2024 Head Brand Profile

2024 Head Brand Profile

Overview Every brand, large and small, foreign or domestic, has to make a choice about how they want to build a ski.  Once they settle on a construction and the equipment to execute it is on premises, they tend to stay with it for the long haul.  Head’s wheelhouse...
2024 K2 Brand Profile

2024 K2 Brand Profile

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...
2024 Liberty Brand Profile

2024 Liberty Brand Profile

Overview Every mainstream ski brand can trace its roots to a founder, a visionary who nursed a fledgling idea to life.  If we’re aware of a brand’s history (a big if), we’ll associate the brand’s formative years with the sepia-toned photos of its first factory.  But...
2024 Kästle Brand Profile

2024 Kästle Brand Profile

Overview Kästle isn’t what it used to be, and that’s a good thing. Not to dis the current Kästle’s ancestry, but Kästles of yore could be clumped in two camps: race skis it took a god like Zurbriggen to bend, and kooky creations that should have been euthanized in...
2024 Stöckli Brand Profile

2024 Stöckli Brand Profile

Overview Our spider sense tingles when we hear the term “handmade” applied to skis, as the implication is that such slats will receive extraordinary care in manufacture no mass-produced ski can hope to receive.  One reason we look sideways at the “handmade” qualifier...

2024 Tecnica Boot Brand Profile

Roughly a decade ago, Tecnica was at a point in its evolution where it had to change. The brand still had market mojo, but the line was due for an upgrade. Once a brand decides it needs new molds, all ideas are on the table until eliminated in the R&D cage match...