Originally Posted by
splat
Make no mistake. It breaks my heart that this happened. For all the criticism I endured as a result of other people making skis for me that failed, the last few years I personally made the skis, I had a fail rate of about .25%. The blem rate was much higher because I was making a ski no one else on the planet was willing to build and I was doing it on a very low tech, low budget approach to a high tech finished product. Instead of 5 steps to make a perfect product, there were about 25 steps that had to go down flawlessly to crank out a perfect pair. To say it was very difficult would be a huuuuudge understatement, which is why only one guy in North America was willing to try. And he failed miserably at every step except getting the topsheets aligned correctly.
The most gratifying aspect of it all was that the people who appreciated the skis most were also extremely good skiers. The better they were, the more they got it. Maybe it was foolish pride, maybe it was bad business, but I just couldn't join the race to the bottom to make the cheapest ski possible, whether here or in China. I was driven to make the best possible skis in new shapes with cutting edge composites and artistic function in the form. I guess I had the misplaced faith that the means to manufacture the skis more perfectly and economically would arrive with economies of scale that would require a larger scale of production to gain those advantages. That financing fall all that was on the horizon. I had a promise of a $2 million investment to do just as I described above had the guy on Vashon delivered as he promised. But he proved to be very short-sighted, costing me and a bunch of fellow maggots our dream.
