Remembering the Salomon "Freedom Action Sports" era - Board Culture, Inline Skating & Wingsuit — Transcript

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1. 0:00So, we are in 99, 2000.
2. 0:02Invited by Salomon, it was top class.
3. 0:03The boss is about to arrive,
4. 0:05so everyone is tense,
5. 0:06and so was I.
6. 0:07Cool, there is a guy coming. Suddenly, this guy arrives,
7. 0:10I look at him and say to myself:
8. 0:11"Gosh, hold on, another guy dressed worse than me!" Oh!
9. 0:14Everyone was in a suit and tie
10. 0:15Jean-Luc Diard was in flip flops a Hawaiian t-shirt, an open shirt
11. 0:19half spotted with the Monday button that goes with Sunday.
12. 0:22Hello, my name is Jean-Luc,
13. 0:24I'm in charge of Salomon.
14. 0:26Sorry.
15. 0:29And all those sports that we have seen,
16. 0:31emerging in the last ten years,
17. 0:33This is what we call "Freedom Action Sports".
18. 0:58The material, the equipment,
19. 0:59they are here simply to allow,
20. 1:01each person to express themselves freely.
21. 1:05Jean-Luc has seen,
22. 1:08the development and the emergence,
23. 1:10in fact, of what was called "board culture".
24. 1:18Things were moving,
25. 1:20it was necessary for a company like Salomon, recognized
26. 1:23for its innovation,
27. 1:25to innovate not only in engineering, but to innovate in its way of approaching
28. 1:30the brands, the business sectors, the sports practices, etc.
29. 1:34I think Salomon was always really good
30. 1:38and kind of funny about trying new technologies
31. 1:43and also going down like quirky weird roads.
32. 1:48With a ski, you are facing the slope,
33. 1:49it's really for me a performance tool.
34. 1:52The snowboard is derived from the surfboard,
35. 1:55from skatebaords and
36. 1:57it's a toy.
37. 2:03It's a different culture
38. 2:04and it inspired us enormously.
39. 2:06There is more similarity for me
40. 2:09with free ski, freestyle and a snowboard.
41. 2:12than perhaps the more rigid side of the alpine ski.
42. 2:22I think the Salomon Snowboard,
43. 2:24was delicate, yes, in the beginning.
44. 2:26The boards were not as yet quite on point.
45. 2:30We have separated this culture and this group,
46. 2:33rather than saying: “we know how to make skis,
47. 2:35so we will then make good snowboards”.
48. 2:37But from today’s perspective, you could say that they were horrible,
49. 2:41but most boards from the mid-90s,
50. 2:44were pretty terrible, compared to today’s snowboards.
51. 2:46They were just different than what was available at the time.
52. 2:49When you get there and you see the machines testing the boards,
53. 2:53the resistance, etc., that cut boards in front of you,
54. 2:56then you realize that there is a lot of research
55. 2:58and that there is a hell of a mess behind it all.
56. 3:00And at 15 years old, that was Disney Land!
57. 3:02If you imagine, it would be a bit like,
58. 3:04James Bond coming to see Q
59. 3:06to get like a presentation of the new products,
60. 3:10but with Q not being this "gentlemen" type
61. 3:12but just being like this really, really nerdy French engineer.
62. 3:19It’s nice, when I asked for my boards
63. 3:21I always wanted David Bendek boards.
64. 3:23I did pressure tests,
65. 3:24with like a backpack with a computer,
66. 3:27with engineers that took notes.
67. 3:28To me, I was just a snowboarder,
68. 3:31I didn't care too much I just wanted to snowboard.
69. 3:34I think it's supposed to start in maybe, I don’t know, 2 hours?
70. 3:38But everyone is already here just to watch the snow
71. 3:41Cos no one has ever seen snow here I think, so…
72. 3:47Salomon Snowboard prototypes are made in the Wolle Nyvelt factory,
73. 3:53a snowboarder type.
74. 3:58He makes all the prototypes by hand,
75. 4:00in his small factory in Austria.
76. 4:02If we had remained a ski brand
77. 4:05that makes snowboards,
78. 4:07today, we would no longer exist,
79. 4:09we would no longer be in culture!
