Calgary based Ski company is doing a kickstarter, 1 day to go, help them make it!!!

[Mav]

Here's the link.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...7/templar-skis

Awesome looking skis and they are so close to their goal. Come on CalPuck, we help him get there!!!

[DownhillGoat]

So I get the idea of Kickstarter, but not the details. What happens if you pledge and they don't make their goal, or the skis for that matter?

[Flames0910]

Originally Posted by kunkstyle

So I get the idea of Kickstarter, but not the details. What happens if you pledge and they don't make their goal, or the skis for that matter?

if you pledge and they don't make their goal, it's a non-starter. no money leaves your account.

[pylon]

Well really at this point they are so close, one of the guys raising funds could donate the last $1200 bucks, to get the full 30k. If this fails at this point, and one of them doesn't figure that out, they deserve to fail.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by fotze

Stupid kickstarter question, as I have never looked into it. If you donate to one of these and say donate 1%. Are you now a 1% owner in the company?

No. You get nothing for donating other than a sense of charity and pride or "supporting a good idea/cause".

The best you get is perhaps a pre-order on what ever item you're kick starting.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by fotze

Stupid kickstarter question, as I have never looked into it. If you donate to one of these and say donate 1%. Are you now a 1% owner in the company?

No, you're paying for a product, not an equity stake. This isn't Dragon's Den, and you're not O'leary

[rd_aaron]

Originally Posted by fotze

Stupid kickstarter question, as I have never looked into it. If you donate to one of these and say donate 1%. Are you now a 1% owner in the company?

Each kickstarter has their own rewards for pledging. You can see them along the right side.

In this case, for example, if you pledge $30 or more, you get a t-shirt. If you pledge $500 or more, you'll get any pair of skis you want. These are just a couple of examples.

Usually it's a pre-order of whatever item they are trying to build, and usually you get it cheaper than what they will be offered at when they come to market.

[19Yzerman19]

The last thing the ski industry needs is another startup ski company. Are you making these things yourself? Can we see your presses? How many pairs have you pressed to date? What's the cost going to be on these? Has anyone involved in this venture ever worked for a ski manufacturer in North America? My guess is no. They're in for a very rude awakening and will likely realize pretty quickly that this is just a recipe for frustration.

2200 grams for a 120 underfoot ski in 185 length is pretty much par for the course. That's the same weight as a Billy Goat Tour in 191 (actual length being closer to 194) so they're doing exactly nothing revolutionary in terms of ski construction, at least nothing that's producing significant weight savings. Meanwhile, the BG tour is widely thought to be one of the best powder skis you can buy and gets Powder Magazine and Freeskier editor's picks, while no one knows if these Templar sticks are worth riding. The guys who run companies like Moment, DP and ON3P have been involved in the ski industry for years, and everyone knows and trusts that they know what they're doing in terms of ski design. Given the choice I know where I'm sending my money.

Just for further reference, my BD touring skis have basically identical dimensions to the knight (3mm wider shovel, 3mm narrower tail, 1cm longer reported length) and weigh over 100 grams less.

These projects are simply doomed to fail. The skis will cost about $1000 per pair - if you pledge 625 you get a pair of skis, and they estimate you will save "over $300" for that pair. Leaving aside for the moment that paying over $600 bucks for proto skis no one has even seen yet is stupid, that's an awfully high ask for skis that are unlikely to be as good as those put out by rider-owned companies who have been refining their processes for years. Ask yourself if you'd rather have these skis, or a pair of Moment Bibbys with enough $ left over for bindings. It's a no brainer.

To be viable running this out of a garage they'd still need to sell 100 pairs in a year. It's incredibly difficult to get small runs of edge material. I would be shocked if they sold 30. I would be even more shocked if any of them shipped less than a month later than they're expecting.
These guys should post up a thread on TGR and Newschoolers and see what happens.

EDIT: Oh sh** they actually did... http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php/267664-Kickstarting-Skis

EDIT: Just read the skis will be made in China at the DPS factory... which is probably a good idea in terms of being more or less sure the materials will get to your presses but $1000 bucks for China-made skis is pretty damned high. From the TGR thread the whole basis for this is apparently finite element analysis which is a cool idea but not the basis for an indy. These guys should collab with an established manufacturer and see if they can improve someone else's existing designs.

