Victim of American propaganda?

At regular intervals, I’m asked why in the world did I leave my magic Alps to come to America. Most often than not, I mutter some inconsequential answer. 

The reality though, is when I was a small kid, we used to receive a pamphlet or magazine at home, touting the beauty and wonders of America and its society, and when I read that material, I must have instantly fallen under the spell. 

Our family’s material life wasn’t even close to that fairyland described herein and at the time, I was pretty much taking my marvelous surroundings for granted. That dreamland description must have made a permanent mark upon my young mind and from there, irrevocably driven my destiny.

Nothing anyone could do about that! Obviously pure propaganda, that literature was part of the “American Way of Life” indoctrination from the USIA, an anti-communist agency founded during the Cold War in 1953, by President Eisenhower, with the mission of “understanding, informing and influencing foreign audiences in order to promote interest national and deepen dialogue between Americans and US institutions with their counterparts abroad.” 

I was evidently part of that targeted audience and in my case, it did work to perfection!

Cultural filter

I’ve lived for more than 42 years in America and my French upbringing has and continue to influence the ways I see, interpret and interact with my new host country.

Because I do my very best to remain in control of my thoughts and of my critical thinking, I believe that this approach has served me very well. It has given me and continues to provide me with a resulting personal culture that is a blend of the “best of both worlds”.

Sure, both countries have areas where their superiority shows over the other, and the idea is not to blindly adopt the host culture, but rather pick and choose and run with the winners in each categories. Evidently, and when possible or where I could control it, I did all that I could to steer clear of the less desirable trait of either country.

That’s pretty much the road I’ve chose to follow and it has rather served me very well. Instead of just “switching” cultures, I have done my very best to synergize my positive native background with my host country’s best idiosyncrasies...

Out of Look Sports, 1982 (continued)…

When 1982 began, my wife was expecting a baby for March or April. Look had left New York and was settling into its new Essex-Junction home, up in Vermont, within a brand-new Nordica distribution facility. The successful Italian boot company had just left RNC, a company jointly owned by Rossignol and Nordica to be on its own. My job was to work the marketing and sales transition for the first four months of 1982.

I was commuting every week from my home in New York, all the way to Vermont and staying at the South Burlington Ramada Inn. I was working with Rief, then Nordica’s marketing manager and with its sales managers, Petrich in the East, and Brammer in the West. The latter was a nice fellow from Provo, Utah, while Rief was more temperamental and difficult to work with. Petrich war harder to read and not necessarily welcoming.

Immediately, I began to look for a job and had a pretty positive interview with Volvo, in New Jersey, that was then also distributing Koflach boots. The job definition wasn’t quite clear and the money not so good, so I decided to seat on it.

A few weeks later, when I flew to the international Ispo trade show in Munich in late February, I happened to be in the same flight as Lumet, the new president of Lange USA. He invited me to the section of the plane where he was sitting with DeLotto, his CFO.

They asked what I was up to and offered me a job on the spot. They were looking for a director of marketing to support their sales efforts under the direction of Colley. We talked over salary, benefits and other details, and I agreed to start on June 1, after spending a quiet month with my family.

Going to work with a direct competitor wasn’t necessarily the liking of Garland, the new Nordica president, but every one ended up putting a good face to it. At the Las Vegas show, we had a press conference to show off our new Integral boot-binding system and Garland was not to happy to have me there.

What’s notable is that the Frenchman Thierry Convert who had replaced me in Nevers, accepted to take the spot I had vacated in Essex Junction! A few weeks later, our daughter Charlotte was born on a snowy April day, and after a few more weeks of presence in Burlington, I pocketed my end of contract bonus, got a big, nice trophy from Nordica, and said “adieu” to Look.

A bittersweet farewell, because while I had learned a lot at this “University of Hard Knocks” it had been done at a huge and lasting personal cost.

Look Sports 1981… (continued)

Harrington had convinced Cattin, the new acting managing director at Look to purchase our representatives company cars.

He decided to on VW Passat Diesel wagons. To showcase the new fleet of vehicles, it had been decided that the Eastern and Midwestern reps would drive their new cars to Sugarbush, Vermont, where our January sales meeting was held.

This happened during a severe cold spell, with temperatures at about minus forty degrees. Only one or two cars made it. All the rest got stuck on their way as the diesel fuel clogged the injectors. Eventually these reps showed up when they understood that they should add at least ten percent of kerosene into their full tank.

This was a bad omen to begin the year. We did the best we could to motivate the sales force even though Pike was quitting and replaced by Doe who didn’t bring much to the table either. At that point the rumors of a Nordica-Look Integral system were out and everyone was concerned that Nordica might eventually end up distributing the bindings too, leaving everyone out in the cold.

