Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

In August, 2001, the American ski industry died. The industry was born in 1879 in Minnesota from Scandinavian immigrants and was responsible for more innovations than in any other country in modern ski equipment design. The last surviving major company of American ski manufacturing closed its doors when Volant shut down their factory in Colorado. They held the world patents on steel capped skis and nothing else skied like them and they won more awards than just about any other ski of their time. They were the Rolls Royce of the ski slopes yet the company NEVER made a profit in spite of their premium price and laid the blame on high priced American labor that got a whopping $15 per hour plus benefits on a 4.5 hour manufacturing time per pair. American skis could stand up against skis made anywhere, but Joe Scootfoot let his wallet do the deciding most of the time when he bought skis during the past 10 years. Joe Skibum just got whatever was the cheapest on eBay when another skier bailed out after discovering that in America, equipment was the LEAST of your worries when alpine skiing costs were figured up. When the Berlin wall fell, western European manufacturers couldn't wait to let Lena and Dmitri start building skis for them in order to escape western European workers and their labor unions that had bequeathed them with six weeks of annual paid vacation and benefits. Soon China got into the act as well. The Obermeyer Girl was soon modeling Chinese clothing to the ski world. Except for a few sweat stains here and there, her threads were still looking good. Lena, Dmitri, Skim Lo, and Woh Gah Dam don't live near a mountain and don't know how to alpine ski if they do. But they do work cheap for long hours. The new Finnish owner of Volant figures to save at least 30% at wholesale price on eastern European labor alone. Volant skis will then be aggressively marketed in upscale European resorts that dwarf America's market by comparison. Not to mention Japan where any high class skier MUST get a new complete outfit every year in order to save face with his peers even if he can only manage a blue run that just got groomed on his better skiing days. American ski manufacturers never seemed to figure out that many Japanese skiers (the world's biggest ski market....hard to believe) went skiing to form a unique identity rather than to get adrenaline rushes like snow crazed white boys and girls that were a small subculture in America and always would be. They should have spent skilled American labor costs on high profile commercials instead and convinced average recreational that bad **** made them look sophisticated in the same way the old TV cigarette commercials did. They did change styles often, but they didn't attract enough new skiers and they failed to sell clothing to nonskiers just wanting to look cool, like The North Face and Patagonia did with overpriced mountain climbing rags.

Joe and Sally Scootfoot take the family down to a sports mass merchandiser and get them ski, boot, binding, pole combos for $300 or less these days. Junior gets a snowboard with baggy pants and jacket instead because it's the cool way to be for him. Marketing convinced him that bad boy image was more important. Skiing usually lost another customer when Snowboarding gained one. Marketing made it happen.

I would say that as far as the mass market is concerned, the American guitar industry has went down a similar road, except they do an even worse job of marketing. LP's, Strats, and P-basses are still about the best they can offer to beginners ever since the ski industry was still making wooden skis and beartrap bindings. And the new guitars are considered no better than the originals. And the ski industry is considered conservative and resistant to REAL change? At least they slowly got a lot better over the years. Guitar and amp manufacturers must therefore be considered real neanderthals. Skim Lo and Woh Gah Dam can make guitars and amps they can't play as well as they can make skis they can't ski. THEY might as well be doing it if all you get is the same thing in a different color scheme year after year. If you stand still, you get copied and put out of business. If you excel and innovate, you had better develop a way of letting it be known and DESIRED if you want to make sales that reward your excellence. It's a constant paradigm shift or dispair on the dime shift. That's just reality in a Global economy.

Is the American guitar/amp industry going to see the same losses the American ski industry has, or do you think it has already happened??? Do they deserve a better fate??? When I see a $3800 retro Les Paul on "sale", I know the answer to that question. At least the ski industry isn't crowing about how their new ski model skis just as well as the dangerous relic they made back in 1964 and charging you extra for the retro ride.

