Swimming Against the Tide

“You must know, deep inside, that what you are doing is important, meaningful – vital.  That someone somewhere needs it to be special, that you have thought about them, and that you care.”  – Master Carpenter Callum Robinson, author of Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman, as quoted in Touch Wood, featured in The New Yorker, December 9, 2024.

I conducted my first ski tests during the winter of 1986/87 when I was a product manager at Salomon. The intentions of Salomon management were twofold: to take a snapshot of what the ski market looked like at the time, and to begin enlightening our field force about skis in general, as we expected to be selling same in the not-too-distant future.  Salomon invested heavily in training so they could better control how any particular product story was told. A precondition for this strategy was total control of its in-house reps. In the current market, every rep in Christendom is an independent, which, among other significant factors, diminishes a brand’s interest in investing heavily in their professional development.

Some of the features of our early test protocols remain in wide use today: a 5-point scoring system, a 10-criteria test card, and a one-run-per-model test cycle.  Of course, the ten criteria being tested for have changed a lot since 1987. For example, one of our criteria was “Glide,” as out-of-the-box behavior was very interesting to measure for a brand that would soon be making its own skis. While waist width and sidecut are important enough today to define the category boundaries, back then, no one used the minute differences in sidecut to define a ski’s genre.  (SKI did break down the sidecut dimensions of the skis they analyzed as part of a statistics-saturated set of reviews, but the skis were categorized according to who they were made for, not their shape.) 

The next time I would be handed the reins of a well-financed ski test was during my tenure at Snow Country Magazine, a New York Times Magazine Group title. I created the test criteria (using a 10-point scale, an underappreciated improvement), approved the test location (any run off the Summit chair at Alpine Meadows, California) and most importantly, picked the test team, matching the skiers’ talents to the categories under inspection.  For example, for mogul ski testing I engaged the services of Cameron Boyle, who won all three beer-sponsored mogul tours one year, Scott Kauf, who won five mogul titles in succession (I believe), his wife Patti Sherman-Kauf (no slouch herself), the hyper-athletic amateur mogul champion Robbie Huntoon (who took under his wing another amazingly talented athlete, Tina Vindum, who became a sought-after ski model), the exquisite Kristi Brown, and the Legend himself, Wayne Wong.

But having a highly qualified field of testers isn’t what made Snow Country Magazine the world’s largest circulation ski pub within its first five years of existence. SKI magazine, where I would continue testing skis for the next twenty years or so, also could tout an elite team. The German rag, Ski Magazin, probably had the most prestigious roster, as its team was comprised of two world-class athletes provided by each of the brands under review.  What truly separated Snow Country from the crowded field of competitors wasn’t the jockeys riding the skis; it was how the results were presented on the page.

While all publications touted their independent, unbiased results, they dreaded crossing swords with ski suppliers, as they were also big-ticket advertisers. To keep the peace, they listed the models they covered alphabetically, lest the order of presentation be mistaken for the order of finish.  I rejected the norm as fundamentally flawed; when the same brands ran prototype tests, the ski with the best scores would most likely be the ski they ended up making. I simply applied this principle to the market at large: may the best model win, and be accorded the first review.  The order of presentation and the order of finish would be the same.

Our readers loved it; some of our biggest advertisers were considerably less enthusiastic. Rossignol claimed (probably correctly) that they were the number one ski brand in America, and its president, Jacques Rodet, was used to getting his way, so naturally he blew a fuse and threatened to pull his ads when one of his vector models was ranked 16^th in its genre. So, Snow Country’s publishers called for an industry-wide pow-wow that did not go Jacques’ way. The Rossi rebellion was crushed and Snow Country’s readership shot through the roof.

Why am I telling you all this?  To remind you that even before I hooked up with Realskiers.com I had already tested hundreds of skis.  As I also wrote a parallel package of reviews for London Daily Mail Ski, my ski review output to date easily runs into the thousands.  I know whereof I speak and have a track record to prove it.

Why at this late date am I still trying to establish my bona fides? Because, in all probability, I have written my last ski review, and I want to reinforce the foundation for what comes next.

