Does The World Need A Custom Ski Just For You?

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Way back in the winter of 2018, long before Covid raised its ugly head, I asked the heads of marketing (none of whom would qualify for a SeniorsSkiing/com subscription) from three manufacturers a simple question: “Has ski material science and engineering reached the point where—with a simple, easy-to-measure parameters, and algorithms— a ski manufacturer can produce a ski tailored to the way an individual, recreational skier skis?”

The answer was yes, they have been making custom skis for World Cup and Olympic Ski racers for decades. But what about us common folks?

Again, the answer was yes. Physical dimensions of the skier and other limits such as artificial joints could be entered by the buyer.

The hardest part would be translating how a skier skis into data that can be used by a computer to then control the manufacturing process. For elite racers, they have zillions of gigabytes of footage “experts” can analyze coupled with on-snow testing.

Unlike ski racers where the variations in their technique are subtle, recreational skiers are all over the map. If you don’t believe me, watch a well-traveled slope. Even the “untrained” eye can see the differences in technique, some good, some, well, not-so-good bordering on awful, or where they are in learning to ski.

All three ski designers hypothesized that with two to three minutes of video of a skier on a a ski whose design parameters were known skiing down a known piece of terrain with measured condition, a custom ski could be done. The individuals all agreed that this approach would eliminate many variables.

From there, they could have internal experts go through their analysis, come up with whatever inputs a computer model needs, and, voilá, out would come the engineering/design specs for the ski.

Now we get to the second issue: Producing the ski. Ski manufacturers make huge investments in equipment that can be used to turn out thousands of skis so they can amortize the investment over each ski produced. In this “personal ski” scenario, the molds and materials can still be used. Workers would have to be re-trained. How and why happens is beyond the scope of this piece, so just accept the fact that custom construction is possible.

Which brings us to cost. The custom ski would cost more than the $1,000 for a top-of-the-line ski. How much more, my informal panel wouldn’t or couldn’t agree on a number, but again, for the sake of dreaming, let’s say $3,000. Whether or not the ski was salable at that price is a different subject, again beyond the scope of this post.

So the obstacle was not cost, nor engineering, nor manufacturing, but identifying and then gathering the needed data that could be translated into ones and zeros. In the end, they all said,  “Why bother?”  The current designs meet the needs of 80—90 percent of recreational skiers. And therein lies the rub and why, at least not yet, everyone can’t have a custom designed ski.