To My Dear Readers and Dear Listeners:
No sooner had I posted my (wonderful) podcast with Kim Reichhelm, than I started to feel queasy. In short order I was felled by a respiratory infection that got me in its grip and refused to let go. I won’t regale you with my abundant symptoms (the photo above bears silent witness to my body’s gift for effluvial production); suffice it to say, I was reduced to total helplessness that persisted for days.
I’m on the mend now, thank the Lord, but not yet up to par. With your kind indulgence, I’m going to take a brief sabbatical from churning out new content until my recovery is complete. I fully intend to return to my usual publishing schedule in the not-too-distant future. I will continue to answer all Member Consultation requests, so please share queries as they arise and I’ll do my best to get back to you ASAP.
Lest anyone feel shortchanged by this temporary suspension of newsletter and podcast publication, I remind you that my weekly Revelations and podcasts are a FREE service that always are available for the edification of all my Dear Readers and Dear Listeners.
With eternal gratitude for your continued support, I remain
Your Humble Servant,
Jackson
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One of the many hats I wore as North American binding product manager for Salomon in the early 1980’s was that of delegate to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). I believe the first meeting of F8.14 – the sub-committee on ski safety – that I attended was in Pennsylvania. I was flying under the wings of Salomon’s seer of all standards and patents, Gilbert Delouche, and the binding product manager for the North American zone at that time (and my mentor), Joe Campisi.
I was a babe in the woods, but I soon caught on to the game under Delouche’s patience guidance. I recall a debate on the binding specification then being batted around in the technical committee chaired by Carl Ettlinger. Ettlinger wanted language that would require any release/retention setting of 10 or above to be “visually distinctive” from the rest of the scale.
Why This Buyer’s Guide?
Don’t read the 2021 Masterfit Buyer’s Guide in Partnership with Realskiers.com for its 62 ski reviews. I should know. I wrote or edited all of them.
Not that the ski reviews aren’t worth the read. But ski reviews on the web are as common as rice, while the Buyer’s Guide contains something no other publication, whether in digital, print or video format, can claim: the most respected, thorough and dependable boot reviews in the world.
This isn’t mere puffery. The Masterfit Boot Test is so well regarded by the supplier community that nearly every brand not only sends its following year’s line-up in four men’s sizes plus three for women, it also dispatches its top designers and/or product managers to a distant North American site for most of the test’s five-day duration.
The Ripple Effect
As I’ve observed in this space before, product managers spend most of their time in the future; the present for them is two years away for the rest of us. So when the coronavirus shut down the 19/20 ski season, it triggered an automatic response in the R&D lobes lodged deep in my noggin: what impact will this have two years down the road?
If I knew the answer to this question with any certainty, I should be running a hedge fund, not scribbling about skiing. But after checking with several of the bellwether players in U.S. market, I have some idea of what’s in store.
