Swiss Massiv ends ski production

The market isn't fair, nice, or beautiful, and today it's worse than ever. Everyone is just trying to get the best for themselves, and consumers and retailers are incredibly ruthless. This leads to great products that are great disappearing from the market time and time again. The reason for these disappearances isn't a lack of demand or poor product quality, but often internal company problems such as staffing issues, financial problems, small company size, or a lack of marketing.

René Unternährer was a lone fighter with good ideas and excellent skis in a constantly shrinking market. Small ski brands in particular are struggling; the German company Indigo went bankrupt, and the Austrian company Original+ went bankrupt. The ski brand Zai, which always thrived on generous sponsorship money, was forced to reorient itself one day and abandon its Swiss base after sponsors lost confidence in the brand's future. And its successor brand, Anavon, would likely cease to exist without donations. But even large ski brands are struggling. The Slovenian ski brand Elan, for example, ended its collaboration with the Swiss sporting goods importer Catrade, presumably for financial reasons – they probably wanted to save the importer's margin. Did it work out for Elan? And things are currently in turmoil at K2, too. The manufacturer of the "Swiss Massiv" skis was likely struggling with difficult trading. Retailers are demanding everything from manufacturers these days, and it's questionable whether they'll get anything back. After all, René Unternährer ran his company himself without any support from sponsors. That was a lot of hard work with no thanks! And the cruel thing about this story is not only that the manufacturer from Entlebuch put so much heart and soul into his own skis without receiving the appropriate remuneration for his backbreaking work, but that now beautiful, handcrafted, unique skis made of natural wood have also been lost. It's a real shame! This kind of thing just pisses me off. Small companies are much more innovative than large companies, they are more innovative and of higher quality, but they often go under simply because they don't receive the financial support they deserve. This is a hard blow for all fans of Swiss massive skis. I hope René Unternährer is doing well and looks to the future with confidence and courage. He has achieved great things.