Zele Community Table: The Secret Life Of Skis

February 13th, 2008 at 07:58am Zele Community Table 117

Max Werdenigg

Director of Sales USA

Edelwiser

 

January 29, 2008
 

Zele Community Table with Lisa Zimet, Michael Conniff, Natalie Golden, Kerstin Anderson.

 

Max Werdenigg: I’ve been here in Aspen for wo months. I’ve been here to the United States a few times before. I went to Miami for diving—I went and discovered the whole diving thing. It went to Palm Springs and started as a pilot.

Michael Conniff: Diving, a pilot, starting a ski company. You’re a risk-taker.

MW: I’m a risk-taker as long as you can evaluate the risk. The risk is we have a completely new product that approaches the market in a new way with a social commerce model. One of our claims about Edelwiser is it’s more than skis. There’s a lot more behind it.

MC: Like what?

MW: The number one thing high-quality products. We took the time, the money, to develop the skis. My mother a World Cup and Olympic racer, Nicola Spiess, fourth in downhill in the 1976 Olympics at Innsbruck. She raced from 1974 to 1980. My Mom is the skiing component, my father the visionary and the business component. He’s a true visionary. In 1997, he formed the  First Austrian Internet Congress. He equipped a gondola with wireless! He could really be described as a visionary. But it’s not easy.

MC: Tell me about it.

MW: He was a consultant for the Austrian skiing area Bad Kleinkirchheim, where they have World Cup races. And he did the First Internet Congress. The Internet was not present, but he saw the possibilities.

MC: How did the idea for Edelwiser—and custom skis—come about?

MW: Basically, it was born at the kitchen table. We were working with Reinhard Fishcher about the dynamic movements on skiing. He thought about carved turns. The snowboard things came along with efficient turns and he said that’s it. He cut snowboard in half so it was two skis with one edge per ski. Our most popular model is still the Swing 162 that goes back to that ski. My mother really liked his idea of skiing and his skis so they worked together. This idea came up with black skis to have stickers on it.

Kerstin Anderson: There’s no effort in turning.

Lisa Zimet: I can’t wait to get mine.

MC: What’s different about Edelwiser skis?

MW: It’s torsionally stiff.

MC: What does that mean?

MW: We us an aluminum composite that causes the ski not to wind. That’s torsional stiffness. But it gives you the support you need. Most skis tend to crank in the turns. That’s one of the basic features. And we have an 80 width underneath binding. In 2000 nobody had 80 under foot. It was revolutionary.

KA: When I go on the ski, there’s no effort in turning at all. Why is this ski really different? Race skis—sometimes I have to force them—but when I ski on these it’s a natural movement. I don’t have to put in any effort. They hold the edge, but they’re also soft enough to ski the moguls on Big Burn on Snowmass. It’s hard with my other skis to ski moguls. They’re soft, yet they really grab. It’s so fun to ski them.

MW: That’s something I heard from a lot of people. They say the ski responds immediately but they find the sweet spot on the first run. I’m not sure what that means.

N: It’s the spot where it’s exactly the way you want it.

MC: What makes the ski different inside?

MW: It’s got a wood core and different layers of laminate. Most skis have foam in the middle. This Edelweiser has three different woods—mainly ash, tropical wood, poplars—and laminates. There’s a sophisticated life inside the ski because of many little factors. It took one year to develop one ski. We’ve had to develop different styles, different versions. My Mom is the head developer. She knows how to tell somebody how she feels. That’s what sets us apart. A lot of skis are cheaply produced, other than the 5 percent top range on the market. For example, the base of the ski. We have nothing on base of ski—no logos or designs—because it’s a graphite base. We could do that but we’re not going to touch the base. It’s a block of graphite carved down. You would lose quality.

N: Race skis are all black.

MW: We tried different skis. I must say, the wide skis are designed for the lift in powder, they’re not designed to carve. Ours are designed to carve.

LZ: Would the same construction work for a snowboard?

MW: No. But we are planning to expand. We want to get to a level where the company is working. There are so many ideas of things that can be done.

MC: Who is your competition?

MW: The only one I know about is Pete Wagner, Wagner Customs, in Telluride. It takes him two weeks to do one set of skis. Hardly anybody can express what they need.

LZ: The price tag must be in accordance with that.