There's just too much to respond to here. Snowboarding's fun(marketing had nothing to do with that), inexpensive is good as long as quality is there, $3800 is too much for any current Gibson, I still ski on my U.S. made PREs and play my RICs. "That's just reality in a Global economy." - Yep. Nothing good or bad here - just today's reality. See the Roach - Be the Roach. Oh nevermind.

WOW!!!! Everything in the economic sector has gone the route of "cheaper labor/outsourced for more money"...That is why I appreciate John Hall's position. the company has never done anything to compromise its patents and trademarks and they are STILL made in california. IF not for ANY other reason, my purchase of a new RIC keeps people in jobs and I am still getting an excellent quality product.

The american guitar/amp industry has already reached this point. How many fender copies are there? 100's...
But how many RIC copies are there? Old ones but I don't see any new ones and I am glad. If I had 3800 to spend on a guitar, I could go any number of ways. I could buy new RICs, I could buy old RICs...why would I want to pay so much for a "reissue?" Now, I realize that there are not as many of the old ones around as there used to be...George Gruhn started that trend...but I would still rather search one out than buy a "reissue" just my .03

I'm not into the reissue thing either. With an extra $3800 I'd buy 2 new RIC basses and take my family on a nice vacation, and probably still have change left over.

Bill, I still ski my 97 Volant SuperKarve I skis and probably will for a long time. The new Volant Spatula ski takes everything that was ever learned about shaped carving skis and turns it around 180 degrees, so I might get a pair of those some day. Somebody finally realized (Shane McConkey for one) that powder skiing required a completely different ski because it is more like water skiing than groomed hardpack skiing. That's why it looks like a water ski, and snowboarders will finally run up against skiers that can float in pow just like they do and blast past them under conditiaons that boarders find hard to handle.

Since I ski at Taos Ski Valley more than everywhere else put together, snowboarding wouldn't be much fun for me because it isn't allowed there. Some call the resort narrowminded, but all the expert skiers there agree that the average snowboarder simply can't handle the steep conditions there and would crowd onto the easier runs, cause congestion and accidents, and scrape the snow off the run with their constant sideways sliding like they do at other steep resorts. Snowboards have great float in powder, but the more you gravitate to hard conditions the more the skiers blow past them. The Spatula ski has now eliminated the float advantage of snowboards in deep powder and crud while keeping the advantage of independent leg/foot action that skiers enjoyed in other conditions. If you want to imitate a surfer, then snowboarding is the thing. If you want to blow past them, get some Spatulas.

The fact it took the ski industry 15 years to realize what the appeal of snowboarding was and to engineer a better alternative in the ski equipment arena shows just how boneheaded the leaders in the ski industry are. Since snowboards were analogous to surfboards in powder, why not come up with the Spatula ski that was analogous to water skis? When a superb skier with outstanding abilities and respect like Shane McConkey keeps these ideas to himself for a long time because of fear of ridicule from ski industry leaders and fellow skiers, it shows how the pioneer spirit that made the American ski industry great has went to sleep, if not outright died.

If a Finnish owned ski company using eastern European labor can succeed in bringing such obviously correct products as the Spatula ski to market where American efforts failed, then more power to them. The ball had been in our court, and the court of western European factories, for a long, long, looooong time. People who play guitars may have similar feelings when new products show up.

BTW, there are still very small garage operations building skis in America, but they do NOT sell to the average skier. Rickenbacker takes an approach similar to these small ski manufacturers. If RIC were anywhere near as big as Gibson or Fender, their present method of business would seal their fate just as happened to the ski industry and other guitar manufacturers. Gibson and Fender are correct in needing to source cheap labor to maintain market share, but they don't have to be so boneheaded as to keep shoving the same product over and over again. Musician's Friend catalog makes me want to puke with the same old **** every "new" issue I receive in the mail. You can take two catalogs printed 3 years apart, open them to the Fender or Gibson section and try to figure out which issue is the latest.

The choice of cheap labor wasn't made by management so much as by consumers in the marketplace. That's something to consider the next time you buy a $20 toaster at Wal-Mart. You, the consumer, send a message to business management every time you make a purchase of ANYTHING in the marketplace.

