Question about the ski industry...

colin13

colin13

Active member
So I've been thinking about how the ski industry works lately, specifically about how a ski is designed and is put into production. First, I imagine there is the issue of patents. Edges, bases, and possibly certain types of manufacturing techniques are licensed by select companies. These are chosen with performance goals of the ski in mind and there is room for originality in material selection and layer-by-layer construction. In the end a LOT of effort and money must go into making a new ski even if doesn't differ much from other models. Perhaps just the design licenses alone take up most of the budget for a new ski. This is why companies just starting up might pay the license fee to use another company's design for the first year or two.

The question I have is about research and development. I'm sure all companies have this to some extent, but, other than trying different prototypes out on the hill, I doubt some of the smaller companies are making designs that will be licensed out to others. It could be a big risk for a company to stray to far from tried and tested parts of ski design. So, which ski companies have the bigger R&D departments? Are there some companies that don't even make skis, but have a large influence on the industry with patents? I ask this because I'm thinking of applying for a co-op job in this area and I still don't really understand where all this technology comes from. Thanks.

TL;DR Which ski companies have big cutting edge research and development departments? Are there some companies that do R&D, license their technology out, and don't even make skis?
 
I can only imagine that the bigger corporations such as K2 have a ton of people in research and development, but then you can look at 0n3p and because everything is in house they make a ton of random skis partly as a joke it seems but do experiment with realistic ideas. If you haven't seen this stuff before look the oars and maybe some other stuff. Armada also kinda started that elf shoe design, that covers everything from big corporations to a handmade ski company with armada as a sort of in between. Seems like you could be good anywhere, not educated in patents and all that so my post may not have even been helpful....
 
Yea that makes sense. There's only so much a single machine could do though. I wonder what crazy materials have been tested in skis.
 
Actually, designing and building a ski, start to finish isn't the worst thing in the world. There is a few NS'ers on here who do just that for hobby and for a living. Here is my thread on ski building:

https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/forums/readthread/thread_id/651776/

And here is the biggest resource for all you need to know on building skis:

http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/

Honestly, the worst part of my entire building journey has been waiting for epoxy. I've been waiting for over a month now and I'm not even 100% sure if I've been charged for any epoxy and if it will ship here soon... The epoxy supplier has been really screwing the dog IMO, but them being the only supplier within Canada that stocks the stuff I want, I guess I'll just have to wait. Finding suitable woods has also been an absolute bitch. I wanted to build my first set of skis from a pure poplar core like many others have; it's a cheap wood, has a great flex characteristic, and a high modulus of rupture, but no one stocks it locally, and I would have to wait a month to get some and at that, the lumber supplier was unsure of what sizes they would be getting...

Financially, ski building isn't cheap, but it is certainly affordable if you work hard and budget properly. It also depends on how you build a ski; press or vacuum bag, and how complicated you go with each setup. I'm lucky that I have access to a large variety of tools at my workplace, so that has help cut costs immensely by me not having to buy many of these tools.

Hopefully all of this will give you some insight on your questions.

 
Ever see a pro on a ski with a plain, white topsheet? 98.9% of the time, that's a prototype, and that pro usually has a handful of other prototypes that are all slightly different from each other (I think LJ had like 3 different skis when they were redesigning the Chronic, Tom had a few when he was coming up with his pro-model). For the most part, minor tweaks in flex, sidecut profile or rocker/camber shape are the main changes, but sometimes companies go out and do something completely out of the box (ON3P Oars comes to mind here). Ever company has a R&D department, it just varies from company to company what they means...for bigger companies, that's some team that designs shapes then hands them off to the pros to try, then the pros give feedback and the R&D guys redesign based on feedback and repeat the process till they figure out the right ski, for smaller companies, it really comes down to what they want to do...be creative and wild, stay traditional and just make minor tweaks...or even a bit of both...it really depends on how they want to evolve their skis (and therefore their company). If I remember correctly, the Afterbang took something like 4 or 5 years of testing, breaking, redesigning and re-working before it even touched snow.
 
Oh wow, totally forgot to link my post to your question...

What I was trying to say is that I doubt big name companies like K2, Atomic, or Salomon are selling the licenses of a ski model to smaller companies so they can build them. It's relatively simple to design a ski (well that's all subjection but at the core of it all in my opinion it is...) so I doubt that is happening.

And yes, all companies will have some level of R&D, which doesn't have to be crazy expensive either. You can spend like crazy on R&D or spend very little on R&D.

Here are two examples of some R&D:

ON3P Oar:

560888_270501463034439_119100341507886_49631519_1823387363_n.jpg


Just some crazy experimentation from the guys over at ON3P. Here is a thread on them:

https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/forums/readthread/thread_id/687115/

I guess you could more or less call this radical experimentation; trying something outside of the box to see if it works.

Eric Pollard's Pro Model:

EPOV: A Decade of Ski Development with Eric Pollard from Line Skis on Vimeo.

And this would be a more practical form of R&D, most of what goes on in the industry today (from what I know) It just consists of making minor and major tweaks to a ski from year to year, and building on it each year based on rider feedback. The hellbent is a really good example of this if you've known any of this history of that ski.

Hopefully that brings it all together and makes more sense!

 
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