As a lifelong skier and a longtime resident of Colorado, Niwot’s Ted Doering knows exactly what he wants out of a pair of skis.
They have to offer a lot of floatation in powder and be nimble enough to shimmy through the trees. They need to be light but stable enough to excel in the backcountry, as well as able to handle inbounds crud and hard-packed groomers. And, perhaps most important, they have to be durable enough to match his hard-charging style.
After years of buying off-the-rack skis, Doering took a different approach this fall when he went shopping for a new pair of sticks. Instead of going to a ski shop, he stopped by the small Boulder warehouse facility of Folsom Custom Skis and, with the help of Folsom’s entrepreneurial founder Jordan Grano, designed a pair of made-to-order skis that matched his exact specifications.
For grins, he had pictures of his son and daughter designed into the customized top-sheet graphics.
Total cost: $1,200. Excitement factor: off the charts.
“They’re already the best pair of skis I’ve ever owned,” says Doering, vice president of information technology and e-business for an international electronics company. “I can’t wait to get them out on snow.”
The ski industry has been flooded with upstart boutique ski brands over the past five years or so, with some, like Fat-ypus Skis of Breckenridge and 4FRNT Skis of Park City, Utah, more successful than others at building and selling smaller batches of skis much the way microbreweries changed the beer market in the 1990s.
But Folsom Skis, a two-man operation that opened for business in 2008, and Wagner Custom Skis, which started in 2005 in Placerville, are among the few that build true custom skis. Although twice as expensive as off-the-rack models, custom skis offer personalized performance features and one-of-a-kind artistic designs tailored to a customer’s preferences.
In-depth information from the skier about his or her style is used to create skis with a personalized size, shape, flex, torsional rigidity, weight and camber and rocker profiles, as well as unique top sheet graphics.
“What really sets us apart is the performance of the ski,” Grano said. “The benefits are that you’ll be more in control, you’ll be more confident and you’re going to be less tired. When someone gets on our skis and they’re matched right to the right length, size and flex pattern and other criteria, they can ski all day without getting the late afternoon burnout because the skis aren’t overworking them and they aren’t overworking the skis.”
Popular with discerning buyers
Both companies take pride in long-term durability. Grano and Wagner Skis founder Pete Wagner estimate their skis last four times as long as a mass-produced ski built in an overseas factory with an assembly line mentality. And that’s another reason each company has started to flourish in harsh economic times.
“I think people in general are being more thoughtful about purchases,” said Wagner, who previously made customized golf clubs. “There is value in spending a little bit more money that you know is going to improve your skiing experience, as well as be a really durable product that is going to last longer than a set of skis that’s made in China.”
There’s also a green side to buying custom skis. Wagner Custom operates out of solar-powered building in Ophir (south of Telluride), while Folsom uses nontoxic bonding agents and soy-based inks. Each company sources its materials from the U.S. and has gone out of its way to reduce scrap waste.
Folsom Skis produces only 300 pairs of skis each year, about six pairs per week, all designed and produced one at a time by hand. Wagner Custom hand-built about 1,000 pairs of skis last year.
Wagner Custom’s starting price is $1,695 this season, but it offers slightly more shapes, sizes and types of wood cores, and it is imbedding a computer chip into its skis that tracks performance data. Wagner’s skis are developed with a computer software that Pete Wagner morphed from his experience in the golf industry.
“Our skis appeal to people who want something that’s just not the run-of-the-mill product,” Wagner said. “They want something that’s tailored to them.”
Commitment to excellence
Grano’s background didn’t necessarily predict a career as a successful ski entrepreneur. The 32-year-old self-taught tinkerer grew up learning how to build and fix things on his family’s farm in Virginia. He studied philosophy, religion and music in college and eventually started working in the TV industry. But as a passionate skier who was dissatisfied with the quality of mass-produced skis, he started building skis in his garage and testing models at Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia.
Finally, he went to a ski and snowboard industry trade show in Las Vegas to show off one of his prized skis.
“I went there with the idea that I might have wanted to get a job with an established ski company,” Grano said. “But that’s when I realized I didn’t want to start designing skis that would be built in a factory in China and become thousands of the same things at stores. And that’s when I got the idea of working with one individual person and getting it right from the start.”
Buy local
Folsom Custom Skis, Boulder
folsomskis.com, 303-248-3418
Wagner Custom, Placerville
wagnerskis.com, 970-728-0107
