Last season Völkl unveiled the fifth generation of its legendary Mantra, the M5. The Mantra M5 was created to win back the experts who once formed the backbone of the brand’s market support. The key to its success was a new way of deploying Titanal, breaking the top...
Rossignol has been on a new product introduction rampage recently, investing in five major diversifications plus a concept store, leaving few Euros in the corporate kitty for ski R&D. The only activity in the Alpine collection is the creation of a 4-model...
Overview Salomon was riding a string of ridiculously successful product introductions when the brand introduced its first ski in 1989. The monocoque shell was the big story, creating such a groundswell of demand that all the ski brands that came before had to re-tool...
It’s unusual for any brand to overhaul a product family’s design two years in a row, and the various modifications Salomon made to its QST series this year I would classify as major. For starters, it jiggered the deployment of carbon, flax and basalt as introduced in...
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...
It’s unlikely that Atomic management foresaw just how much its boot brand would come to depend on a modest line of recreational boots it launched twelve years ago. Called Hawx, its unique feature was vent-like creases on both sides of the forefoot, perceived as a fit...
