Quarter-century old marketing concepts

Some 25 years ago, I was working with Pre Skis, an off-shoot of K2 skis, and was in charge of international sales for a change instead of what I knew best, marketing. Back in December of 1992, we had produced a movie for our 1993 sales meeting that was meant to communicate the product marketing positioning as a “Western, big mountain ski”.

Image-building was the only thing we really could sell. Our U.S. distribution had been poorly setup and wasn't what it should have been, but I was totally powerless to changing it, given the fact that our General Manager, at the time, “knew better”.

Scott USA, its previous distributor had it set up right the first time, but this was thrown out of the window, like the proverbial baby and his bathwater. To make matters worse, K2 wasn't willing to give good or specific product to nurture that parallel brand.

So from the get-go, I witnessed a build up that I knew full well was destined to crumble and crash.

This vain effort lasted four year before K2 closed down the division after wasting a few million dollars on its effort.