Skiing Business

Ryan Dionne
2012-01-24 15:10:27 | 4598 views SHARE

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Line Skis
www.LineSkis.com
888-546-3754
Jason Levinthal, Rebel Command

Men’s Prophet 85 Ski
Available length of skis: 165,172,179,186
Two-sentence description of featured skis:
For all-mountain skiers inspiring to go beyond the groomed on a ski that is still within their narrower width comfort zone. Just point em’!

Women’s Soulmate Ski
Available length of skis: 158,165,172
Two-sentence description of featured skis:
No watered down women’s skis here. We use the same high performance construction and technologies as our men’s big-mountain skis, with simply a lighter Aspen Macroblock core to match a lighter female skier.

What’s on the horizon for next year’s skis?
Narrower and less rocker, I’m serious! We live in the future! We’ve been designing powder skis for so many years that our designs have progressed to the point of now enabling us to go 10-20mm narrower with half the rocker yet maintain all of the float. The result is great powder performance with 20 percent more Active Edge, and grip. Thus, more versatile all-mountain performance and a ton less tip bounce than others in its class. You can feel this in Mr. Pollard’s Opus, Sir Francis Bacon and our Influence series.

What are three of the biggest forces shaping the changes and developments you’ve made?
Skiers expect new skis to enable them to have more fun on the same terrain.

Skiers want the versatile of a variety of specific models, all in one single ski.

Skiers want a graphic that matches their specific personality.

Any completely new models (including pro models)?
Men’s freeride: “Prophet 85″ for all-mountain skiers inspiring to go beyond the groomed on a ski that is still within their comfort zone.

Women’s” “Soul Sister” 98mm waist big mountain ski for girls that don’t want watered down women’s skis.

Any disappearing?
The “130″. Yup, believe it or not the ski that started the modern fat ski revolution is going away. It’s a testament to over a decade of our powder ski design progression that literally makes today’s 115 waist skis perform equal to 130′s of the past. They’re narrower yet float equal or better with much more versatility outside the powder. You can feel it on Mr. Pollard’s Opus and Influence 115.

What will be your best selling ski? Why?
The Prophet 98 because the “Freeride” category is the largest segment and it’s a one ski quiver that does it all for everyone from east to west.

Any new materials or construction technologies?
The “Blend” & “Chronic” is over 10 percent lighter by applying Thin Tips, a new Maplelite Macroblock core and Capwall construction.

How much emphasis are you putting on rocker?
We’re not putting any more emphasis on rocker than any of our other ski design geometries. A bad ski with rocker is still a bad ski, a ski with too much rocker is a bad ski, a ski that has rocker that shouldn’t is a bad ski…you get the point. We use it as one of our many potential design ingredients. Thus, apply it only where it fits best and to the degree that makes the most sense just like any of our other geometries and materials.

What about sidecountry/backcountry?
This is the category with the most current and future growth. It’s less about the product and more about the state of mind that product, and marketing inspires.

What type of skiing do you see leading sales next year and why? How are you preparing for that?
Freeride image driven skis in the 85-100 width range.

What about sidecountry/backcountry?
We believe the backcountry/sidecountry trickledown effect is starting to hit the mainstream skiers that are currently on skis under 85mm. These consumers want skis with the look, features, tech and most importantly, inspiring attitude of their wider, wilder siblings. These skiers want to fulfill their aspirations of going beyond the groomers but are not willing too take too big a leap from their current under 85mm carving ski comfort zone. We’ve added two new models to our popular Prophet family, the “Prophet 85″ and “Prophet Flite”.

How are manufacturing costs going to impact retail prices?
When the cost of everything on the planet goes up, so do our ski prices.