Probability of Getting Good Race Skis at Small Ski Shops ??

And BTW - where these rockets straight cuts or skate cuts?

Not much input from the ski industry on this discussion thread ... not
that I'm really surprised.

I will fess up and say that I do know a little about ski and composite
product construction. Though the emphasis in the last sentence is on
the word "little". I have some experience from the past and the
current.

In the Past (mid-70's) I raced for a year on Lovett skis, there were
made in the US in Boulder, Colorado. One day I got to assist in making
a pair of skis. Actually they were a pair of racing skis that I would
end up racing on a lot in the US and Europe (good powder skis, now
hanging on the wall of my home office, serial # "TK 1", Lovett was a
cool ski company). The construction then was definitely artisan
oriented. I remember taking a brush and coating the fiberglass strips
and laying them into the mold, sandwiching the foam core. With this
lay-up technique it would have been easy to lather more epoxy on one
ski's composite strips versus the strips in the other skis. When
different thicknesses of epoxy cure, the ski flex patterns will reflect
this. The flex patterns will differ.

As of current, I have a garage with piles of carbon and kevlar fiber,
epoxy resins and hardeners and fiberglass molds. I've gotten into
making stuff out of modern day composites. It's easy, it's fun.
Lately I've been working on kevlar-carbon fiber ski expedition sleds.
Duing my mad home fabricator escapades I have learned a few things
about quality control with composite materials.

The basic lesson would be - if you want really, really good quality
control, you don't put the epoxy resin on the composite fabric
yourself. You have a company that specializes in this process do it.
It's called "pre-preg" technology. A roll of carbon fiber, kevlar, or
whatever type of fabric you want is run through a machine. This
machine soaks the fabric with a carefully control thickness of a
carefully controlled mix of epoxy resin mix. This pre-impregnated
composite fiber is then wrapped and kept in cold temperatures to stop
the hardening process. The materials are then shipped to a customer
(who usually has a large freezer to store this material). The customer
then uses this highly quality controlled composite fabric in the making
of their products.

So the question is - do ski use pre-preg composites? Or do they hand
soak all of their composites? My bet is that the still hand, or tub,
soak all of the composites and that is why there is such a variance
when making skis. With this 'artisan' approach there is more "luck"
involved than quality control.

Pre-preg composite technology is not rocket science. It's been around
for a long time and it keeps getting better. The catch is - it's more
expensive than laying up composites with eposy-resins yourself. So I'm
thinking that this would be another reason ski companies would opt to
remain using the old methods ... it's better for the profit margin.

Oh yeah - when I say composite technology is not rocket science ... I'm
reminded of a ski pole manufacturer's ad. This pole manufacturer
said that they were using a revolutionary carbon fiber braided sleeve
to build their poles. Like this was some amazing, leading edge product
they had developed and no one else could have. Ha! Carbon braided
sleeves have been used for many years to build lightweight prosthetic
legs. And the cost of this material is so low now that you can by
rolls of it for less than 2 dollars a foot. See:

http://www.cstsales.com/CarbonFiberBraidedSleeve.htm

This web site is a "hobby shop" web site. Kids use carbon fiber
braided sleeves to make lightweight model rocket tubes. So yes - ski
and pole composite technology IS rocket science ... for 12 year old
model rocket builders !!!

Tim Kelley
(Question authority ... and anything that the ski industry tells you!)

Tim,

You've definitely opened a can of worms here. I've been writing a
response to this for a few days now, but there are so many different aspects
of this issue that my brain has seized up and my normal loquaicousness has
degenerated into a rambling, nonsensical tome about ski manufacture. I'm
going to post it because it has some interesting thoughts on the issue, but
reader beware....

Ski manufacture and distribution is a difficult business and there are
definitely issues of which consumers should be aware. But I think that your
take on it is overly cynical and there is not a grand conspiracy out to get
those small ski shops. Ski companies are trying to make money, and they
know that the best way to make money is to sell people good product that
makes them happy. While racing is vital to marketing and research, everyone
understands that the consumer and quality of product are much more vital to
their businesses.

