Early September 1974, I started my job at Look as their new director of racing services. First, I underwent the traditional training about Look bindings and what made them superior to the rest, like their high elastic travel, their anatomically located turntable and their unique protection from the elements.
The next logical step would have been to get acquainted with my department’s records, but there was absolutely nothing for me to see. A total void: No files, no rolodex, no memos, no budget, no correspondence with the various ski federations; strictly nothing. Plancherel, the man previously in charge, was an independent contractor living in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, who probably parted ways with Look in less than cordial terms. It is to be noted that Mrs. Beyl had expressly asked me that I do not contact René Plancherel, which didn’t help either.
The only element that I found, related to the racing activity was a few recent copies of Ski Racing, an American publication that the export department had a subscription for. I couldn’t understand it and I figured that it was the way Look was doing business, which quickly to prove to be true. Unbeknownst to me, I had just walked into a pathetic situation in which I was truly set up to fail miserably, had I not survived through my staunch determination, a great dose of common sense, quite a bit of good luck, as wall as my unending energy and creativity.
That’s how I immediately began to acquaint myself with the various tech reps we had in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, United States and Canada. Except for France and North America, all the reps had been hired and put in place by Plancherel, my predecessor, while he was in charge of the program. Each had his particular view of what his mission should be, something that was all over the map, wasn’t clear or necessarily supportive of the company’s marketing goals. In addition, these folks were fearful of the headquarters, had a lot to lose and didn’t want me on their back. This was just a recipe for failure.
What I was soon to find out was that under Plancherel, Look’s racing budget had mushroomed into unsustainable levels. In these days dollars, racing was costing the company $1 million out of $12 millions in sales, not counting normal marketing costs. At the same time, Look was feeling pressure from Salomon as the other French company was making some serious in-road with mid priced, more convenient products that soon would capture the much larger market of entry level to intermediate skiers.
Keeping racers like Thöni or Moser-Pröll on the binding was expensive and under a tighter competitive environment, that money would have been better allocated to Look’s R&D that was woefully lagging behind. Of course, I was never made aware of the dichotomy between the cost of maintaining a full-fledged racing program and the company dire financial situation. I was simply given a budget and asked to watch it by keeping a heavy lid on it.
That was until, Blime, the new General Manager hired away from McKinsey, tried to find every which way to reduce expenses in order to keep the company afloat. He began with some value analysis in an attempt to make our products cheaper, but the element that stuck out the most, the low-hanging fruit, if you will, was the huge financial involvement into racing, that showed no clear short term benefit or direct promotional effect.
I was asked to make an analysis of that entire department and my only recommendation was to pool our field support services with another equipment manufacturer like, say Rossignol. This wasn’t to the liking of Mr. Beyl who fiercely treasured his brand’s independence and preferred instead to decapitate the whole racing program, with the exception of Italy and France.
I survived the purge as Look offered me a product manager position in Nevers – a place that I hated and didn’t want to move to - that would providentially extend my career with the ski binding manufacturer.
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