In the spring, Kelly, our president, got fired as president and a new excentric recruit came to replace him, in the person of Sinclair, the new factory manager that would assemble Look 27 bindings on the opposite bank of the Hudson River. Sinclair, was old, politically-minded and malevolent and started immediately by throwing his weight into our sales and marketing division instead of getting his factory geared up for production, as if he obviously wanted the president’s job too!

By summer Look was now in the process of separating from Beconta and preparing its move north to Vermont. A new guy, Mamez, had been hired in France to replace Deschamps and had cosmetically revamped the binding line to make a bit more attractive. By that time, Look was on its knees and financially bankrupt, so it made the separation with Beconta even more difficult to settle to Look’s advantage.

I was invited to follow and join in the new Nordica organization (the ski boot maker was divorcing Rossignol too, to get out on its own) but after spending one week vacation with my family, we concluded that I would stay in New York instead. As I announced that I would stay behind, I negotiated a transition that would keep me with Look through April 1982.

The end of my Look career was now in sight. I had a chance to meet the sales and marketing of Nordica, close and personal, during Ski Industry week that took place in December, in Vail, Colorado. I didn’t enjoy that team at all and I was confirmed in my decision to pursue something else.

This was the beginning of the end of an era... (conclusion to follow)

Look Sports 1980...

Early in the year, we had our national sales meeting at Park City. This was my very first time in what would become my real hometown. We stayed at the brand new Racquet Club Condos and couldn’t ski because there was no snow. Deschamps, Look’s marketing director came from France for the occasion, and I believe that Blime was on his way out.

Pike, our western sales manager, had brought us a motivational speaker he had used when at Xerox and we thought we were ready for big times! We had introduced our ski brake, to respond to Salomon’s as well as our new Look 37, a pretty homely looking binding.

When I returned home, we moved from our White Plains apartment into a single family home in nearby Hawthorne. At the 1980 Las Vegas ski show, a new guy showed up by the name of Kelly and was introduced to me as being the newly hired President, Look was looking for.

Coming from Thermos, Kelly was as clueless as the rest and focused first on getting a bright yellow Mazda RX7 as a company car and purchasing a large house in Chappaqua, NY. Later in May, my parents came to visit us from France and we had a good time together.

In the summer Kelly came on board as the new president and from the get go, did as badly as Ed Paul, his predecessor. Either the place was cursed, or Blime or Cattin were woefully incapable of hiring the right people.

Sales kept on struggling as Salomon products were advancing by leaps and bounds and the company was working on its ski boot project. Look, for its part, had decided to establish a factory in the US in order to build our new economy binding, the Look 27.

Simultaneously, Look was also approaching Nordica with a project of intergrated boot-binding system. All this made Kip Pitou, Beconta’s sales manager, say: “If you’d put a tent on top of Look Sports, you could sell tickets...” Nice way to compliment your tenant!

The good news concluding the year was our moving into a beautiful home we had just purchased in Chappaqua. Yeah, like just like Kelly!

Look Sports 1979…

The year 1979 came and went without any major changes in the nature of Look business, except that our sales did go south instead of north, and that Harrington and Pike were blaming Look, the parent company, and Beconta, the company providing us the logistics, for their lackluster sales results.

Some major remodeling in our office separated us a bit more from our landlord Beconta, but the relationship got tenser. Things weren’t going too well either for the sporting goods distributor; they lost Puma and decided to build a factory in Vermont to assemble the Dolomite ski boots sold in North America.

Some staff was added to our larger office, but failed to make a positive impact on the overall outcome either. Harrington and I were tolerating each other, while presumably Look France was watching whom of the two would survive, while it still was interviewing candidates for that elusive president job.

In the meantime, the rudderless organization wasn’t moving forward as it should have. That wasn’t the case for Salomon that had just introduced its new 727 binding, as it was now able to use Look’s expired patent on upper boot radius interface.

On the job side, the sole good news was that I inherited Blime’s automobile, a.k.a. the “Turtle Car”!

Look Sports 1978…

The year 1978 began with a joint sales meeting with Beconta in Aspen, Colorado. What a way to start the selling season!

After some good skiing, I returned to New York and that’s when Philippe Blime decided he would replace his departing president part-time while still remaining the Look’s GM in France. He got himself an AMC Pacer as a company vehicle (a car his wife fancied) and came to visit a few times.

By the middle of that year, Blime realized that his plan wouldn’t work and decided to hire a replacement for Paul. I told him I wanted that top job, but he said that while I had the potential, I should stay put doing the marketing manager job my product manager position had gradually evolved into since I had been working in America. He just didn’t think I could pull it off. The man was stubborn and lacking solid common-sense.

In addition, he decided to hire two sales managers, Harrington in the East and Pike in the West. Harrington was an advertising manager for Olin skis and was clearly eyeing Look’s top job. He spoke a good game but wasn’t able to walk any of it.

Same thing Pike, a Xerox alumni, who had a great baritone voice but had no clue about the ski business and its quirky distribution. These choices reflected very poorly on Blime who might have been a number guy (?) but was woefully inept at reading people.

