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.