80. 4:10Maybe Salomon
81. 4:11doesn't have to prove themselves as a part of snowboarding.
82. 4:16They simply are, I think.
83. 4:20We were leaving snow territory
84. 4:22that was associated with the mountain
85. 4:24and gradually, we added elements.
86. 4:28The inline skate,
87. 4:30it was the way to practice
88. 4:33I would say a gliding sport, in a certain way,
89. 4:35on asphalt.
90. 4:37It was the skate boom!
91. 4:45Everyone who skated, in fact,
92. 4:47were not at all happy
93. 4:50because they had sore feet,
94. 4:51they broke their heels when they jumped.
95. 4:54So we very quickly analyzed,
96. 4:57the problems they were having.
97. 4:59I think the ST 90 looked great, It’s a great looking skate.
98. 5:01I loved the way Aaron (Feinberg) and Shayne Skower skate them.
99. 5:05Like they f***ing murdered it!
100. 5:06That was when Shayne had told me,
101. 5:08"Hey, man, Salomon’s interested in signing you".
102. 5:11And he let me try his skates on a mini ramp.
103. 5:13I’m like "wow, these actually feel great"
104. 5:15they slide good,
105. 5:17Um, I loved that you had to like bend to get into the tricks.
106. 5:21Yeah, they were comfortable,
107. 5:22I could wear them all day and night And not be sore.
108. 5:24They saw that we were capable
109. 5:25of really bringing them something and a response
110. 5:28to the brands that had been around for years.
111. 5:31One of my most memorable moments working with the Salomon team
112. 5:34and ah especially René, the designer,
113. 5:37was flying over there for my pro skate.
114. 5:39René helped like basically design those skates with me.
115. 5:42No other skate company did it at the time.
116. 5:45I took the prototypes, I took the skates,
117. 5:47I went for fifteen days,
118. 5:49to a month to California with them.
119. 5:51They were a mess.
120. 5:53Where they were,
121. 5:54with their baggy trousers around their bums
122. 5:59and cockey in the morning,
123. 6:03It was weird for the elders and for all those who were there.
124. 6:08We received damage invoices
125. 6:10that were fairly colossal.
126. 6:14Watch the road.
127. 6:15It was not that it was nice to watch them do stupid things,
128. 6:17but to succeed, we needed to get into their skin.
129. 6:24When you’re getting a check
130. 6:26for doing something that you love...
131. 6:27it is like: 400 bucks, shit, I'm doing this for free anyway,
132. 6:30and I’m doing it for fun!
133. 6:31So, paying me, like that was just a bonus.
134. 6:36Funny thing is, from what I hear on the streets,
135. 6:40all the world over, everybody still wants Salomons.
136. 6:41I do have lots of friends rocking these boots and they love it.
137. 6:44I do know that a lot of people love these.
138. 6:47and I have seen that Claudio Antonelli from Switzerland
139. 6:49He’s making like a "soul plate" for these and it is amazing!
140. 7:02It is rare that in a given field,
141. 7:05we can generate real new ideas.
142. 7:08All of the competitors, in one way or another, come to the same conclusions.
143. 7:12The strength comes from the hybridization. the mixture of the domains.
144. 7:16I'm never in my office, I am with my colleagues,
145. 7:19in binding, with my alpine shoe colleagues.
146. 7:29One of the special points
147. 7:32from the Design Center in Annecy, was to build,
148. 7:34enormous pilot workshop
149. 7:36with all the technologies side by side, so that
150. 7:40we can mix technologies in metalworking, composite, sewing,
151. 7:43plastic injection anything we want, etc., something that
152. 7:46no other company was able to do.
153. 7:49In a basically straight line, you had all the RD where they started working on the sails, the souffle ailleurs
154. 7:53with Loïc Jean-Albert,
155. 7:55where there was plenty of prototypes, and stuff
156. 7:58that was neither head nor tail, but on the other hand, they were going
157. 8:01and it was completely crazy!
158. 8:04It was really a "Gyro Gearloose" office!
159. 8:07And all of it was to find
160. 8:09in each of these fields things that would connect well
161. 8:12with each other and in the center of this, there was air.
162. 8:15And why air? Because
163. 8:17in all of these sports,
164. 8:19there are always times when we get away in some way
165. 8:21from gravity.
