Business: Rossi Rides the Big Ski Lift

It is king of the mountain, and tennis racquets are next

Skis, in a way, are like vodka. Apart from the very top and bottom of the line, many brands are similar in quality; yet a special mystique makes it In to buy and use a certain one. Nowadays, from Mt. Fuji to Mt. Blanc—with many mts. in Colorado and Vermont in between—the fashionable ski is “Rossi,” fond nickname for the product of Skis Rossignol, a company with headquarters in the French alpine town of Voiron. Rossignol, counting its Dynastar subsidiary, sells more than 16% of the world’s skis—1.5 million of the 9 million pairs marketed last year. Before Rossignol’s ascendancy, Japan held one-quarter of the market and threatened to smother European competitors; now Rossignol sells one-fifth of the skis in Japan, whose export business has plunged but shows some signs of recovery. Rossignol has plants in Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Germany and Williston, Vt. Sales last year approached $100 million, up from $57 million in 1976.

President Laurent Boix-Vives (pronounced Bwah-veeve), now 51, started two ski-lift companies in his home region of Savoie in 1951, after serving an apprenticeship in his father’s fruit and vegetable business. In 1955 he learned from a friend, Emile Allais, a former world downhill and slalom champion, of a nearly bankrupt firm, Societe Rossignol, that produced wooden spools for the textile trade and wooden skis on the side. Boix-Vives borrowed $50,000, bought the firm and laid off everyone but 27 ski makers, creating a lean, one-product shop. Allais soon devised a metal ski that helped France’s Jean Vuarnet win a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics at Squaw Valley, and Rossignol’s reputation was made. Metal skis soared in popularity, but the firm was equipped to turn out only 7,500 pairs of metals, and the U.S.’s Head Skis cornered the market. Says Boix-Vives: “I learned an important lesson then. Always be ready to satisfy demand when it’s there.”

In the past decade, Rossignol’s capacity has risen twentyfold, to 2 million skis a year of wood, metal, plastic and fiber-glass foam. Because cross-country skis are booming, Boix-Vives plans to double capacity in that department this year to 350,000 skis. But his strategy involves more than expansion of capacity. As volume grew in the mid-’60s, the company’s increased productivity enabled Boix-Vives to adopt a policy of, as he puts it, “aggressive pricing”; Rossignol prices stayed completely stable from 1964 all the way to 1972. Today Rossignol produces eight principal lines of skis, competitively priced from $50 (for cross-countries) to $230 a pair. Boix-Vives has also sought out the world’s best skiers and equipped them with Rossis, including Lise-Marie Morerod, winner of the 1977 World Cup.

Also crucial to Rossignol’s success was Boix-Vives’s decision to go into multinational manufacturing. Says he: “It was better to produce on location abroad so that we could become accepted. It also gave us a better knowledge of local markets.” Indeed, it was the company’s Vermont plant that developed a compact ski suitable for New England’s thickly wooded hills; the ski has also become a hit in parts of France, Austria and Germany.

Of Rossignol’s 3,000 employees, 100 work full time in research and development, a proportion unique among ski makers. In their search for the “ultimate ski,” the designers, together with West Germany’s Bayer AG, are exploring the properties of polyurethane and compressed air. Boix-Vives is also planning a whole new product line. A dedicated schusser, he was inspired by an American study showing that 80% of his fellow skiers also play tennis. So he plans to spend $1.3 million to get Rossignol racquets into production. The racquets will be a molded mix of metal and plastic, and they will not be cheap: in the U.S., where they will arrive in 1980, they will cost $50 to $70. Most important, they will say ROSSIGNOL—in bold letters.