Look and its commitment to ski racing

With its Nevada-Grand Prix ski binding, Look had a lock on racing until the early 70s. In fact, Look had stolen that leadership position from Marker and its Simplex-Rotamat combo during the entire 60s.

Look's product was far superior, had good patent protection and no competition. Problem was, it was only an expensive, top-of-the-line offering and Look's mass-market bindings were dismal.

First, the Look 55 – Nevatic was expensive to produce, not really good or convenient, and never sold well at retail. It's successor, the Look GT was a mixture of bad engineering and poor convenience.

When Salomon entered the product category with its 505/404 series and later with its 444 binding, it grabbed that vast and lucrative mass-market away from Look.

The French firm was left with eroding sales and a costly racing program that set it $500,000 back every year, plus the investment burden of a brand new factory that would first see stagnating then declining sales. Its financial bleeding that would last until bankruptcy in 1983.

Look R&D was hampered by a lack of good talent, tyrannical control by the company founder-inventor and had nothing new and consumer-friendly on its drawing boards. On the other hand, racing sponsorship was quite inefficient and costly for a company that just sold ski bindings and had to have an army of tech reps traveling the world, just to service the racers.

That's when, forty years ago, Look backed in a corner, made the fateful decision to cut most of its racing sponsorship programs except for the Italian ski team, just to stay alive. Could this save the company? No, it was a case of “too little, too late” that would merely extend the firm's agony...

Look had bet all of its resources on the losing horse, racing, instead of zeroing in on marketing and consumer preference, which was Salomon's choice...