166. 8:29When I saw
167. 8:30the specialists, Loïc Jean-Albert
168. 8:32who were carving up the mountain,
169. 8:35making tracks with a smoke generator,
170. 8:37Flying like a bird with a wingsuit,
171. 8:40or passing three meters from the ground
172. 8:45with friends.
173. 8:46For me, it was like watching
174. 8:48a science fiction movie or Spiderman.
175. 8:51It was a crazy thing,
176. 8:53the effect that it had on me!
177. 8:54I think the wingsuit, it's
178. 8:55like any other sport we can practice,
179. 8:59in leisure
180. 9:00without necessarily engaging too much risk.
181. 9:03And then we can also, if we want, send a little of the pâté.
182. 9:08Flying has always been man's dream,
183. 9:10in certain aspects, it was completely
184. 9:13new and for us, it was a little bit
185. 9:16of the ultimate freedom.
186. 9:24After, Salomon has been helping to develop this.
187. 9:27We brought retailers to watch with us,
188. 9:30the guys, they had never heard of this,
189. 9:32all of a sudden, we saw three people arriving in wingsuits
190. 9:35who had their trace kits on
191. 9:38flying just above us and then disappearing.
192. 9:41The retailers were asking themselves what
193. 9:45had actually happened!
194. 9:51As such, it's unsaleable,
195. 9:52On the other hand, what that gave us, was a technological image
196. 9:55in relation to the clothing.
197. 9:56It was the pinnacle of
198. 9:58the innovation, to have man flying like a bird.
199. 10:14The starting point of the surf project,
200. 10:17is a major revolution,
201. 10:20on the very design of a surfboard.
202. 10:22It's an industry that claimed to not have developed
203. 10:26the design of the boards since the Middle Ages.
204. 10:29And then inevitably, you have jerks landing from the mountain, saying: “But
205. 10:33no one thought of approaching it differently, to work it differently”
206. 10:37It is a real added value,
207. 10:39to conduct research
208. 10:41and to find something that has never been done before.
209. 10:58We have built something that was quite unique
210. 11:00as we have built a design center in Australia.
211. 11:03We have started a whole lot of work with the shapers.
212. 11:05The concept is to have a group
213. 11:10that is simultaneously working on the whole project.
214. 11:13Classic surfing, has a shaped foam board,
215. 11:16then glazed with fiberglass.
216. 11:19And we started on a structure of an aircraft wing.
217. 11:22We have built a design team
218. 11:24for advanced design which led to a concept that was very original,
219. 11:28with a hollow structure with three stringers.
220. 11:31Our industry is thirsty for new technology.
221. 11:33Something new in the environment that we have never had.
222. 11:36It's a new frontier.
223. 11:37Something fresh.
224. 11:37Salomon competed in a surf competition.
225. 11:40Which is incredible!
226. 11:42I can tell you that at the time, you would say: “are you serious?
227. 11:44Salomon in a surf competition ...?!"
228. 11:46There was a wow side anyway!
229. 11:48It's a bit far for us.
230. 11:50This small grain of madness,
231. 11:51has spread within the whole team and the people who were around us.
232. 11:54We uncapped things.
233. 11:57And even see there was even a type of move saying:
234. 12:01"Oh shit, are they allowed to do that!"
235. 12:02I think it gave some permissions,
236. 12:05and authorized to look elsewhere,
237. 12:07authorized to think differently.
238. 12:20Of all the crazy bets that they made,
239. 12:21this one, it is in my opinion in the top three.
240. 12:24this one, is in my opinion in the top three.
241. 12:28the madness of Salomon.
242. 12:30At a time, when you are a snow brand and that you are going
243. 12:33to surf, you don't understand, you don’t understand!
244. 12:38And somewhere, it has also helped us to say to ourselves,
245. 12:41Ok, let's get more strategic,
246. 12:42by choosing where we want to go,
247. 12:45our playing field.
248. 12:46Failing to complete a project
249. 12:49is to set up the foundations
250. 12:53for the success of the next one.
251. 13:09Come on, good snow.
252. 13:11Then go get the next magazine. "In memory of Pascal Aymar, brand director in the 2000s and a lover of the outdoors. "