K2, Volkl, Full Tilt and others up for sale and may just shut down ....

[Jully]

Guy sounds like an idiot... you don't say you'll shut them and then go no woops jk. Maybe not an idiot, that's a tad harsh, but at least clearly not a snow sports enthusiast!

 

[Jully]

Marker Volkl Dalbello are owned entirely by Newell.
Talking to my Dalbello/volkl rep yesterday, he said the Marker Volkl Dalbello companies are the only 3 of the winter companies in the portfolio doing well and making $.
Line and full tilt are profitable, but barely. K2 has loosing $ badly ever since moving production to China. I can tell you that we have finally grown tired of K2's crappie service on deliveries and dropped them after being very large dealers in the past.

That's too bad about K2. I had thought they were improving. I mainly know about Volkl and Marker. Surprised Line is doing badly / barely profitable though.

 

[thetrailboss]

Marker Volkl Dalbello are owned entirely by Newell.
Talking to my Dalbello/volkl rep yesterday, he said the Marker Volkl Dalbello companies are the only 3 of the winter companies in the portfolio doing well and making $.
Line and full tilt are profitable, but barely. K2 has loosing $ badly ever since moving production to China. I can tell you that we have finally grown tired of K2's crappie service on deliveries and dropped them after being very large dealers in the past.

I haven't seriously looked at K2 skis in a while...since they moved to China actually. I loved my older K2s--they did the job.

 

[Hawkshot99]

I haven't seriously looked at K2 skis in a while...since they moved to China actually. I loved my older K2s--they did the job.

I loved them back 10 yes ago or so. Since then they have been pretty bland feeling to me.
China screwed them over as well. They had a factory near the ports. Well a highway was to be built through the factory using eminent domain. China paid to have K2's factory moved and to relocate all their employees. Unfortunately the new location was on the other side of the country away from all the ports and the employees had no desire to relocate.
Since then they have been very bad at making on time deliveries to their retailers. In years past some stuff didn't arrive till Christmas.

 

[dlague]

Never had K2 my self. Always wanted to try them but they never caught my attention. Or the attention of anyone in my family.

 

[drjeff]

K2 basically had a ski version of a license to print money back in the 80's with all the publicity the Mahre brothers got them as they were winning Olympic medals, World Championship medals and world cups, their racing credentials sold them a ton of consumer skis! (Heck I still remember the 1st pair of skis back in the 80's when everyone did the "grab the tip and try and flex the mid foot area" push that REALLY amazed me and that was the telephone pole stiff K2 VO Slalom's!!!). Then Bode Miller in the early/mid 90's helped give them shaped ski credibility when he kicked butt as junior racer at the US Alpine Ski Championships at Sugarloaf that year by winning on a general public release pair of shaped K2 Fours when all others were racing on super stiff skinny skis!!! Then they were lucky enough to sponsor Seth Morrison as Free skiing and back country skiing stated to take off and K2 pushed the design revolution with the wide, full rocker Pontoons - K2 by far and away has been an industry innovator, even if they're sales popularity has been on par with their R&D innovation

 

[bootladder]

I know you're joking, but I wonder how much the growth of the "craft ski industry" has hurt the big players. In some ways the proliferation of small production new ski brands in recent years mirrors what has been going on in the beer industry.

Some of the smaller ski brands have ended up getting getting gobbled up by the big players such as Line. Same thing in the beer industry with producers like Goose Island and Ballast Point.

Ideally I'd like to buy my skis from a small player. I'd rather my money go to the little guy. To date I've only made such a purchase once when I bought a set of High Society skis about six years ago. They sucked so bad I have stuck to mainstream brands with the three pairs of skis I've bought since. That definitely goes against my spending philosophy though. With regards to beer, you would never see a Sam Adams in my fridge and I no longer buy Ballast Point either even though I love their beer. I'd rather support a smaller brewery/business especially those within 100 miles of me.

Maybe the next skis I buy will be a set of Mad Russians.

I can highly recommend Sandwich Tech http://sandwichtechskis.com/