A Visit To The King Of Boards
Pale plans for the future

If there was a king in the snowboarding industry judged on the number of boards made in a year, Pale would probably wear the crown. The company says it produced 500,000 snowboards from its factory less than two years ago. Although it’s scaled back its production to around 400,000, it’s probably still producing more boards than any other factory in the world.

With numbers and a reputation like this, SNOWboarding Business put Pale first on its "must visit" list during a recent trip to Europe. Unfortunately, officials at the factory wouldn’t take us through the facilities, but they were willing to talk to us briefly about its history and business.

Pale Ski and Sport is a ski and snowboard company and factory located in the south-central Austrian town of St. Stefan. It’s owned by Gerhard Leopold. The factory started making skis in 1957 and then snowboards in 1984. Its first client was Avalanche Snowboards, who it has made boards for ever since.

Besides making boards for Avalanche, Pale has made boards for numerous other brands over the past ten years, including Ride, Division 23, Limited, Kemper, Liquid, Mercury, Generics, Barfoot, Spry, Maui & Sons, Train, and countless European brands. In addition to making snowboards for specific brands, a large number of Pale boards go directly to chains in Europe and Japan.

Sitting off the main road through the town, the Pale facility consists of a series of one- and two-story buildings in a square-shaped area. The buildings are painted a dull yellow, with the logo in red across the outer wall. The offices are in front through a gate, and in the rear of the complex is a large parking lot and factory shop. There are basements under the main buildings where it’s rumored that enough raw materials for three years’ production are stored—purchased to prevent problems with supply and price fluctuations.

According to Head of Export Walter Knauder, Pale made 500,000 snowboards in the ’95/96 season. For ’96/97, it cut production to 400,000 because of worldwide overproduction concerns. Numbers for next year are still up in the air, but Knauder believes the total will be down a little more. Prior to the recent decline, snowboard production grew rapidly at the factory—in 1990, the company only made 40,000 snowboards.

Of course, the factory still produces skis. In contrast to snowboards, for the ’95/96 season, Pale made 300,000 pairs of skis and 260,000 the next. It was three years ago that Pale first made more snowboards than skis.

The factory is fully staffed and operational from February to September. During the year, employment ranges from 150 to 500 people, working in either one or two shifts.

Because it makes so many boards for so many different clients, the factory probably has a good idea of new construction and board trends. Knauder says board widths are changing more than the lengths right now: "Boards are getting wider. In addition, three years ago, we saw a shift to more freestyle boards. Now it’s going back to more Alpine-oriented boards."

He states that product development is an area the company constantly works on. "We continue to have new ideas and use new materials on our boards," says Knauder. With the number of boards it’s producing, Pale can surely afford to try out plenty of new stuff.

—John Stouffer