I haven't had a chance to try carved skis yet. Unfortunately I haven't gotten in a lot of skiing over the last 4 years. Before that I hadn't missed a year from the time I was 7. I skiied Taos in '92. That walk up to the top is a killer. Taos was some of the best skiing I've done (that & heliskiing in Canada).

Ric content: in the early '80s I had a pair of Harts w/Ric stickers on them.

If I were to buy again, I would probably get a freeride style of shaped ski since they work better all over the mountain. They came in after the SuperKarve showed up. The PowerKarve would have probably worked better for me, but I figured I just had to go fast. Volant has changed their entire line since I last bought.

The only stickers on my skis are NotWax stickers because it's better than any wax I ever tried and lasts a lot longer. It sinks into the base and hangs on all day long. Faster running than any wax job I ever had as well, and it goes on both skis in less than 2 minutes without the smell and hassle of regular waxes. I also wear an LL Bean Gore-Tex parka over fleece instead of my puffy Obermeyer ski jacket because it's a lot warmer since it totally blocks wind. Windbloc fleece also blows away regular fleece for things like glove liners and headgear. A Gore-Tex mountain climber mitten shell over wool liners ($5 at army surplus) or Windbloc fleece gloves also beats any "ski glove" I ever tried. A lot of the clothes I ended up wearing were not specifically intended for skiing but they work better and sometimes cost less than a lot of ski gear because they were built for performance over style. I have gripes with a lot of "ski" clothing, and I've heard more experienced skiers than me with similar opinions. Mountain climber style gear that is warm, light, and rugged is often worn by the truly serious and experienced. There's some analogies there with music gear as well.

I'll never pay retail for ski gear again, after I saw what the markup structure was. You can get boots, skis, bindings, clothing at the end of the season for half price all over the place because ski gear is style driven just like fashion clothing. ALWAYS buy nothing newer than last years model, buy from individuals if possible, and you can ski for half price or less and suffer almost no reduction in performance. The ski shop doubled their money on me even though I bought at discount.

There was this one ski bum in Powder magazine that only bought single skis from a broken pair. His left and right skis never matched, but he didn't care if he broke them because he paid almost nothing for each ski. He really ripped on those mismatched skis. Yuppies and such support the ski industry in America, because I found the real skiers pay a fraction of what I did as a beginner. No ski instructor or ski patroler ever paid more than wholesale (40% of retail, 50% of street price) for new skis because he's advertising a brand. As the economy tightens up, I expect a lot of skiers will be dumping alpine gear on eBay. The same goes for guitars as well, and I'm never buying a new one again.

I was fortunate to meet the local rep for PRE, Marker & Scott in the late '80s. I bought my second set of PREs with Markers on them & some Scott products at major price reductions. I know what you mean about the mark ups.

Philco,

To answer your topic title's question I'm willing to bet by the end of this year, or by next summer at the latest when I'm out looking for a job.

I broke both my legs at the same time while snow skiing. Six months in casts. I've only gotten a bruised ego from my guitar playing. Much safer.

I'm sure having 2 broken legs gave you plenty of quality Ric time.

Robert, I'm probably facing enforced early retirement before the end of the year myself, so I'm going out with something, but it's a big pay cut. I'd better get used to cross country skiing instead of alpine skiing for a while. It might be the best thing to happen to me, because I needed a career change anyway. I have some plans I want to take a stab at.

The bottom line is that whatever it is you're involved in, if profits aren't being made you need to cut and run before you get the axe.....if you can. I swore I would never return to the semiconductor industry or the navy, and I'm not sorry I stayed away from both outfits. I saw what was going to happen to people in computers and telecom, and I stayed away from there as well.

My trip to Russia showed me something they need and don't build in that country. It would actually do them more good than it does us. Perhaps.....?

So, you're moving to Russia?
I've heard that the people there really don't hve much of a sense of humor.

Phil, have you been smoking those hemp speakers again?