Regular visitors to realskiers are most likely aware that we haven’t covered Elan for a few seasons. It hasn’t been for lack of interest on the part of our membership, several of whom have voiced intense displeasure at our elision of Elan. The brand has been selling...
Blizzard’s fortunes began to turn around several years ago when the Tecnica Group acquired the brand and factory in Mittersill, Austria, and pumped a few million euros into an overhaul. It’s often the case in the world of industry that he who builds the last factory...
When Laurent Boix-Vives acquired the distressed fledgling brand Dynastar, he already had Rossignol in his portfolio. Thus was born a sibling rivalry that persists to this day, with the elder trying to establish an untouchable record and the younger always looking for...
The heart of this lay-up is a wood core that’s been whittled by a 5-axis milling machine to pare away every gram of excess mass. Square sidewalls are replaced by sloping shoulders that slice easily through 3-D snow. A thin Titanal shell reinforces the ski underfoot...
Management at every brand, large and small, foreign or domestic, has to make choices about how they want to build a ski. Once they settle on a construction and the equipment devised to execute it is installed on the premises, they tend to stay with it for the long...
