Yo, here's the deal.
Karhu and Line are both divisions of Trak Sports, USA.
We are the same company, but we are run seperately. There is a sales and marketing department for Line and one for Karhu.
Trak has one R&D department with lots of workers working on lots of different things. Some people work on Line product development, and some work on Karhu.
At the end of the day some skis we end up sharing, some skis we don't.
We always test our new products for Alpine and for Tele...some skis like the Mothership and Jak work well for both Tele and Alpine, some don't.
We don't rip each other off, we work together to develop the best products possible for our respective markets. Next year you'll see several skis that we build that Karhu won't and vice versa.
Sometimes Karhu skis have different flexes/mounting points/tail heights, and sometimes they don't. The point here is that we test everything before we 'steal' products from one another.
For the record, we developed the Assassins in coordination with Karhu because we both needed ripping all mountain skis.
By the way, we're not the only company that does this.
K2 Public Enemy= K2 Piste Pipe
Rossi B series= Rossie T series tele skis
Atomic R:EX= TM:EX
The list goes on, and there's nothing wrong with it. Whether you tele or alpine, you're still making turns down a mountain. Sometimes a ski needs minor tweaks for tele or alpine, and sometimes a ski just rips for everyone as is.
Later,
Jordan Judd
Product & Team Manager
Line Skis