The problem is inherent in the cross-country ski industry, and manufacturing
consistency, while it could be better, is not the true problem - the
difficulty of fitting a ski to a skier is. Unlike selling bikes or ski
poles, skis can not be sized easily into increments. Skis must not only
account for a skier's size and weight, but also for track hardness, snow
temperature, snow age, the skier's ability and many other factors that make
fitting a ski a very challenging endeavor.

I am sponsored by Fischer skis, so there is full disclosure. What follows
is my experience and knowledge of what goes on in the industry, not just at
Fischer. Let me also say that inconsistency has always been one of my pet
peeves, but as I've learned more about the ski industry, I have learned why
it is a fact of life we have to accept.

First, about skis. The manufacture of a ski is a complicated process with
many steps and ingredients. Minor variations in raw materials and the
manufacturing process itself create inconsistencies that are very difficult
and expensive to remove. These inconsistencies are not all bad, as the
manufacturers rely on it to provide variation among skis so that they can
create a ski to fit anyone from 90lb junior to 250lb bruiser. But these
variations also make it practically impossible to be able to take two pairs
of similar skis and say which are faster without testing them on snow. Even
skis that are made out
of the same materials in the same batch will vary in flex and possibly
speed. If you test two skis in a pair on a flex machine, it is highly
likely that you will see variation between even two skis from a pair, as you
said in your post.

Now, taking your analogy to Dell computers, if you talk to any technician
who works on those things for a living, you will discover that certain
batches of model x break down much more frequently than other batches of
"the same" model x computer. If you took 100 "identical" Dell model x
computers, plugged them into the wall and ran benchmarking software
to test their speed, you would see differences between them based on the
quality of the parts installed, even though the parts are supposedly
identical. This is true of cars, computers, appliances, ski poles, bike
frames and any other complicated piece of machinery. The root of the
problem is that manufacturing large numbers of any complex item brings
inconsistencies because it is nearly impossible to get raw materials that
are identical and be able to have 100% consistency in assembly.

Ski inconsistencies seem to stick out more than other manufactured items,
but this is only because subtle differences in production quality produce
relatively large performance variations. And each consumer often has more
than one pair of skis, so it is easy to compare between them. Can you tell
me which one of your ski poles flexes less than the other? Probably not,
but I bet if you investigate it more closely, you will see variation between
the two poles in a pair and pairs of poles across a manufacturing batch.

Also, the keyboard is one size fits all so it is not a very good analogy.
Do you think Dell would be able to handle it if for some reason variation in
hand size required them to stock 100 different keyboard sizes for each model
of computer? And then there might be a difference not only in size, but
perhaps you need a certain type of keyboard for when you set it on a hard
surface like a desk, but a different keyboard when it rests on something
soft like a person's lap. All while being able to educate consumers on how
they should fit themselves? Dell might be able to handle this gracefully,
but only because computers are a multi-billion dollar market and they could
absorb the costs without raising prices significantly. The XC ski industry
is simply too small to be able to absorb all of the massively expensive
changes required to produce skis more consistently without making skis too
expensive for the consumer. I know that Fischer has made huge strides in
the consistency of their skis due to large investments in production
machinery and robotics, but to completely remove inconsistency would simply
be impossible, and to try would add too much to the price of a pair of skis.

Finally, about your "trickle down" theory of ski distribution. This is a
complicated issue with many different aspects, but I'll try to stay focused
here. Basically, your theory doesn't really work because it assumes that
someone can walk into a room with 1000 pairs of skis and pick out the "good"
ones. Given certain parameters for an individual skier, a skilled ski
picker can find flex patterns that are likely to be fast for that skier.
But until the ski is tested on snow, not even the best ski selector would be
able to guarantee that you don't have some nice looking firewood. And there
is also a good chance that in that same room of 1000 skis, that they left
the best pair in there without even looking at it.

