Zurich, Switzerland
People always ask me how I got into making skis. It’s simple actually: Accidentally.
Myself and five other friends started to design and make skis about four years ago while sophomores in engineering school. At the time, we where just nerds looking for a way to test some crazy ski design ideas we had.
If you had told me then it would become the reason I left school and I would be traveling around the world selling those skis, I would have called you crazy. I still might.
But what came in between an idea to build skis and an overly expensive coffee in Zurich?
It would be cliché to say “hard work”. Not that its been easy, but saying “hard work” is like trying to explain cold snow to an Amazon Native. It just doesn't work. If it did, less people would take the risks of starting a business and just stick with what they already know.
It’s more akin to a bunch of bad decisions. Seriously. The time between our first ski and today has been filled with hundreds of “bad-or-worse” kind of judgment calls.
By this I mean, to get anywhere, you have to leave some things behind. Looking back it’s easy to say which where the right ones. In the moment, going one route or the other looks like you’re leaving a best friend behind each way.
What decisions are you too scared to make?
Make those. Move on. That’s why it’s called “hard” work.
