CLOSE
Sign up to get news on contests, pro events, new products and special offers.
WATERSKI MagazineIt has slalomed, popped up from behind magazine pages and appeared on cups at ski tournaments, touting everything from binding lubricant to trick skis, wakeboard bags to eight-loop slalom lines. It's even spent a fair amount of time in your mailbox.
It's the Bart's frog, green symbol of water skiing's aquatic ties and the icon behind Bart Culver's thriving mail-order business. The frog celebrates its 25th anniversary this summer. We've seen Twiggy the skiing squirrel, but never a skiing amphibian, so what's the connection?
“I love aquatic life,” says the energetic Culver, who started Bart's out of a northern Indiana farmhouse. “The water skiing frog is a love of biology, combined with my love of skiing.”
Culver grew up footing, slaloming and jumping on Webster Lake, just outside of the quaint Hoosier town of North Webster that's still home to Bart's retail store and mail-order warehouse. Enamored with the sport, he sought a path to make it a way of life after college. In 1972, fresh out of Indiana University with a degree in biology (but with a bigger itch for water skiing), Culver decided to share his passion. He started sending out brochures to other water hounds in the area, offering skis and accessories that weren't available anywhere in the region. He took orders, picked up skis in Fort Wayne (almost an hour away) and delivered them to eager customers.
“At the time, there were no pro shops in the area,” he says. “Water-ski mail-order was just like Sears Roebuck back then.”
Whether it was Culver's enthusiasm for his new career or the skiers' need for timely, new ski equipment to tear up over 100 lakes around Kosciusko County, Culver's career choice quickly paid off.
“Dad always told me, 'Take care of the customer and everything will fall into place,'” he remembers. To that end, Culver's business philosophy is to hire the best people and give them a stake in the enterprise. “I want them to run the business as if it were their own.”
With Culver's four years of undergraduate biology study at IU in the can, is the frog on Bart's catalogs the only thing he has to show for eight semesters of studying pond ecosystems? Not a chance. In fact, the frog is the embodiment of Culver's undying love of two things he still does with a passion: biology and skiing. The frog remains a focal point of the Bart's image – and Culver's life. A portion of Culver's profits eventually end up back at IU in the form of grants to support biological study on the little creatures. Culver even builds his own ponds, stocks them with flora, fauna and wildlife, and offers them for university study programs. Just outside his office window is one pond, which was even used for an Air Chair demonstration during the new retail store's grand opening three summers ago.
While Culver gives generously back to sport and science, it is family philanthropy that's the most intriguing aspect of Bart Culver. Each year, the Culver family – wife Cinda, and daughters Audi (13), Breesa (18) and Alexis (16) – spend three to eight weeks in a developing country. The Culvers have cooked with Kiwis, eaten with Indians and slept in Singapore, all in the name of education.
“I want my kids to see that they live in an aberration,” says Culver. “The U.S. isn't representative of the rest of the world.”
The trips aren't just feel-good sessions, however. The Culvers take T-shirts, hats and other assorted items from the Bart's stockpile (all adorned with frogs, of course) to hand out to those in need.
“I just hope to make a difference,” he says in his honest Midwest tone.
Judging by the number of skiers, indigenous peoples and amphibians Bart Culver has helped over the last 25 years, he's made quite a splash.