There is no magical way to pick skis without waxing them up and testing on
snow. Even with very advanced testing devices, World Cup ski techs still
take the shotgun approach to ski selection. Armed with a skier's stats,
they choose a particular size, base and flex pattern that they think will be
fast in certain conditions. Then they try to find as many pairs of skis as
possible that match this profile, take them back to the waxroom, mount them
up and test them on snow. They weed out the slower pairs and end up with a
few top candidates, but only by thorough testing on snow. It might take 100
pairs of similar skis to find the one magical pair that will slaughter the
competition on the World Cup.

Because pickers are basically limited to choosing based on size, base and
flex, the good skis don't necessarily get pulled out of the pool because:
1. The elite skiers are looking for very specific characteristics. If a
ski does not flex correctly for a given skier's weight, then it is ignored,
even though the flex profile may be very favorable and the ski would be
likely to be fast for a skier of a different size.
2. The sheer quantity of skis in production overwhelms the ability of any
race service team to be able to test even a small percentage of the total
output. This is a completely uneducated guess, but imagine that a single
ski manufacturer sells 50,000 pairs of skis. Perhaps they provide 1000
pairs of skis to athletes and teams (which is outrageously over what happens
in reality). Even if teams test and reject 10 skis for every pair they
select, only 20% of the total fleet has even been examined by a team. So
even when we overestimate the number of skis tested by huge margins, that
leaves 80% of the skis in production going down through the supply chain
without even being examined by the teams.
3. Skis can only truly be tested on snow, so it is impossible to test even
a small percentage of the total output, and furthermore, it is impossible to
say which pair of skis will be the magical ones that win World Cups. This
makes it highly probable that a signficant number of good skis are missed by
the teams, even when they do test them, and they go along down the supply
chain.

The issue gets clouded somewhat as almost every company has special race
stock and the difference between race stock and production skis varies
dramatically between companies. For Fischer, the "race room" is tied very
closely with research and development because they use race testing and
feedback to determine what features will make it into next year's
production skis. They also sometimes have special skis made for very
specific conditions that would never go into production because they would
not sell due to their narrow range. So while some race stock skis may have
prototype base materials or use a mold that is in development, the majority
are just production skis with special tracking numbers that can be used to
easily identify the construction of the ski for race service people. And
generally only very elite skiers have access to anything other than
production skis, even though they are officially considered race stock.

I know that this varies wildly by company, though. I've heard that some
companies have completely separate race production, but I don't know enough
about what each company does to say more than that.

Back to the "trickle down" theory. So, basically we have a broad range of
production skis that gets distributed. The majority of these are never even
examined by race service, and even of the block that are examined by race
service, the skis that are left are not the dregs due to the factors
discussed above. What it comes down to then as the skis get to your shop is
simple probability. Ski Teams pick just as many lemons as get delivered to
local shops. The difference is that teams probably pick these out faster
since they are out testing so much. A local shop will only be able to
discover this after the consumer skis on them for a while, and only then if
the skier is savvy enough to know that they have a pair of dogs.

Ask any World Cup technician, and they will tell you about the probability
of finding a good pair of skis. They select large numbers of skis every
year and test them on snow, slowly weeding out the fastest pairs from the
rest. Each service person will give you their odds of getting a good pair
from each manufacturer. Everyone I have ever heard talk about this ranks
Fischer first as having the highest odds of selecting a good ski, then
Atomic, then Madshus, then Rossignol. Every manufacturer makes good skis.
Some make more good skis than others. Unfortunately, all of them make
firewood, at least occasionally. A lot of these skis are identified before
they ship, but not all of them. Some manufacturers will warranty a pair of
lemons. Some won't.

For the manufacturer it is exceedingly difficult to tell if a pair of skis
is truly a lemon because ski fit is so important as is base preparation. A
wicked fast pair of skis will be dog slow if the person riding them is fit
poorly or ruins them in preparation. In my travels around the country, I've
talked with what seems like a hundred angry, under-educated consumers who
hate their skis because they are "slow". After checking their skis out, it
is about 50/50:
1. Extremely burnt bases or bases that have not been waxed.
2. The ski was bought on a clearance rack and either the shop told the
person they don't fit but the consumer bought them anyway or the shop did
not now or did not tell the person that those skis would suck because they
did not fit.