Since the joint Beconta/Look sales force was far from perfect, Harrington had no better idea than scrap it totally, throw the baby and the bathwater, instead of doing incremental changes as would have been advisable in that instance.

Instead, he started with a fresh stable of green guys who weren’t all that good and worse, were very inexperienced. A recipe for disaster. At the same time Salomon’s products were gaining ground over Look’s and I kept on pulling my hair but still learning an awful lot by witnessing my colleagues piling up mistakes upon mistakes.

The year ended on a wonderful note, though; the birth of our son Thomas in December.

First year in America

On May 2, 1977, Evelyne and I arrived at New York JFK airport via Swissair, were picked up by a limo, and whisked to the Ramada Inn, in Elmsford, New York. So far, so good.

The only bad news was that the weather was terribly hot and humid, we only had 2 weeks to find a place to stay, and my wife had to learn English in a hurry.

Looking for an apartment is always depressing and sooner than later we found one in White Plains, my wife enrolled in an ESL class, we bought a small Datsun and I went to work, hoping some kind of guidance from Paul, my boss, but it really was “the blind guiding the blind”. In fact I was the one teaching him about the ski industry while he couldn’t teach me anything about American business.

From the get-go, this wasn’t looking good. Later in the month, Evelyne and I traveled to Nova Scotia for a Canadian Ski Patrol symposium and a few days later, I was off to Europe for a Look sales meeting at Les Deux Alpes, where I met Jean-François Deschamps, the newly hired marketing manager who seemed to live on a cloud of textbook theories. I also met Thierry Convert, my replacement.

This said, there were still no visible signs of future improvements or positive changes.

Back in the office, I was terrorized by having to pick up phone calls from disgruntled dealers, having to write letters and memos, and truly felt like a fish out of water. What became obviously clear from day one, was Paul’s total incompetence.

My good common sense felt violated everyday as I watched him around and wonder where I had gotten into. In fact, through pain and despair, I learned an awful lot by watching people around me do totally stupid things. As one might have expected, Paul got fired at the year end.

Another bright spot was that I also began running to alleviate my daily stress and this became a passion that would last and benefit me for about 40 years.

At the end of the year, when Evelyne and I flew back to France for the Christmas Holidays on Icelandic Airlines, this was a welcome break in an otherwise grueling first eight months...

First months in America…

When I finalized my commitment to come to America, it was agreed that I would make two trips of about one month each, one in January and one in March, before moving for good, with my spouse early May.

I needed to honor the commitment I had made to the Avoriaz ski school for the peak periods of the winter season, and also needed to organize our personal affairs in view of our move. This was particularly tough on my wife who stayed alone in France for such a long period of time, near my family that wasn’t particularly supportive.

As I reentered the ski school for the Christmas holidays, I realized that after two full season of being absent, I had seemingly lost my mojo and also my priority ranking. This was hard to swallow. My first trip took place early January 1977 and lasted about a month.

I accompanied Blime, Look’s managing director, along with Cattin, the Beyl’s son in law, who was progressively introduced into the company picture after running his family appliance distribution in Africa. Why was he brought in, I have no idea; some form of training perhaps?

We established our living quarters at the Rye Hilton in Purchase, New York and worked with Ed Paul, the newly minted Look Sports, Inc. president. Why in the world did Blime hired Paul still mystifies me to this very day. The man was a total misfit and clueless about business in general, not to even mention the ski industry in particular.

At any rate, we spent days crunching numbers, getting to know the ski media, meeting the sales force and analyzing our future business in all possible directions. Coming from McKinsey’s, Blime was a numbers man who didn't understand human relationships and wasn't able to understand Look's existing dealership.

We should instead have spent time crisscrossing the country to learn from retailers about Beconta’s distribution, its sales force and what was needed in terms of products and programs. This would have gone a much longer way.

From the start we shared the sales force with Beconta, our host and former distributor and this very quickly became fraught with conflicts and bad influence. From the start, Beconta’s Pitou was openly making fun of our president, and I could see that things were not going to be fun...

I returned in March, attended the annual ski show in Las Vegas and slowly began to get my feet wet with this new business environment. Teaching skiing, as I had just found out, was no longer a viable option for me.

Now, I was on the cusp of learning an awful lot, everything was totally new and I was ready to make the best out of this extraordinary venture.

Would I emigrate today?

Last night we were discussing the topic of emigration and wondering if the thrill (?), sacrifices and work behind it might have truly been worth it. Of course, not an easy question with no easy answer. Was it in fact fate more than circumstances that dictated the move? 

Why in the world would I live one of the most beautiful region in the world? Would we recommend, let alone support the idea, if our own children wanted to repeat what we've once done? Not so sure... Is moving around part of the new human destiny as opposed to spending a quiet life in one's place of origin?

A rich, disturbing subject that I intend to develop in a near future. Stay tuned...