[ranchlandsselling]

2013? Shouldn't they be making snowboards?

Just kidding, but it does seem so 80's/90's sometimes.

Never heard of this kickstarter though.... kinda neat.

[Clarkey]

Originally Posted by 19Yzerman19

The last thing the ski industry needs is another startup ski company. Are you making these things yourself? Can we see your presses? How many pairs have you pressed to date? What's the cost going to be on these? Has anyone involved in this venture ever worked for a ski manufacturer in North America? My guess is no. They're in for a very rude awakening and will likely realize pretty quickly that this is just a recipe for frustration.

2200 grams for a 120 underfoot ski in 185 length is pretty much par for the course. That's the same weight as a Billy Goat Tour in 191 (actual length being closer to 194) so they're doing exactly nothing revolutionary in terms of ski construction, at least nothing that's producing significant weight savings. Meanwhile, the BG tour is widely thought to be one of the best powder skis you can buy and gets Powder Magazine and Freeskier editor's picks, while no one knows if these Templar sticks are worth riding. The guys who run companies like Moment, DP and ON3P have been involved in the ski industry for years, and everyone knows and trusts that they know what they're doing in terms of ski design. Given the choice I know where I'm sending my money.

Just for further reference, my BD touring skis have basically identical dimensions to the knight (3mm wider shovel, 3mm narrower tail, 1cm longer reported length) and weigh over 100 grams less.

These projects are simply doomed to fail. The skis will cost about $1000 per pair - if you pledge 625 you get a pair of skis, and they estimate you will save "over $300" for that pair. Leaving aside for the moment that paying over $600 bucks for proto skis no one has even seen yet is stupid, that's an awfully high ask for skis that are unlikely to be as good as those put out by rider-owned companies who have been refining their processes for years. Ask yourself if you'd rather have these skis, or a pair of Moment Bibbys with enough $ left over for bindings. It's a no brainer.

To be viable running this out of a garage they'd still need to sell 100 pairs in a year. It's incredibly difficult to get small runs of edge material. I would be shocked if they sold 30. I would be even more shocked if any of them shipped less than a month later than they're expecting.
These guys should post up a thread on TGR and Newschoolers and see what happens.

EDIT: Oh sh** they actually did... http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php/267664-Kickstarting-Skis

EDIT: Just read the skis will be made in China at the DPS factory... which is probably a good idea in terms of being more or less sure the materials will get to your presses but $1000 bucks for China-made skis is pretty damned high. From the TGR thread the whole basis for this is apparently finite element analysis which is a cool idea but not the basis for an indy. These guys should collab with an established manufacturer and see if they can improve someone else's existing designs.

I love this site, it doesn't matter what niche subject is being discussed, some guru inevitably comes out of the woodwork. This site is such a valuable resource beyond the hockey topic.

[MrMastodonFarm]

The Calgary based Kickstarter iMirror seems really really stupid.

[polak]

Originally Posted by ranchlandsselling

2013? Shouldn't they be making snowboards?

Just kidding, but it does seem so 80's/90's sometimes.

Never heard of this kickstarter though.... kinda neat.

Free skiing and the growing popularity of big mountain has really shifted a lot of the youth movement back to Skiing.

Made skiing cool again.

[Tron_fdc]

This idea has LOL written all over it.

Chinese made skis at full retail price? Good luck. You're competing with the majors, and they're going to eat your lunch. Plus I doubt these guys have ever sourced in China. I do it daily, and it's a HUGE pain in the ass.

Custom skis made in China at custom price? People aren't dumb. They won't buy them. Have fun selling them to friends and family though.

I know a few guys making custom skis locally, and it's a tough gig. They sell at a high price to a niche market, and supplement custom skis to Heli operations at a low price to pick up capacity shortfalls. They are not making a ton of money. If I were these guys I would approach them to see if they can manufacture at a decent price, and try to buy up their excess capacity.

Chances are this guy breaks even (if he's lucky) and his poorly thought out project disappears in 2 years.

[Flamenspiel]

Sorry, lost me at the off-shored factory. I like buying local/Canadian made stuff, my Graf skates were actually made in Calgary

[19Yzerman19]

^Historically, Canadian-made skis have sucked and no company making their skis here has survived doing so. Armada actually started out with their production in Quebec, but quickly moved it to Europe because of durability issues. I had a pair of AR5s from the first run which were really fun but the bases might as well have been made out of margarine.

