Ryan DionneSHARE
Industry leaders may not agree on how the technology should be marketed, but brands concur that rocker skis help the industry.
“In some ways it changes the way skis ski as much as shape skis did at the time,” says Geoff Curtis, Marker-Völkl USA’s marketing vice president.
But buzzwords abound: reverse camber, flat camber, mixed camber, rocker-camber-rocker, early rise, tip rocker, tip-and-tail rocker, and plain old rocker. And many companies have their own words like Baseline and CamRock, so are consumers confused?
Many brands don’t think so and plan to continue using “rocker,” the catchy word that gets its name because it mimics a rocking chair rail.
(courtesy Dan Campbell)
“I’m not sure (that what it’s called) matters a whole lot,” says Kirk Langford, Goode’s worldwide sales and marketing vice president. “Each company has their spin. I think consumers are going to figure it out.”
And Curtis agrees saying as long as messages are clear and brands are transparent, consumers can decipher the buzzword puzzle by visiting a ski shop or researching it online.
“What we don’t want to do is confuse people,” Curtis says. “I think the easier it is to explain (rocker) to consumers, the better it’s going to be.”
At Bill and Paul’s Sporthaus in Grand Rapids, Mich., customers are quick to understand the buzzwords.
“For the most part it doesn’t take them long to understand it,” says Eric Pearson, owner of the ski shop.
Pearson says many of his customers know little about rocker when they walk into the shop, so it’s easy for his employees to give them a lesson. And after a quick in-store demonstration of the different types of rocker, the customers get it.
Before skiers even walk into a shop, ski manufacturers are working to educate consumers.
To spread the word, brands plan to take advantage of social media and other web-based tools like YouTube-one marketing advantage they didn’t have when shape skis went mainstream.
(courtesy Dan Campbell)
But with some companies putting rocker in race skis, it can be hard for consumers to know whether it’s really rocker or a traditional-cambered ski with a slightly turned up tip.
“Perhaps it’s a little bit, from the marketing side, misleading,” says Stephan Drake, DPS skis founder and designer. But he adds, “there are advantages to having a small amount of tip rocker in a ski designed for hard snow or mixed snow.”
And Drake thinks having rocker in race skis helps transition the technology into the mainstream-a move that started last season and should continue this season.
“It really does work, and that’s the most important thing,” Curtis says.
For 2011-12, it’s hard to find a brand that doesn’t have rocker skis in its line.
“I think (the industry has) accepted it, and now we’re modifying it and tweaking it and adjusting it,” Langford says.
“It’s a really exciting time to be involved in ski design,” Drake says. “In terms of rocker, there’s a long ways to go in terms of getting to standard profiles. Right now you look across all these different companies and there’s a huge variety of rocker profiles out there. The next few years are going to be really exciting.”
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