Going by his university studies, Anthony Ruski-Jones was destined to become a policy analyst. That went by the board, so to speak, when he discovered snowboarding during university holidays in the United States. PHILIP CHANDLER chats to him about his fascinating life both in and out of business

It can be hard retaining enthusiasm for a business you’ve had for 30 years.

But for Queenstowner Anthony Ruski-Jones, who owns the resort’s original snow board-only store, Quest, his eclectic range of interests means he’s never, well, bored.

Besides snowboarding, the 53-year-old’s passions include mountain biking, travel, ice hockey, design, classic cars and socialising, while he also owns Queenstown’s only party boat.

Raised in Invercargill, Queenstown was his second home, due to a family crib here.

His parents were Southland Ski Club members, so, from 1975, he enjoyed skiing on Queenstown’s Coronet Peak through his school years.

In the late ’80s, his parents moved to Wellington and he went to Victoria University, studying to become a policy analyst.

One university holiday, while working in Winter Park, Colorado, in the United States, he and a mate got vouchers from work which they used to hire snowboards from a local store, and then got hooked on the sport, which in 1989 was still pretty new.

Back in Wellington, he co-founded New Zealand’s first snowboard club, at Victoria University.

After leaving uni, he and mate Steve George opened NZ’s first snowboard store, Board of Authority (B.O.A), in Ohakune in 1993.

The following summer, Ruski-Jones found a Queenstown Mall site for a second store which they opened the next season.

When volcanic activity affected Ruapehu two years in a row, ‘‘we just pulled pin on the North Island and focused on Queenstown because that’s where my heart was, anyway’’.

In the ’90s, they even designed and manufactured outerwear and snowboard boots, and had a distribution business.

Ruski-Jones says for the first six years he’d pack up in October, then go snowboarding overseas — ‘‘our annual rental was what we pay monthly now’’.

In 2000, as B.O.A.’s sole owner, he merged with Russell Reddell’s Totally Board to set up Quest; Reddell left about six years later to get into real estate.

Over the years, he’s expanded Quest into rentals, next door, and added an online business and a Burton ‘partnership store’ — still the only one in NZ.

‘‘People view it all as retail, but I view it as tourism because of the dynamic market we live in.’’

He also had a Quest store in Christchurch, but the earthquakes there put paid to that.

For about five years, Ruski-Jones also owned a summer mountain bike tour business, Gravity Action.

And for the past 10 and a-half years he’s owned — originally with a partner — Queenstown’s party boat, Luanda, which is popular for hen and stag parties, every now and then spiced up with a stripper or two.

‘‘We just contract all that out,’’ he says, adding he’d not originally intended it to become a party boat.

‘‘It’s pretty unusual, in tour ism/hospitality, where you actually own your own venue.’’

Meanwhile, Ruski-Jones, who’s ‘‘amicably’’ separated, is very proud of his children Ruby, 20, who’s in her last year at uni, and boys Axel, 18, and Ollie, 16, who are promising ice hockey talents.

Axel, who’s just graduated from school in Canada, where he had a two-year hockey scholarship, is playing for Queenstown’s SkyCity Stampede before joining a team in Florida, in the US, while Ollie leaves in September to take up the same Canadian scholarship as Axel.

Ruski-Jones says he only took up the sport when his sons did, but is now a keen social player.

He also served several years on the club committee, during when he secured SkyCity’s sponsorship, and, as a coach, took junior teams to Australia and Japan.

His other great passion is classic cars, and from September he intends competing in a pre-1978 series.

Through all his involvements, Ruski-Jones says he just loves people — ‘‘I love being in and around people and just feeding off them, there’s always yarns to be had’’.

And then there’s his passion for Queenstown.

‘‘It’s changed dramatically, but the thing I love is coming home.

‘‘The last couple of years, I’ve been living for three or four months at a time in Jackson Hole, Wyoming [in the US], and when I come back, it’s such a good feeling.’’

For the future, he says he’s looking for other opportunities.

‘‘What I’ve chosen to do is a lifestyle, it’s not something that’s made me a wealthy man.

‘‘I’d like to think I’ve still got a good 15 years left in me in terms of work — we’ll see what happens.’’

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