Overview
K2 once reigned over the US market for so long, its sales leadership practically became a cliché. The keys to its sustained success were manifold, but from a product standpoint it’s not hard to summarize: K2’s have always been easy to ski. Regardless of your skill level, your terrain preferences or your gender, there’s a K2 for you and chances are you’ll love it. Given K2’s longstanding preeminence, just about every American with 20 years on the snow has owned a K2 at some point, creating a groundswell of skier-to-skier endorsements that has kept the K2 ball rolling even when, on occasion, it’s been deflated.
It’s been several years since the investment group Kohlberg & Company acquired K2 (along with a fistful of other ski brands). It’s impossible to effect much change in year one, so it was no surprise the ski collection didn’t move much in 2019. But while the Pinnacle design limped to the finish line two years ago, R&D was preparing a sweeping overhaul of K2’s men’s and women’s core collections. The limited quantity of the new Mindbender series available in the spring of 2019 were snapped up by eager consumers, auguring well for a brand rebound. But K2 skimped on the design of the first-generation Mindbenders in an attempt to grab more gross margin at the expense of product quality, echoing the miscues of the first-year, foam-core Pinnacles.
The women’s market has always been vitally important to K2 – 2019 marked the 20th anniversary of the K2 Alliance – and the current collection shows admirable gender balance. For every unisex Mindbender, there’s a Mindbender W model to match. The ladder of women’s Mindbenders extends from the Mindbender 85 W, pitched to the intermediate market, all the way to the Mindbender 116C W, one of the fattest made-for-women models you can find. All but the lowest price point models use women’s specific cores and tooling.
The ski line overhaul that began with the Mindbenders continued in 2021 with an all-new Technical/Frontside series dubbed Disruption and the return of a twin-tipped collection named Reckoner. The headliners of the original Disruption series were 5 Technical models – an arena where K2 has been all but invisible – 3 for men and 2 for women. The signature technology for the Titanal models is a tip-to-tail band called Ti I-Beam; full length carbon stringers energize the non-Ti Disruptions.
Twintips have always found a home in the K2 collection, a space occupied by the Reckoner family since 2021, playful, carbon-powered twins originally sold in 102mm, 112mm and 122mm waist widths. Now expanded to 5 men’s models and 3 for women, the Reckoners are all about smeared turns and aerial acrobatics. If the mountain looks like a series of linked launch pads to you, the Reckoners are ready to send you into orbit.
For the 2023 season, K2 not only significantly improved its cornerstone Mindbender Ti collection, it created a whole new off-piste family, dubbed Dispatch. The envisioned Dispatch skier wasn’t into touring, per se, but was more of a powder hound focused on thrilling descents, however he’s able to access them. The 3-model series, at 101, 110 and 120 widths, was clearly targeted at the off-trail world, but with the accent on the descent, not the ascent. Whatever skier the Dispatch was trying to attract failed to materialize in an over-served backcountry market, and the Dispatches were themselves dispatched after one unmemorable season.
The arrival of Dispatch caused K2 to subtly shift the emphasis of its established Mindbender collection to all-terrain, lift-assisted skiing. Accompanying the shift in accent was a product change that was truly transformational: K2 altered all the dimensions of the Y-Beam Titanal laminate that governs how the ski grips. The Y-Beam fork in its forebody was given a new shape, as was its tail section, which moved most of its mass towards the rear. The elevation in on-piste performance was stunning – partly because the prior effort was so lame – making the Mindbender 99 Ti and Mindbender 89 Ti the most improved models in their respective categories two years ago.
The 2025 Season
A lot has happened at K2 over the last two seasons, but the action hasn’t been in the product line but in the backstage maneuvering to position the brand for sale. To abbreviate what has been a long and tortured process, Kohlberg repackaged its ski holdings as Elevate Outdoors in order to move the whole, under-performing lot off its books. I won’t go into all the hoary details, but the nut of the problem is that ski brands don’t operate like many consumer-products companies. Someone whose expertise lies in mining spreadsheets won’t like that they don’t fit their preferred formula. I am reminded of the remarks of the chairman of Newell Brands when it acquired the ski bundle now on the blocks again, to the effect that, should these peripheral ski brands prove inconvenient to operate at an expected rate of return, he would simply liquidate them.
To this class of financial wizard, the entire ski business is no more than a rounding error. If this sounds like they don’t give a flying fuck about the ski culture that has sustained their brands for decades, you’re getting the idea.
The reason I mention this sad state of affairs in this space is that many of my Dear Readers remember K2 as the warm-and-fuzzy brand that got it, that understood their core skier down to his or her toes. That brand, and the people that created K2’s unique marketing magic, have left the building.