This is not the consumers fault. It is the industry's weakness - skis and
wax are too difficult for the average person who just wants to go out and
ski. Even many people who I would describe as enthusiasts have
misconceptions or incomplete understanding of what is necessary to get a
fast ski. I don't even know.

Finally, getting to the point of the small ski shop. Most shops place
orders for specific sizes, flexes and base combinations
in the summer. This order is sent to the national warehouse, where the skis
are picked and sent out when they arrive in the early fall. This is no
different than the process for a college team, for instance. The only
difference will be that a college team's ski selection criteria will be more
specific than a shop's since the college team is picking skis for
individuals and the ski shop is picking skis for what it believes will be
its customers. So, while a college team's order for one of their skiers
might have a flex range within 2-3 kg, the shop does not necessarily need
such precision since they are ordering a large number of skis to cover their
expected consumers, who are not specific people yet. At least in Fischer's
case, there is not a "special" pile in the US warehouse that goes to the
college teams. All skis are the same and get picked by size, flex and base.

So, what it comes down to is probability. Unfortunately, that is why you
are less likely to be able to find a great ski for you at a small ski shop
(off the rack). The probability that you will pick a good pair of skis off
of a small ski shop floor is exactly the same as it is at the warehouse or a
big dealer. But since they sell fewer skis than larger retailers, they have
a smaller selection. A smaller selection means fewer numbers of skis that
will fit a particular individual and skis are probably selected on a broader
range of flex than you would see in a high-volume dealer. Since ski fit is
the primary factor involved in ski performance, this is a problem if you
can't find a good match.

These days, most shops should be able to place special orders for skis if
they do not have something that fits what a particular customer needs, but
it is less financially advantageous for them to order a pair for you rather
than sell one off the floor. So, unfortunately, the market drives them
toward pushing what they have on the floor, and maybe not toward doing the
best thing for you. And even if they do place a special order, it is not
guaranteed that the warehouse will have the correct size in stock. I don't
think this is malicious on the part of the shop owners, but there is enough
of a gray area in fitting skis that they can rationalize that the ski on the
floor is "close enough". Most of the time, a few kg does not matter, so
when they have something close on the floor, they will sell it to you and it
will probably be OK. This is not necessarily wrong or malicious, but it may
not be ideal for the consumer.

And that is the root of the problem. It is impossible to stock all of
the skis to fit everyone perfectly and maintain a financially viable
business. Ideally, a well-trained person like Zach Caldwell would fit you
at your local ski shop. He would place an order at the factory and they
would match your specs to a pair of skis out of a huge selection and you
would have the ideal match. But this is just not viable. Manufacturers
have to educate their dealers and rely on the dealers educating the
consumers at the local ski shop.

Ski sales fluctuate wildly based on snow conditions. Every year everyone
from the manufacturer on down to the retailer has to make their best guess
as to how many pairs of skis they will sell when they place their orders in
the summer. If they overestimate, then they end up with excess inventory
which they sell at a loss or very low margin. If they underestimate, then
they lose potential business and perhaps market share as their customers
move to other retailers. And since there are so many configurations of
size, base, and flex, the retailer not only has to choose the total number
of skis to order, but how many of each size to stock.

This is a daunting task and the reason why it is so difficult to pick
skis.

-Nathan
www.nsavage.com

"Tim Kelley" wrote in message
oups.com...
I'm starting this discussion thread so hopefully I and other r.s.n
readers can learn more about how racing skis are distributed from the
manufacturer to the consumer. I'll keep this discussion "ski vendor
generic" so as not to offend anyone.

I don't know much about ski manufacturer distribution models. But I
know a lot about buying skis ... I've been buying skis for over 30
years. During this time I can safely say, the best skis I've ever
owned I either bought in Europe, or bought 2nd hand from a former
European national team member. I've never had much luck buying great
skis from a small local ski shop in the US.