One-on-One Consultation

Of all the member benefits of a Realskiers’ subscription, by far the most valuable is one that the site shall retain: one-on-one consulting with yours truly.  The late, unlamented Curated.com thought enough of the concept of one-on-one counseling to create a swanky site that carried an enormous selection, until it crumbled under its own weight. Its phony façade made it sound like they sold more skis than the rest of the American market combined. [See the list of Curated’s purported “curated” skis as of March 22, 2024. As lists go, this one is quite interesting, as it exposes the weirdest product mix imaginable and lays bare the site’s commercial objectives.] Once you’re selling off your own inventory, all pretense of objectivity is kaput. But by its own on-site records, the vast majority of its “curated” models are low-ball bottom-feeders selling, not on their merits as skis, or because they were a good fit for this or that Curated customer, but because they were cheap. In short, Curated.com was a wall-to-wall fraud.

There are many other reasons to dislike Curated.com’s business model – I’ll dip into those waters in a minute – but on two subjects it couldn’t have been a more polar opposite of Realskiers.com: 1) Curated sold skis – by their accounting, tens of thousands of them – while Realskiers never sells skis or skims off an affiliate fee; and 2) my Dear Readers and Dear Listeners do not consult with an idle Level 1 instructor or underemployed shop employee; they get me, unfiltered and unassisted.

I have two more bones to pick from Curated.com’s rotting carcass: because they sold boots but had no way to fit customers, they encouraged their visitors to get fit by a specialty shop, then walk out the door and buy them from Curated. That’s called, “theft of services,” and it isn’t just immoral; it’s illegal. (Their mix of boots, BTW, is ludicrous. Many of them are unskiable mush-buckets). As for its Curators’ ability to match skiers and skis, that aptitude depends, at a minimum, on the ability to test skis.  I was able to observe a fleet of Curated.com’s cadre of ski testers when they convened on the slopes of Mt. Rose last winter. Not only was their skiing unimpressive, they appeared to follow no set methodology.  According to the company reps who were called upon to outfit them with skis, many of them opted for models they were simply curious about, instead of capturing a fair comparison among market leaders who would serve them and their customers far better.

Sorry for the rant. Obviously, my tender psyche is perturbed by the thought that thousands of skiers have chosen to take the advice of the blatantly underqualified when I know more about skis and how to match them to skiers than the top 90% of Curated’s cadre combined. And this service costs only $19.95/year for sustaining subscribers, $24.95 for those freshly converted.

Content You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

Realskiers members will still find our exclusive Brand Profiles featured on our subscribers’ site. My coverage of this season’s new models will be limited to my reporting on each brand’s most recent moves, be it in their model line-up or overall brand direction.  As far as I’m aware, no other ski site offers an historical perspective of every brand it reviews.

While my recent back surgery put a serious crimp in my usual once-weekly output, there are nonetheless 324 Revelations stored in the Revelations Archives, most of them as germane today as they were when originally published. The Realskiers’ Archives also include every long-form ski review I’ve crafted since 2015.

Realskiers’ free, public site will continue to be the home of two important resources available only to Realskiers’ visitors: Jackson’s List, the only specialty shop registry that prioritizes customer service over membership in some group, chain or other form of shop affiliation; and The Returning Skier’s Handbook, which encapsulates all that’s new about today’s ski market.  Realskiers’ public site will also preserve five seasons of podcasts of Realskiers with Jackson Hogen, including 17 entries from the current season.

One of the recurring themes of my body of work at Realskiers is the paramount importance of boot model selection and fitting. I feel that the best – and perhaps the only – online resource for understanding the current alpine boot market can be found at America’s Best Bootfitters. Realskiers will continue to publish links to all ABB boot reviews, along with our own Boot Brand Profiles that provide context and history behind the current coverage.

Epilog

Any avid American skier doesn’t need me to tell him or her that the sport they love is going through some massive changes. Some of the seismic shifts, like the disruptions wrought by the arrival of the Epic, Ikon and Indy season pass conglomerates, are evident to any active skier; but the turbulence in today’s market isn’t limited to what’s happening to the on-snow experience.  The battle in the boardroom at several major ski/boot/binding brands also portend a future with less meaningful innovation and more hollow posturing.

If you’re a recently renewed Realskiers subscriber and would like a refund, I get it, and I’ll accommodate you as soon as my coffers are in condition to comply. My hope, of course, is that you’ll agree that content like my latest Revelations and podcasts – both of which are free – are deserving of your continued support.

https://youtu.be/cmSbXsFE3l8?si=a0SG1Wa0mVMIp0Ls

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