Völkl Builds New Factory
Company plans for expanded snowboarding presence.
Edited by John Stouffer

Völkl recently decided to build a new ski and snowboard factory. Why did this leading German manufacturer decide to upgrade, and what are its future plans in snowboarding?

SNOWboarding Business spoke with Völkl's Marketing Director Reto Furrer shortly after he returned from a heli trip in Alaska and asked him for the answers to these questions and more. Here's what he had to say:

SNOWboarding Business: Where is the new factory going to be located?

Reto Furrer: The factory is located within the community of Straubing. The district is called SAND, and is located right at the river of Donau. Straubing is in Bavaria. Our factory is about twenty miles away from one of the biggest BMW car plants.

Is it replacing the current factory and what products will be made there?

Yes, it replaces both the former ski, as well as the snowboard, plant and combines these two factories within one building and one production process. Much of the machinery is taken from the current factory, since most of our machinery is state of the art.

The new plant will receive a completely new and modern production line for producing skis and boards that are synthetically laminated.

How many boards will be made and what lines will you be manufacturing?

The factory will have a snowboard production capacity of 150,000 units. We're building boards for our brand Völkl, and Rad Air, Santa Cruz, Marker, as well as some Nitro models.

When will it open?

The roof will be up within July and the plant building should be finished by November. From then until February 1999, we will be moving production step by step. We'll be showing the factory in March and April to VIP's.

How will this new center benefit Völkl?

There will be several advantages: The first will be in the quality of production. Obviously, it will have a very modern lay-out allowing us to better control quality at all production stages.

With new machinery, we will also be able to further move down any tolerances within products to a minimum. Our production methods in principle remain the same. Those methods still rely on working by hand in areas that machinery would create too much deviation. Völkl standards such as our woodcore, our various constructions, as well as our materials, will remain them same. In principle, the new factory mainly gives us a cleaner way to produce and develop.

The second advantage is with synthetics. The new factory will receive a completely revised and newly designed section to produce synthetically laminated boards and skis. This section is a world novelty and will allow us to greatly improve the performance of these products, as well as to speed developments in this section.

Third is logistics. The former snowboard factory will be turned into a distribution center that will allow us to promptly ship stuff within Europe and the world. This will improve our delivery capability due to time cuts from factory to customer.

Finally, the new plant will act as a new R&D center. The new factory features a greatly improved and extended R&D capabilities. This new center will feature new testing and prototyping machinery for tennis rackets, skis, and boards. The factory also features an outside tennis court for testing.

It seemed you had a good factory. Why did you need to make a new one?

We're trying to improve our R&D potential by combining much of the board plant with the ski plant. The factory also has a new process lay-out that makes production more efficient and even more flexible.

As you know, the know-how of our ski division in snow products is quite extensive, and we have people who have worked for us for decades.

By the way, we're having our 75-year anniversary this year.

What are the long term plans for the snowboard brand?

We have been successfully introducing the Völkl snowboard line globally and will be continuing to penetrate the market with a strong product statement. The Völkl boards are developed and produced with the same principles that we have for building tennis rackets and skis. It is our commitment to produce boards that perform better than what's on the market.

We're focusing on simplicity, making the product better where it doesn't necessarily show for the customer, but it feels better. At Völkl we have a design rule, that is also our brand slogan: "You can feel it."

There are no technologies that go into our rackets, boards, and skis that are not noticeably different and "feelable" for the customer.

In addition, we will continue to implement proprietary Völkl ski technology, such as the famous Völkl ski tune (edges, base, stone grinded), the patented Sensor Wood Core, as well as some other patented technologies.

Völkl boards will also be a brand that has no problem admitting that it comes from a 75-year-old ski maker, that it is produced in Germany, and also engineered in Germany. We feel that the German factor may not be cool and hip, yet it's an important factor in the quality and performance of our products-and it's the simple truth.

The Renntiger and Zebra boards (with old retro ski graphics) are an expression of that statement. Yes, we built and have always built skis.

In marketing, we will continue to build our team. We've had a very successful team this year with an overall ISF world champion, as well as a FIS halfpipe overall winner. A rider broke the world speed record going 196 km/h on a Renntiger board.

In addition to this, we will continue our efforts in demoing our products to people. Völkl has traditionally been a product that is successfully sold after being tested. This applies to the skis, rackets, or boards.

How was the response for the brand after one selling season?

We have hit our sell-in goals and are now focusing on a good sell-out of the boards. The boards have created more image and respect than we expected. We have benefited from the industry trends moving toward performance and function.

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