By Bob Williams

Dec. 27 (World Wide News) – Snowboard sales, which shot out of nowhere in the early 1980’s, have began to decline this year. Following is a year-end report, written by Eric Pfanner of the International Herald Tribune, showing that a handful of start-up ski brands are giving the troubled industry a shot of adrenaline.

-------------

Like many people in the Alps, Stephane Radiguet grew up on skis. And like many skiers, he switched to snowboarding in the 1980’s, attracted by its laid-back image and the feeling of floating effortlessly through powder snow, at a time when skis were/ long, straight and ramrod stiff – and many skiers were, too.

Mr. Radiguet, whose nickname is Zag, became a competitive snowboarder and eventually went to work for Nidecker, a Swiss snowboard brand, as a designer. But as his 40th birthday approached a few years ago, Mr. Radiguet, who is now 43, sensed that the snowboard phenomenon might be losing steam.

So he decided to design a new type of ski that borrows the voluptuous dimensions of a snowboard, allowing skiers to share that buoyant sensation.

“When I tested these skis, it was like ‘I want to go skiing again,’” Mr. Radiguet said. So he started his own company and Zag Skis was born.

Zag Skis operates with three full-time employees from a 270-square-foot office in Bourg Saint Maurice, France, a railhead and pit stop on the way to ski areas such as Val d’Isere, Tignes and Les Arcs. Despite its tiny size, it is one of a handful of start-up ski brands springing up in France, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the United States that are giving a troubled industry a shot of adrenaline.

While their sales remain small – Zag Skis, for example, expects to sell about 2,000 pairs of skis this year – they are contributing to a resurgence in skiing, after nearly two decades in which snowboarding, well, ruled.

The global market for skis has held steady at 4.2 million pairs for several years, according to industry estimates, despite tough economic conditions in major markets such as Japan and Germany. Snowboard sales, which shot out of nowhere in the early 1980’s and reached 1.5 million by the late 1990’s, fell back to 1.28 million during the 2003-4 season.

For now, the newcomers – with names like Boheme, Bumtribe, Armada, 4front, Line, Aluflex and Movement – pose little threat to the titans of the ski industry, led by the German-French sporting goods maker Adidas-Salomon, Skis Rossignol of France and the Amer Group of Finland, which owns the Austrian brand Atomic.

But even the big players acknowledge that the start-ups are influencing design and attitudes.

“These brands are bringing a bit of motivation,” that is stimulating the market, said Patrick Werle, managing director for Europe at Skis Rossignol in Voiron, France.

But Rossignol is not worried about a looming competitive threat, Mr. Werle said, adding: “In any market, there are examples of brands that identify a niche. After a few years, they usually get taken over or go out of business.”

Still, entrenched manufacturers have found it impossible to ignore the niche brands. Rossignol and its competitors have been rushing to develop and market their own skis aimed at proponents of snowboard-influenced trends like “new school” and “freeride,” which are championed by the start-ups.

New school, or free-style, which involves wearing baggy clothing and performing skateboard-style aerial tricks in obstacle-ridden snow parks, is all the rage in the United States and among young skiers; freeride involves leaving the prepared runs at a ski area in search of fresh powder, and is popular in the alps.

In the United States, snowboarding is still going strong, with sales rising to 475,000 last season from 458,000. But there are signs that the trend in the United States may also be close to a peak, experts say.

“The key thing is demographics,” said David Ingemie, president of Snowsports Industries America, a trade organization. “Most of the new people coming in are getting on snowboards, at least initially. But we’re seeing a lot of people who started out with snowboarding who are getting back into skiing.”

That is sweet music to the ears of ski manufacturers, who have had precious little good news for most of the past two decades. As a post-World War II ski boom crested in the early 1980’s, the industry sold as many as eight million pairs of skis a year. But then snowboarding arrived, along with a succession of dry winters in the Alps in the late 1980’s, which cut into sales.

The drawn-out economic downturn in Japan, which persisted through the 1990’s, curbed growth in what has been one of the fastest-growing markets.

Rapid inflation in ski ticket and equipment prices in the United States had a similar effect. And many people who used to buy skis now rent them, with the caliber of equipment in rental shops having improved.

While volume has shrunk, winter sports remain a sizable business, with $2.2 billion worth of ski and snowboard equipment, apparel and accessories sold annually in the United States alone, which accounts for about one-fifth of the global market.

The ski industry responded to leaner times with waves of consolidation, starting in the 1980’s, as dozens of small, often family-owned companies concentrated in the Alpine countries either went out of business or came under the control of bigger corporations. Skis Rossignol, ,for instance, acquired Dynastar and the Trappeur and Caber boot brands, along with Look, a maker of bindings.

Atomic bought Ess bindings and Koflach boots before it, too, ran into financial difficulties and was acquired by Amer, the Finnish sports equipment maker. Last year, Amer in turn added Volant, a niche United States ski brand.

Benetton of Italy acquired Kastle, an Austrian ski maker, and renamed it Nordica, like its boot brand.

In the mid-1990’s, ski makers in Austria, which still has the largest number of independent brands, developed the first effective product innovation in years: the parabolic ski, so named because of its hourglass shape. The wide tips and tails and narrow middle help skiers “carve” turns, rather than skidding from edge to edge, as they often did with the traditional, straighter models, which were fine for World Cup racers but more difficult for the average weekend skier to use.

“The carving is very attractive now,” said Ewald Kainz, head of research at Fessel-Gfk, a research firm in Vienna. In Austria, where more than 500,000 pairs of skis are sold every year, sales are expected to rise by 3 percent to 4 percent this season, he added.

While ski manufacturing remains concentrated in the Alpine countries, some companies are experimenting with lower-cost options elsewhere. K2, the only major United States brand, for instance, has moved production of its skis to China. When K2 recently acquired Volkl, the l;eading German brand, it started speculation about another possible move, but the company says Volkl will stay in Germany.

This week, Adidas-Salomon said it would cut almost 10 percent of the work force at its French snow sports division as it shifts production to China and Romania.

Some of the start-up ventures also use outside contractors to make skis, leaving htem to concentrate on design and marketing. Zag Skis, for instance, are made in Voiron, near Grenoble, in a factory next door to Rossignol.

Movement, based in Vevey, Switzerland, works with a contractor in Italy. It has been one of the most successful start-up brands, expecting to sell more than 5,000 pairs of skis this season, 4,000 outside Switzerland. Like Zag, Movement grew out of a Swiss snowboard brand, Wild Duck, which was started in 1981.

By 1998, the snowboard market was losing promise, said Roch Schenk, who handles marketing at Movement, so the founding partners decided to branch out into skis. A year later, the first skis appeared, and now there are 17 models, sold across Europe, Australia and parts of Asia. Eventually, Mr. Schenk said, Movement hopes to enter the market in the United States.

Like other employees of ski start-ups, Mr. Schenk spends a lot of time on the road – driving 4,000 kilometers, or nearly 2,500 miles, in two weeks is not uncommon, he said.

Because these start-ups lack sizable advertising budgets, marketing is essentially done through sponsorship of “riders” – that is, daredevil skiers who use the skis at freeride competitions and other road shows.

That is how Mr. Schenk started with the company himself.

Can turning out a few thousand pairs of skis be a profitable business?

For now, Mr. Schenk said, the company is breaking even, plowing its earnings back into product development.

“I would be lying if I said we didn’t want to make money,” he said. “But everyone at the company loves skiing or snowboarding, and that’s the bottom line.”