Throughout the industry there is a lot of talk about the “fit” of a ski. While fit is important, it’s not the most important element of the equation in finding a superior pair of skis. Boots? Sure – getting the right fit should be first on your list of criteria. But as we refine our ski selection methods we find that an overemphasis on fit with respect to skis is generally misplaced.
Overwhelmingly, we have customers come to us most concerned about getting the right “fit”. As important as matching the skier to the right ski is, the overall quality of the skis we put on the snow is more important, especially with skating. I wrote an article for the BNS site last year (http://tinyurl.com/yfd69l3) that introduced the idea of “absolute quality” as a primary concern and it remains good background reading on the topic. Since then we’ve handled a few thousand additional skis and pursued specific characteristics we see in “special” skis, not to mention spent a winter testing them on snow. The lessons learned from the recognition of the fantastic qualities of Kris’s 261 ski have resulted in the selection of additional skis (not all picked by me) that have relegated that 261 ski to a strong position in a fantastic fleet, rather than a go-to ski. Kris raced on them only once last year. We’ve gotten better at this game.
Particularly with respect to classic skis, it’s important to match the qualities of the ski with the qualities of the skier. This means paying attention to at least a half-dozen different factors including weight, skiing style, track conditions and various aspects of ski construction. Skis are dynamic and all aspects of “flex” change with a changing load and snow surface. The idea that there is one “flex” that “fits” a given skier is an oversimplification. We have been investigating different characteristics in skis that correlate these complex load profiles to performance on snow. Our work with top-level racers indicates that our methods of identifying the highest quality skis are effective and producing results.
This whole phenomenon manifests itself in other ways as well. We often pick skis for high level racers with a lot of skis at their disposal. We might get a request from somebody to find them an RCS 610 at 2.1 – 96.4 Fischer numbers. Well, OK. We can probably come pretty close to that by digging through some racks at the warehouse. But this is no guarantee of quality. Those flex numbers describe two points on a load-response curve, but they can never describe the shape of the curve. And the load response curve is only one factor among many that determine the quality and performance characteristics of a ski.
The unpleasant fact is that skis are not all created equal. There is variability within every production run of skis, and there is even bigger variability between production runs. Good skis travel in batches – when all the conditions are right in the factory then good skis are the result. In order to deal with this reality we go as far upstream as we can to identify the skis that we want to have in our inventory. There are two conditions that must be met in order to get your hands on good skis. First, you need to know what good skis look like. And then you need to have access to enough skis to determine where the good skis are found – what batch they were made in, and when during that batch all the conditions came together to produce great skis.
Going “upstream” to find good skis means going to where the skis are. In the most optimal case it means going to where the skis are made. With few exceptions we select our skis from either the factory racing department inventory in Europe, or the distribution warehouse in the US. Going to the factory is great because we see a ton of skis from a good selection of production runs. Not only do we get to decide what production runs we like, but we get to find where in that production the really excellent skis were made. It’s especially nice because the skis are not all stored in plastic sleeves, which makes examining them much more efficient. The US distribution warehouse scene is inherently more frustrating. The inventory is nowhere near as complete. Instead of a thousand skis in each size and construction we’re looking at anything from “not available” to a couple hundred pairs. We might see skis from two or three batches, but not from the WHOLE production run. It sure beats just taking what they send us, but the work is slower.
It is unclear to me why we are the only ski dealer that travels to the warehouse or factory to select our inventory (to be fair, I only know this to be the case with Fischer). It definitely adds to the overhead, and it certainly wouldn’t be worth it if we didn’t have a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to find. But we do know what we want, and we’re picky, so we do it.
In some instances we have ended up asking a vendor to send us a bunch of skis that we didn’t pick, at which point we end up with a good reminder of why our business model is what it is. We’ll find that some of what comes meets our standards, and the rest doesn’t sell and goes on “closeout” if we don’t get organized enough to return it. In general we are not a “closeout” store. With inventory that we pick ourselves there is usually not a meaningful amount of carry-over to the next season. That also means that we tend to sell-out of skis. We work hard to get our customers to order skis early. The ideal circumstance is to have the order in place when we travel to Europe.
This year we got greedy. We had access to a large quantity of excellent skis, and we went fairly heavy on inventory. Our plan was to pick the pre-season orders, and then allow for growth by picking similar numbers to our total sales from the year before. We ended up taking more than that because we got really excited about what we were finding. So our current inventory is both big, and extremely high quality. I’ve mentioned before that I thought it was the best inventory of racing skis ever assembled in North America. Maybe I should have emphasized that it is the highest quality inventory of skis ever assembled in North America.
The factors that will determine the quality of your experience on your skis can be prioritized as follows:
1 Absolute quality
2 Conditions-specific flex characteristics
3 Grind selection
4 “Fit”
5 Wax
The exception is that on a few specific days wax might trump all but absolute quality. On classic skis, particularly for lighter skiers, the fit of the ski is of greater importance, but still doesn’t rise to a level above quality or specific characteristics.
Sometimes you can get lucky on closeouts and end up with a great ski. But by and large I’ll stand-by the method that we have developed over time – work hard to find the best skis you can, and charge a fair price for a great product. We won’t sell you anything we’re not proud of.
Zach and Nathan check out Kris Freeman's fleet and grinds
More Gratuitous Flex
Zach the Monkey Boy wishes he could pick skis by plucking them and listening to the tone. Unfortunately, picking good skis is still a lot of hard work.