MW: These independent labels in skiing—I really like the idea. Every ski has its own personality. When we build skis we put our soul in it. That’s more and more important in our society. The masses grow to a point where you lose the individual part of one’s self. Now you can design your own Porsche—everyone’s going to mass customization. They talk at MIT about mass customization. Some scientists say it’s a pretty young field. Finally we’ve got a case study.

MC: What about your business model?

MW: Social commerce is our business model based on communicating with people. With a big ski company, you buy them or not. For us, there has to be a dialogue with us. For us it’s a strong aspect to create communication between two people.

KA: They have a blog where they comment about the skis. The home page is continuously updated, and his mother’s very involved. She responds. It almost seems like they’re connected to their skis emotionally by putting you in touch with other people. It’s more than just buying a ski—you put your own identity on the ski. There’s a lot of different components. They also have graphics there.

MC: How are you going to sell it?

MW: We don’t have retailers. We don’t want to go through shops because we offer custom products. You could only display a white ski.

LZ: It starts at the level of designing your own custom ski.

MW: The bonds through the product are going to grow. She will love her skis.

MC: Tell me about the newbie thing?

MW: We have the newbie, greenhorns, and members. A greenhorn is somebody who’s never had anything to do with the company. They buy the Swing for $750. He skis with a friend, he wants to get the ski. His friend gets a number, his friend gets a discount of $50. The one who connects the two, gets $50 or 30 euros.

MC: Tell us more about Edelwiser?

MW: Edelwiser is a snow family. My Mom does workshops on snow. At the moment she becomes part of a movement called Feldenkrais, a way to get more aware of your body by doing very small movements and seeing effects. Like the slopes you feel much more when the movements are smaller. She does snow workshops, she shows people how to do it. Those skis fit the concept, you don’t need much force.

MC: And your father?

MW: My Dad is a visionary. He wouldn’t just sell skis. The regular ski business is too boring. He wants to do something exciting, something new. The pricing model is one thing. Another big part is a community. We have a forum, profiles, our new Web site. We have a new one more technically advanced and international. In 2007, Ispo gives out the Volvo sports design award and we won the award for the whole concept. We also won the Austrian national award for ebusiness and multimedia. The jury was fascinated how we integrated the social commerce in business. The other thing is in Austria is we receive a grant from the state—and bigger grants. This is good for everybody, because they bet on the right horse.

MC: How does the design process work?

MW: If I get a picture I need the resolution to blow it up.

N: You can buy blanks, and practice.

LZ: We did mine on Max’s computer. He has a program.

MW: The first way is our interactive online design toolkit at Edelwiser.com. There are four ways in all. There’s the toolkit. You download the shapes as vector files in your graphics. We have ski art gallery. Also the analog design kit—a roll of paper the dimension of the ski and then you can work on it.

MC: Natalie, how do you look at this as an artist?

N: I’m doing glitter. I’m going to design it and see if they can sell it. There’s a space to design it and they can add the price and limit the edition. The ski is $750 but a famous artist can charge $5,000. You can have artists and limited-editions. You also have the original to be auctioned for charitable purposes. More goes to artist. I’m not greedy. I’ve been painting skis by getting a couple blanks and playing around.

MC: What does the name mean?

MW: “Edelwis” is an abstraction of the flower. “Edel” in German means precious, high-quality. Edelstein is a gemstone. “Wiser” means a smart concept. It connects to the Alps, toAustria.

MC: How long will you stay in America?

KA: It depends on how much he shovels.

MW: We have some pretty fancy ideas. We’re thinking about setting up a production line in the United States. We order the skis and that makes us fast. It takes five hours to apply one top-sheet.

N: Do customers pay for shipping?

MW: That’s why we want to set up a facility here. We know we have a really good ski. We have to see how the individualization thing takes off. The other things are orders for the next year. The whole concept is viral marketing. People love it and they will tell people they like it. In Austria, that’s what we have experienced. The tie to the product is so strong.

MC: How many have you made?

MW: This year a thousand. We were founded  2004 and the first one went out in 2002. It took us a long time to get from the kitchen table to the actual office. It is not easy to set up a company. You will encounter a lot of problems. We talk about problems. You’ve got to see further than that. We have so many ideas that we develop together with the skis, apart form the skis. The stuff is connected to skiing is this whole community project. We find there is no ski community out there that uses all the possibility that skiing offers. Ski companies are interested in sales, not the community. The ski manufacturer isn’t. Also the tourist branch is not interested in making a community tool.

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