Ervin points to White's decision to leave his sponsor Volcom, a $216 million action-sports cult brand, to design the Target line. "The Volcom-to-Target transition is an example of how Shaun had to choose between two long-term relationships," he says. "It was tough, but he saw that Target was a better platform to pursue an entrepreneurial drive and also fulfill a dream of creating cool, affordable clothes." That move also highlights White's understanding of brand balance: Target's line focuses on street wear and skateboarding for a mass market, and is therefore completely differentiated from the more sophisticated and expensive technical winter outerwear he produces with Burton. Instead of creating a situation where one deal could cannibalize another, White cranks up his exposure in a new market without diluting his presence in the first. Even his former boss reluctantly understands. "I looked at it and said, 'I can see it from his perspective,' " says Volcom CEO Richard Woolcott. "We had a great run with Shaun. He has an extraordinary opportunity to pioneer a name and a brand and to connect with a lot of customers. It's like when Nike and Michael Jordan took it to another level. I would rather have him, but he'll always be family."

As the party ramps up, Joe Prebich, a team manager at Red Bull, is goofing with White and some special lady friends. Prebich, 25, looks like Jesus if the Son of Man had a stylist; for White, he's a kind of work-life-balance guru -- packing a lifetime supply of caffeine. "Joe is like a guy from the hippie days," says White. "I just look at him and think, What would it be like to live back then? Then I realize he is from back then, just somehow transported here."

Prebich, who wears gold-rimmed aviators and blond hair down to the middle of his back, often helps White choreograph his runs in both snowboarding and skateboarding. "Unlike other riders who just wing it or have a vague idea of what tricks they're going to pull," Prebich says, "whether it's in snow or skating, Shaun has three runs worked out in his head that build from serious to crushing."

In contrast to other beverage brands, Red Bull likes to think of itself as a cultural company that encourages creativity in its athletes. "We try to identify where Shaun hasn't been and make it happen for him," Prebich says. As on a recent trip to Japan: "He's been, like, 27 times, but he'd never gone just to shred powder. So we took him to this remote island, stayed in a traditional ryokan and just lived it." Of course, Red Bull also brought along a small film crew and shot the whole experience, releasing it on MTV as Shaun White Big in Japan -- and later reselling it as a DVD, The Ultimate Ride: Shaun White.

A look at the structure of White's network reveals a pattern: He sits at the epicenter of a multipronged onslaught. After the party, Target's head of lifestyle marketing, Troy Michels, recounts a trip he took to Costa Rica with White in 2006. They were on a boat in the Pacific, he says, sore from the previous day's surf session, hot and salty from a morning of chasing dorado and bigeye tuna. Taking a break from their labors, he and White hung their legs over the side of the boat and had an informal meeting. White had just signed his deal with Ubisoft and mentioned the Target chalet in Aspen, where the company puts up White and other riders and clients during the annual Winter X Games. "Shaun was just riffing on how he thought the chalet would be a good virtual meeting place in the game," says Michels, remembering how White looked out on the sun on the water and said, "You guys sell a lot of video games, right? I think it would be a good fit." Michels shakes his head and laughs. "It was so casual, but at that moment, I knew it was going to happen."

Weeks later, during the Dew Tour skateboarding final in Portland, Oregon, the announcers heckle Jesse White for getting married that weekend and preventing Shaun from competing (White played Led Zeppelin's "Over the Hills and Far Away" on guitar as Jesse's bride walked down the aisle). "There is a Shaun factor," says NBC's Monaghan. "When he competes, not only do the events seem much more important, but the crowd gets into them much more, and there are more people."