I have worked for, amongst others, the following companies in the field of sports design:
- Neil Pryde Ltd. A high-end, performance-focused water sports equipment and apparel manufacturer.
- Flow Snowboards. Pioneers of the rear entry step-in-binding (now part of the Nidecker group). Invented by two good friends and colleagues, Reinhard Pascher and Werner Jettmar.
- Dynafit. Ski touring (ski mountaineering) brand. The company has been built on the pin (tech) binding system. The invention was the brainchild of Fritz Barthels, also a good friend and colleague.
- Salewa. Originated in the 30s, it is by far the oldest of this quartet of companies. Salewa is a mountaineering sports brand originating in Munich and now part of the Oberalp group.
Here are some of my sports design highlights
Dynafit
The Dynafit Zzero line was my first ski-touring boot. It set a new benchmark in both weight and performance. The Zzero was a bestseller and marked a change in fortunes for Dynafit.
The Zzeus (left) didn’t quite match the commercial success of the Zzero, but it played a role in defining the more edgy visual language that Dynafit uses to this day. Though the concept design (right) was never realized, it pushed the angular design language even further.
In addition to the boots, I worked on some of the ski details.
Salewa
Bivvy bags hiking bottles and more …
Flow
I was lucky enough to be in the team that brought the rear entry step-binding to snowboarding. At the time, many companies vied for supremacy in the new hotly contested step-in field. The Flow system is one of the few survivors from those crazy formative years. Twenty-five years ago, Flow head-hunted me and effectively kicked-off my career as a self-employed designer.
Those were the days of the transparent plastic iMac, which kind of excuses the following rendition – plastic fantastic. It was a big engineering challenge to find a transparent polymer that had the right technical qualities.
pod
Pod was a new brand take on a fitness bar. I entered it into the ispo sport trade show BrandNew competition. Even though I was a member of the jury at the time it wasn’t crowned the overall winner.
The idea was to create an ergonomic device along the same lines as the inner sole of a sports shoes. The load spreading contoured surface for the palm of the hand was combined with an optimized hand/wrist position.
Unfortunately, pod never found a manufacturer, in spite of considerable interest from amongst others Nike and Reebok.
During the ispo show, a team of acrobatic dancers took an interest in pod and took it through its paces; with both hands …
… and one hand!