This leads me to visualize that a typical ski company distribution
scheme as such (please ski company reps ... correct me if I'm wrong):

1) A batch of skis are made in Europe.
2) World Cup/ Euro national teams pick over the skis.
3) Euro clubs pick over the skis.
4) Big Euro sports shops pick over the skis.
5) What's left is sent to other places in the world, like the US
6) US National and vendor sponsored teams pick over US skis
7) Large US ski shops and ski service companies pick over skis
8) US Universities and clubs pick over skis
9) Whatever is left over ... is then shipped to small retail stores

The ordering of steps 1 to 8 above may be off ... but my main point is
that it sure seems like the best skis must be long gone before the skis
that go to local shops are shipped.

Actually, this distribution model would not be that bad ... if it
wasn't for my next point: quality control. It seems quality control
for ski manufacturers is still in the stone age.

It amazes me, and shop owners, what can show up at local ski shops in
Anchorage. Skis with identical serial numbers that don't have cambers
that are even close. Skis that are warped and would take
stone-grinding off part of the base and into the core to flatten the
ski!

I'm sure skis are difficult to make. But they can't be any more
difficult than computers, cell phones, TVs, etc. All of these devices,
like skis, were once hand made ... but then the manufacturers got their
act together. Imagine if you went to buy a Dell 8400 computer and the
salesperson said - "Why don't you squeeze these 4 keyboards to see what
fits you best". "Oh no - you can't turn the computer on and try it!"
That's the way skis are still sold.

After 30 years of composite ski manufacturing, you'd think that two
skis could be made exactly the same. But that doesn't seem to be the
case. And because of this lack of quality control, there is a need for
this hierarchal "pick-over" of skis. And the result seems to be that
the full-price-paying end customer at the small ski shop cash register
in the US ... is often screwed.

Your thoughts ...?

Tim Kelley

I think that wood skis of the past were very different ski-to-ski, and
selecting good skis was really an art. I hear that guitars are really
different, and even a good guitar maker can't put out a fantastic
sounding guitar every time. So there's something unusual and
inconsistent about wood.

Now that skis are made with a lot of non-wood, it seems to me that
skis are very similar ski-to-ski, and the key is to get a good fit.
Since there still is wood in there, I can understand that skis are
different. I can understand that someone with a lot of experience can
probably find some skis that are faster than others, but I think part
of this is myth continued by wax techs and skiers when it's hard to
explain why one pair was really fast when another similar pair was
only very good. Maybe one pair has quite a few more kms than the
other, maybe one pair has a lot of cold wax under the waxes of the
day. Who knows, but when you believe one pair is fast, it's a powerful
motivation to keep using that pair even if another pair might be
slightly faster on a different day.

Also, I think some brands of skis are better in certain conditions
than others and that's due to flex patterns. Then there's soft skis
for soft conditions etc. Lots of factors.

So Tim, why do you think some skis are much better than others? Have
you gotten skis from overseas and locally that are the same year but
much different?

Jay Wenner

Hi Jay,

This is a reply to you and Nathan.

First to Nathan I'd like to say thanks for your post. Besides being a
good athlete, you are a great communicator and educator. I along with
many other readers no doubt learned a lot from that post. Posts like
that make R.S.N a good place to visit.

Jay,
I actually have gotten skis of the same year locally and "abroad", i.e.
same year 2nd handers through a university skier that was on a Euro
national team. They were much different ... but hey, we're just
talking 2 pairs of skis. So we can't truly make any judgement. We can
only ask questions and wonder - like I am doing on this discussion
thread.

Honestly - I have never skied on skis that felt as lively, free, fast,
responsive ... and just all around great in wide conditions as the 2nd
hander Euro skis I got. Another pair that I once bought in Sweden
comes close. Why were the skis so good ... in my opinion ... it is a
great flex pattern that's evenly matched on both skis.