If you want to buy "local" your only real option is to broaden your definition to include U.S.-made, and I will always reccommend ON3P in that regard.

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

This idea has LOL written all over it.
Chinese made skis at full retail price? Good luck. You're competing with the majors, and they're going to eat your lunch. Plus I doubt these guys have ever sourced in China. I do it daily, and it's a HUGE pain in the ass.
Custom skis made in China at custom price? People aren't dumb. They won't buy them. Have fun selling them to friends and family though.

The thing is, DPS skis does this, and is fairly successful (by boutique ski company standards, which is to say they've been around for a while and haven't folded yet). Their full carbons are $1250 or so, part carbons (i.e. a lot like this guy's) are around 800. So yeah, cheaper, but still 800 bucks for skis. The thing is they've been doing it so long that they have a few shapes that have established themselves as being really good sticks; namely the Lotus 138 and the Wailer 112.

Thing is, DPS is mostly premised on selling the $1250 dollar full-carbon skis to the uber-gnarly, as an answer to the question, "if you were going to make the best powder ski you possibly could and price was more or less not an issue, what would that ski look like?" That market is available to them because Drake has built up a reputation as knowing what he's doing, people have thousands of days on his skis and the general consensus is they rip. So if someone's going to spend over a grand on a full carbon ski, and there aren't many options available there, DPS is the top-end boutique option.

Now, it only makes sense to offer a cheaper, non-carbon option because it's not like you need to set up a different mold in order to press those skis, you're just putting different stuff in the layup. The capital cost required to offer that option is relatively small; most of the cost is going to be materials. But I have no clue how many of those cheaper versions they sell relative to the full carbon ones. I don't know for sure but I kind of doubt that if they stopped selling the higher-priced carbon skis that DPS would be viable.

These Templar guys are basically making the same sort of skis as DPS's non-carbon line, selling them for $100+ dollars more, and doing it without any of DPS's experience or established market presence.

Chances are this guy breaks even (if he's lucky) and his poorly thought out project disappears in 2 years.

LOL No. Chances are he uses his kickstarter funding to make a bunch of perfectly serviceable skis, sells a small portion of them, and once it's gone they're never heard from again.

[Flamenspiel]

^Sounds like you are very familiar with the ski business....

[Reaper]

WTF is a "women wooden core"?

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by polak

Free skiing and the growing popularity of big mountain has really shifted a lot of the youth movement back to Skiing.

Made skiing cool again.

That, but probably more importantly, parents are snowboarding now and kids don't think anything their parents do is cool.

[BlackArcher101]

This guy reminds me of a lot of new manufacturers started up by new engineers using "new" techniques they just learned, but end up failing because they miss real experience.

It appears the main marketing points are that he uses FEA and he aligns the structures/grains using a new manufacturing process. All I have to say to that is LOL. He then admits in the forum already linked in this thread that he's unaware if other manufacturers use FEA.

First of all, FEA isn't the end-all-be-all of engineering analysis. If you don't have the proper training in using it and confirming the results, the graphs/diagrams it spits out can be pretty but essentially garbage. Hell, CAD packages now come with basic FEA built in. To use this with composites a lot of assumptions have to be made. Composites are still considered a new type of material and unless you can control things 100% (impossible) your results will always vary.

As well, none of this stuff is groundbreaking. I'm pretty damn sure that by now, FEA is used by other ski manufacturers after they peaked in their performance vs weight category. It's a key tool when you want to lower the weight of a product even further while still keeping performance equal or better. Yet the weight of his ski's are greater than the competitors, so I question if he's building a fudge factor into the design or if he's not using FEA properly. This thing about aligning grains to optimize strength? Carpenters have been doing this for thousands of years and is absolutely critical for woven composite fabrics and woods during manufacturing. There's just no way that the numerous other manufacturers haven't realize that by now.

But hey, good for him. It appears he'll make his goal and this will likely be a boost to his resume.

[dsavillian]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

The Calgary based Kickstarter iMirror seems really really stupid.

I'm glad someone said it.

Just an awful, awful idea. I don't think the company behind it is all that great either. I'd be worried that the people backing it would lose their money