5 Ski Brands You Used To See in POWDER Magazine

As a lot as we want it had been completely different, the ski business could be a unstable place. Since its beginnings, ski manufacturers have come and gone for one purpose or one other, with just some hearty manufacturers hanging on (and thriving!) for the reason that ’70s or longer. The early problems with POWDER Journal are fraught with ads of drugs that makes any fashionable skier marvel how on earth they obtained down the mountain in these days. Amongst these ads are the ghosts of ski manufacturers previous who gave it their all, however ultimately folded for one purpose or one other. Whereas there are various defunct ski manufacturers among the many pages of POWDER Journal, listed below are just a few of the extra notable ones.This piece is a part of POWDER’s Summer time of Ski Nostalgia content material collection. Keep tuned in day by day for extra nostalgic articles, and hold a watch out for the upcoming Summer time of Ski Nostalgia badge to establish future content material.You can even view all of POWDER’s summer season nostalgia content material right here.Wish to sustain with the very best tales and pictures in snowboarding? Subscribe to the brand new Powder To The Individuals e-newsletter for weekly updates.

1. Olin Skis

Lengthy-lost ski model Olin Skis originated with Olin Company, a gunpowder producer that began within the 1800s. Within the Fifties and ’60s, the corporate started fabricating its first fiberglass skis and was recognized to mix this revolutionary expertise with reliability. Olin Skis repeatedly ran advertisements in early problems with POWDER Journal. These usually lengthy, editorial advertisements boasted that ‘All skis usually are not the identical, as a result of all ski corporations usually are not the identical,’ and that ‘The standard of a ski is the same as the standard of its components’ implying the model’s superiority. Maybe the very best advertising Olin Skis noticed of their time was a pair of the Olin Mark IVs featured within the 1981 James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Solely.Within the Nineteen Seventies, Olin Skis was caught in a price-fixing scandal alongside a number of different ski manufacturers who claimed they needed to hold ski costs artificially excessive. The model struggled to come back again from the scandal and was finally offered to K2 Skis within the Nineteen Eighties.

2. Hart Skis

Hart Skis originated from a carpentry store in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1943 by Hartvig Holmberg. The store specialised in customized cribbage boards, chess units, and ultimately, operating boards for ski-doo sleds. Holmberg’s brother, Harry, labored on the time for Gregg Skis, one other classic St. Paul-based model. Collectively, the Holmberg brothers started engaged on a steel laminate prototype ski and one of many first metal-edged skis. These prototypes had been full with a steady metal edge spot welded to a perforated metal backside sheet and aluminum high sheet, and had been launched to the market formally in 1955 as Hart Skis. In 1968, the brothers offered the corporate to Beatrice Meals. Below the management of Beatrice, the model finally fell behind as fiberglass skis grew to become an increasing number of common. An investor group purchased the model from Beatrice Meals in 1980 and spent the following 18 years attempting to revive it. The ski line was deserted beneath the investor group in 1998 till 2003, when one other investor group, led by Holmberg’s Grandson, bought the model again. Holmberg’s Grandsons revived the model and moved it to Ogden, Utah, in 2012 after which Summit County, Colorado, in 2015, the place the skis had been manufactured out of snowboard model By no means Summer time’s manufacturing unit. In 2022, Hart Skis went on indefinite hiatus and has not returned. 

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3. Hexcel Skis

A bunch of engineers from the College of California, Berkley based a plastic firm referred to as Hexcel in 1948 that specialised in progressive honeycomb-patterned plastics. Within the early Nineteen Seventies, Hexcel employed their plastic expertise to start out making skis, licensing the ski design from Mammoth Mountain founder, Dave McCoy.In the end, Hexcel shortly determined that their enterprise was higher centered on aerospace expertise. The enterprise was offered to Chris and Denny Hanson, of Hanson Boots. Hanson Boots, and the outdated Hexcel skis went bankrupt in 1984.

4. Molnar Skis 

The primary all-fiberglass ski was designed in 1959 by Artwork Molnar and Fred Langendorf in Montreal, and dubbed the Toni Sailer Ski, for the Austrian ski racer who gained a number of gold medals on it. In 1967, Molnar left Langendorf and the Sailer ski to work for K2 earlier than then ultimately transferring on to work for Lange in 1971. In 1973, Molnar lastly began his personal ski model, Molnar Skis, utilizing the ribbed fiberglass core he’d developed with Langendorf. Molnar Skis had a cult following amongst powder skiers and thrived for a brief time frame. In the end, Molnar closed his ski manufacturing unit in 1983 earlier than later going to work for a snowboard model in Oregon.

5. Sarner Skis

Sarner Tyrol AG was began in Sarnenthein, South Tyrol, in 1973 by architect and engineer, Christoph von Zallinger Stillendorf. The skis had been first offered on the 1974 IPSO Awards in Munich and had been immediately a sensation. Of their first three seasons, Sarner produced record-breaking quantities of skis and shortly started exporting their skis from Europe to Japan and the US. The manufacturing unit helped to spice up the native economic system in South Tyrol, and a number of other notable racers might be seen on Sarner skis as properly. Regardless of their preliminary reputation, excessive rates of interest, growing manufacturing prices, and an absence of profitability compelled the Sarner Tyrol AG manufacturing unit to shut in 1979, and the corporate to file for chapter. In 2017, Hans Innerebner, who had labored on the authentic Sarner manufacturing unit from 1974 to 1977, had the concept to relaunch the model and adapt it to present developments. The model relaunched in a brand new model as Sarner Ski vGmbH in 2020.

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This piece is a part of POWDER’s Summer time of Ski Nostalgia content material collection. Keep tuned in day by day for extra nostalgic articles, and hold a watch out for the upcoming Summer time of Ski Nostalgia badge to establish future content material.You can even view all of POWDER’s summer season nostalgia content material right here.Wish to sustain with the very best tales and pictures in snowboarding? Subscribe to the brand new Powder To The Individuals e-newsletter for weekly updates.

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