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)