Inside Ski Maker K2's Design Process

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The K2 Four skis became the best-selling ski of the era and led the industry to embrace side-cut designs. The same year K2 Snowboards was the first company to use a step-in binding system called "The Clicker." And "rocker", unheard of in ski design just a few years ago, is now part of the marketing lexicon of the industry, with similar designs showing up from rival ski makers.

K2 is part of the Jarden (JAH) conglomerate that includes such household name as Mr. Coffee appliances, Bicycle playing cards, and Rawlings sporting goods. K2, with some 450 employees worldwide, amounts to just a piece of Jarden, which rang up $3.8 billion in sales in the first nine months of 2009. But Charlie Strauzer, senior managing director of CJS Securities in White Plains, N.Y., who follows Jarden, says that K2's breakthroughs have allowed the company to outpace rivals, even in a down economy. "While their sales are down year-over-year, they're taking share from competitors," Strauzer says.

Two winters ago, Peter Pontano, a binding engineer for Ride, the snowboard company owned by K2, was testing some new designs at Mt. Hood in Oregon. While on a lift up the mountain, the top strap to his board binding fell off, leaving him to snowboard down without it. Much to his surprise, the run was fine, except for the heel-side turns when his toes swung out. It got him thinking about reducing the binding weight by holding the toe in place with the least material possible.

That was the genesis of the Ride ContraBand, a binding that uses two plastic straps to hold the toe in place and is roughly 20% lighter than its predecessor. "We encourage our staff to get out as often as possible," says Scott Mavis, Ride's brand director. "A lot of our ideas come from that." No need for focus groups when the athletes who work for the company are free to innovate.

Here, see a slide show of this year's hottest snow gear.

Greene is BusinessWeek's Seattle bureau chief.

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