That's fair -- but I wonder if there is also a geographic difference in your experience. I see you're in GB -- so I'm guessing you're primarily skiing the Alps and clued into the ski manufacturing scene of Europe.
Yes we have some people who contract out their ski manufacturing -- J Skis (Utopie), Icelantic (Never Summer), 4frnt (Elan) -- but those are all pretty demonstrably unique ski designs and layups compared to any other skis you can buy.
But in the US/Canada scene, most of the "indy" brands aren't just re-skins with a clever marketing scheme. Most of them are manufacturers.
For those in Europe -- who are you equivalent of Moment, On3p, Praxis, Folsom, Meier, Wagner, Shaggys, Sego, Voile?
Is it Kästle? Blossom? Augment? Stöckli? who else? The only other small Euro-brand I follow is Down. And I'm 95% sure they don't build their own. But their ski designs are unique....no major brand has a touring ski with a 40m+ radius.
A 40m radius.... I don't go quick enough for that
.
I'm still fairly well connected in the states, I worked with some US ski gear co's over the years and was a PSIA full cert [don't keep it live but have euro full certs].
I do like the microbrand thing - I'm old enough to remember The Ski when it was a garage thing and did some stuff with RD when it had just emerged from the garage
.
Here you have people like:
- whitedot
- pfd
- nix
- lonely mountain
- Fauna
Like the USA some of these guys are tiny homebrewers and others are simply SMUs [whatever they say].
Personally I separate out people like Blossom and see that as essentially a thread going from Persinco, via Spalding and as been pointed out here being for a while the Nordica race room. To a degree Stockli and Kastle [and sporten] are similar, they re essentially smallish players but ones which I suspect given the choice would like to be big ones [sporten
is a big player just not under their own brand].
The vibe from the 'true' microbrands seems very different; there seems to be a statement that they want to make a good product [ I don't dispute that] but there
also seems to be a cultural and 'political' statement of 'difference-ness'. An imperfect analogy but the local coffee store that sources, roasts, blends their own beans and so on. I don't sense that for example Shaggy's wants to be [say] Fischer, but Kastle might quite like to be.
Again the smaller companies seem to specialise in wide or very wide - under the ropes stuff. I don't see the small custom co's doing 'FIS legal' piste trenchcutting stuff. Now at this point I'll make a case that you have less 'tolerance' in something designed for bulletproof ice than something focussed on 2 feet of fluff, or perhaps it's the case that as a 'tester' I am
way more sensitive to performance differences when skiing a course than when I turn on the transceiver and check the airbag. If there's something
off on a 64mm slalom you
know after 2 turns [off can be design, a burr, a ding], take something superwide into the deep and you often have to listen a little more.
My feeling is that most major brands do what they do well, and that they provide highly consistent product - which may be designed to a one size fits most model in a given category. I'm certainly not suggesting that microbrands are unconscientious or make bad skis, just that there might be a greater chance of variation - that's the case with lots of artisan product unless you are hitting hyper high price points [though that might also be an explanation for what are generally higher prices].
So given that much of my time is on firm groomed I guess I am likely to look towards mainstream brands [or I guess the Blossoms of this world] because they make 'tools' that tend to align more with where I spend time.
I know some don't see the relevance [I do, perhaps because there is a culture of small specialist car brands here] but some people would buy the 911, others something more obscure and that makes a statement about performance and also I suspect to a degree to 'attitude' [perhaps that s not the best word for it].
At some point there's project of spreadsheeting prices category for category 'big brand' vs 'micro' and asking
is this ski worth $x more than this ski. I don't know the answer.
Yes, masking the topskis is how it was done at one point but now knowing different shapes and contouring on the topskins it would be of little use. What most would satisfied would be that all the skis were tuned identical...or at least well. You would not beleive how many skis we get on in a season that are either not tuned or poorly tuned.
I remember this being done with coloured ski saver tape [remember ski saver...] but as you say ski shapes are distinctive, arguably the tape slightly changed the feel of the ski and perhaps most significantly other than flat tops you're going to be limited to binding choice which introduces another variable. Even with flat tops you can make a pretty strong case that [for example] Rossi's will work better with Look bindings and Rossi/Langes because that's the setup that the testers will be using for the 'sign off' of the production model.
Also again as you say, do the skis arrive well tuned, if not do you fix it or assume that's how the public will get 'em and test like that.
)