I understand that skis can vary due to manufacturing, the picking for a
skier's ability and style, etc. But after getting a pair of skis like
this that are so much better than anything I've bought locally ... you
start to wonder: "Why can skis that are stamped, say "192 Med Flex",
and come from the same reputable ski company ... differ sooooo much?"
You feel sorry for other consumers like myself that have to learn the
hard way that skis vary so much ... by paying $400-$500 for every
'lesson'. And you feel sorry for ski shops, especially your local
small shops, that have to deal with selling a high variance, high price
commodity to us. Eventually, you get to the point that you put up a
post on R.S.N to see what others have to say about this situation.

Tim

Nathan -

Thanks for taking the time to write a great post about a very difficult
topic.

Ken

Tim,

I, and I think that all of the ski manufacturers, share your
frustration. They want to be able to make their customers happy, but it is
a difficult task due to all of the forces they are fighting.

What made your secondhand skis fast? It seems that your thinking is that
there was something "special" about these skis because they were race stock.
My guess is that your skis are no different from production skis. The
reason they seem special is because they were selected by a very
knowledgeable person who happened to match them to a person who is close to
your size. I would also be willing to bet that another significant factor
is that they were prepared and waxed by professionals. No offense intended
here, but most people don't understand that keeping wax on a ski except when
the ski is on the snow can make an immense difference in performance.

I do know for a fact that Fischer makes some race stock skis that are not
available to the public. And that they can be really, fast in certain
conditions. But I also know from personal experience that stock production
skis are not fundamentally different than "race stock" skis. Many of the
skis in my race bag are production skis, and I probably race on production
skis 75% of the time. There are a few prototype molds and bases that I use
under certain conditions, but generally, if these prototype features are
useful and cover a wide range of conditions, they make it into the following
year's production skis.

I commonly find that while I'm out coaching with my training (rock) skis,
the people I'm coaching often comment about how fast my skis are relative to
theirs. These are stock production skis waxed with straight hydrocarbon
waxes with a whole bunch of scratches on the bottom and not particularly
well-cared for. But I do keep wax on them most of the time and this makes
them faster than most citizen racers' race skis because they do not wax as
often. It is not because my skis are race stock, but because I know how to
prepare a ski to make it fast. And even though they are training skis and I
neglect them, I know that training at a higher speed is a good thing, so I
always keep them waxed, even if I ski over gravel sections with them.

So, just because you have a "magic" pair of skis that came from "race
stock", you can't assume that the reason they are better is because race
stock is somehow fundamentally different.

-Nathan
www.nsavage.com

"Tim Kelley" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi Jay,

This is a reply to you and Nathan.

First to Nathan I'd like to say thanks for your post. Besides being a
good athlete, you are a great communicator and educator. I along with
many other readers no doubt learned a lot from that post. Posts like
that make R.S.N a good place to visit.

Jay,
I actually have gotten skis of the same year locally and "abroad", i.e.
same year 2nd handers through a university skier that was on a Euro
national team. They were much different ... but hey, we're just
talking 2 pairs of skis. So we can't truly make any judgement. We can
only ask questions and wonder - like I am doing on this discussion
thread.

Honestly - I have never skied on skis that felt as lively, free, fast,
responsive ... and just all around great in wide conditions as the 2nd
hander Euro skis I got. Another pair that I once bought in Sweden
comes close. Why were the skis so good ... in my opinion ... it is a
great flex pattern that's evenly matched on both skis.

I understand that skis can vary due to manufacturing, the picking for a
skier's ability and style, etc. But after getting a pair of skis like
this that are so much better than anything I've bought locally ... you
start to wonder: "Why can skis that are stamped, say "192 Med Flex",
and come from the same reputable ski company ... differ sooooo much?"
You feel sorry for other consumers like myself that have to learn the
hard way that skis vary so much ... by paying $400-$500 for every
'lesson'. And you feel sorry for ski shops, especially your local
small shops, that have to deal with selling a high variance, high price
commodity to us. Eventually, you get to the point that you put up a
post on R.S.N to see what others have to say about this situation.

Tim