We made our annual pilgrimage to Austria for ski picking a few weeks ago. This is generally our first picking trip of the year and we follow up with additional domestic and international trips as needed depending on how much product we can procure. This first trip of the season included stops at Salomon, Fischer, and Atomic. This year, we had the privilege of selecting some skis and testing them on snow the very next day on the Dachstein glacier.
The first picking trip of the season always brings a lot of excitement to see what changes are made in production, how quality control is working, and showcasing new designs. We get to meet with the engineers, production managers, race room managers, and service managers to learn how things are progressing. Doing this in person is always a more fruitful experience than over the phone or by email. We always seem to extract more details when talking face to face, especially with the language barrier. I take a keen interest in their process control as I once worked as a quality engineer in the production world. The industry is making strides in their process control but every year I make my trip and I get to confirm there is still a lot of variation in production. This variation helps ensure that I continue to have a role as a ski fitter/picker.
Salomon
Our picking trip started with Salomon. We are huge Salomon/Jessie Diggins fans, and so are many of our customers. Also, I finished my World Cup racing career in 2016 as a Salomon athlete, so it is an easy relationship. At the peak of the Covid mania, our shop was buying/selling about 8% of the entire worldwide S/Lab production. Salomon has since grown production, and we have not had great winters lately, so that % has dropped, but we still have a large amount of interest in S/Lab. Picking was easy this year with a lot of product available, and they also moved into a new race room with a view of the mountains and air conditioning… such a novelty in the European factory/race room scene.
The biggest change for Salomon this year was a new core material. Salomon and Atomic share production facilities, and they are sharing tech on this new core. In the past, they were purchasing Nomex cores from Dupont Germany. But they decided to move core production in-house. This gives them greater control over their process. We got to test the new core on-snow vs a new previous year ski that we brought over. Andre Watt, the US racing manager, brought us up to the Dachstein glacier for our on-snow time. We picked skis with similar flex numbers and load pressure, and it was great to see the new product tested very well on snow. Besides the ski core comparison test, we also got to ski on some prototype product. It was very fun and informative to pick skis, have Luka and Willie grind and wax them, and ski on them the next day. This gave us some near-instantaneous feedback on our picking process and confirmed our biases about what we are looking for in a fast ski.
We are very excited about how the new core flex tested on classic skis. We also continue to be impressed with the new plate design on the S/Lab skis. Many of the staff at our shop tested Salomon skis frequently this past season and everyone is impressed with the increased stiffness and stability without sacrificing low pressure against the snow. Also, we continue to be impressed with the Salomon Blue/F base for cold conditions and their Red/wet base for the wettest snow.
Atomic
Our second stop was with Atomic and it is an easy visit because the Atomic race room is in the same factory as Salomon. They share production facilities in the Amer sports factory but they have distinct design teams and philosophies. Martin Rohrmoser is in charge of helping us in the race room and it is always a pleasure to see him yearly. He is extremely knowledgeable and we love bouncing ideas off of him. Also, we met with Yann Vallet, Atomic Nordic manager, and we love to see him for deep insights into current ski production and also a peek into the future of the brand. We see Yann a few times per year as he works in Alktenmark but also makes trips to the US.
Atomic switched to the new Innowave core last season with extreme success and the big change of this year was some tweaking to the shape of the skis and NEW graphics. I am colorblind so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I think the new graphics are awesome. They introduced some pink into the color palette and it makes the skis pop. From Atomic, we always find excellent classic and skin skis. We have a ton of success with their skins specifically. In skate, they offer the S9 and Gen S9 with the S9 being the traditionally designed skate ski and the Gen S9 offering a unique shape dedicated to firmer track conditions. The Gen S9 has become a favorite among our customers that need a little more stability and it really helps make V2 effortless. But on a firm track, they are extremely fast. The production on the Gen S9 was very good this year and I am amazed at how low they could keep the glide zone contact pressure.
Fischer
Our last stop in Austria was at the Fischer factory in Reid. Fischer is launching a new ski design this year and we are seeing a large uptick in pre-season orders. Fischer is the industry leader and when they make a change to their ski line-up, we always see a large bump in interest. Julian Hunger is our contact at the Fischer racing department, and he is a great source of information. He seems to be connected to all things racing, from production to grind service to on-snow athlete support at the World Cup. It was fun to pick his brain about which skis athletes are choosing at the highest levels of the sport. He confirmed our experience and sources that the DK/Helium skate model is seeing more and more usage at the World Cup level. Anytime Fischer introduces new materials (carbon fiber) into the press/production process, it can take a bit to dial in exactly the shapes they are looking to produce at scale. But we are seeing very consistent production and flex profiles with the Helium skate ski. We love that Fischer now has a huge range of conditions covered with their market-leading Plus/28 base and the newer Cold/31 base is amazing in all temps below mid-20s.
Regarding classic skis, the 902 continues to be the most successful classic ski design in the world and is our #1 selling waxable classic ski at the shop. New this year, Fischer replaced their cold classic 812 model with the 702. This is definitely a step forward. The 702 has more splay and wax carrying capacity vs the 812 but does not yield any performance loss in the coldest snow. We are very excited for this new classic ski, and it will give our customers a great hardwax ski choice with much better upside potential vs the old 812.
