Lorpen background information
For more information, click here to visit the Lorpen website.
CLOSETranspack, founded in 1995, set out to improve the action sports experience by making it easier to carry sporting equipment.
Transpack’s popular boot backpacks, based on the patented Isosceles Storage System, with their distinctive sloping shape, are recognized by skiers and snowboards as the industry standard.
Transpack products are sold in specialty stores across the USA and are distributed in Canada, Europe, Australia as well as many other countries worldwide.
For more information, click here to visit Transpack’s website.
CLOSEThroughout the early 70’s a smart guy by the name of Eric Giese had worked for NASA in the days of early space suits for the first landings on the moon. The big problem in space suits is they had cooling, heating and electric lines running throughout the suit and as the astronauts did space walks they had a big problem with them kinking and getting crimped when people tried to walk with their knees and ankles flexing. The solution was articulating hinges which had ribs to allow flex in the ankles, knees and elbows to preserve the shape of the suit around the joint. Today you see this on everything from water pipes to flexible drinking straws.
In 1978/79 living in Aspen, Eric applied this concept to skiing. He independently developed some very unique boot design concepts that included a floating ribbed tongue instead of an overlap. His goal was to enable the boot to flex without bulging/distorting in the lower shell. This was the largest single problem of the day, especially since ski boots at the time had no ankle hinge. The ankle is of course a critical area of fit where any distortion would immediately causes a loss of control. This is how the ribs of the original Raichle flexon tongue were conceived.
In 1979, ten years after the first moon walk, the first 3-Piece boot prototype was built by Raichle. After many different prototypes it was brought to market during the winter of ’80/’81. This flexibility with direct force path function concept, was later named the Flexon Concept and ultimately this first boot was named the Flexon 5, and later the Flexon Comp.
One of the first pro ski racers and freestylers to compete in the boot was Billy Shaw on a prototype in ’79/’80 and hot dog freestyle skier Peter Ouellette. The boots quickly caught on and became one of the top boots of choice by Olympic racers and freestylers. There was later the legendary Bill Johnston who won a gold medal in the 1984 Olympic downhill as well as Nelson Carmichael who dominated mogul comps throughout the late 80’s.
In the late 80’s Raichle was purchased by a Swiss banker Dr. Grosnick who was in the business of buying companies in distress and Kneissl skis shortly after. As successful as the boot was, because the Flexon boot molds & design went unchanged for so many years, it was natural human instinct to try to end the boot and create a newer, latest and greatest version. They knew the 3-Piece concept worked and over volume versions and lower priced versions but none ever delivered the performance of the original. What they didn’t realize is that they already had, quite literally the greatest boot ever and no matter how many new and changed versions they made, the skiers would always came back asking for the original.
In 1999 Dr. Grosnick insisted that the Kneissl brand offer a boot and made the rash decision of re-naming all Raichle boots to Kneissl branded boots. The company didn’t do as well as anticipated and was sold a year and a half later to the parent company of Roces. From there the molds were bought and sold and passed around without much being done with them.
We’re boot fitters, and we know better than anyone that something had to be done. We took it upon ourselves to go back and search out the original molds and bring it back to life not in some new and distorted form, but in the original construction and design that had been proven over the past 25 years to be the most popular 3-Piece design in the world.
K2 Sports purchased the original molds tested every feature, kept what worked, then added some of today’s most advanced technology to make them work even better, and launched the boot under the brand name Full Tilt in 2006 to the overwhelming excitement of the fans of this design.
Since then Full Tilt has been growing exponentially adding new fans to the boot every year. We hope you enjoy these boots as much as we enjoy bringing them back to life. The revolution in 3 piece boot design started here, and will now continue from here ... For the good of skiing.
For more information click here to visit Full Tilt’s website.
CLOSEDryGuy was founded in 1998 by a skier who had found the solution to cold feet. The solutions that Joel Beckett brought to the ski industry was a line of high performance dryers and supplementary boot insulation systems that enhance the warmth and comfort of any ski boot.
Our objective is to make a profit for our retailers. Without “sell through” there are no winners.
For more information, click here to visit the DryGuy website.
CLOSENecessity is the mother of invention…
It became very apparent to most boot fitters I know that something had to be done to simplify the canting of boots. Over the last several years, endless hours has been spent trying to overcome the engineering that has gone into multi-piece boot soles, so that the experienced boot fitter could introduce the necessary angle between the skiers boot and their skis. Boot fitters have struggled to fashion cant wedges that can be placed between boot sole and the shell, and of course the finish work required to make it all look “pro”.
The other issue/need we had was to try and get away from carrying around a boot sole planner. This is where we came up with the idea, which if we were going to the trouble of making specific cant wedges for Lange and Rossignol multi-piece soled boots (I happen to be a Lange Rep) then maybe we could also make some that were more generic and worked with the most popular lifters on the market.
Cantology Cant Wedges provide a precise, effective, and cosmetically transparent means to introduce the necessary cant angle between your boots and your skis. Cantology Cant Wedges are engineered to be inserted between the removable/replaceable toe and heel pieces on multi-piece ski boot soles and between the boot shell and aftermarket lifters or Vibram™ type soles. Cantology Cant Wedges come in .05, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 degree sizes and can be stacked to achieve 2.5, and 3 degree cant angles (2.5 & 3.0 degree cants available late 2010).
Cantology Cant Wedges utilize a unique ’live hinge’ design so that one set can be used for either Fat Side In (FSI) or Fat Side Out (FSO) or a combination of FSO and FSI. Cantology Cant Wedges are also manufactured to very exact specifications and following the ISO 5355 Standard where applicable i.e. radius, width etc.
For more information, click here to visit the Cantology website.
CLOSEDalbello ski boot company was established in 1974 in Asolo, Italy. It is still family owned and operated by its founder, Alessandro Dal Bello, and remains the only independent ski boot producer in the world. Dalbello has continually grown since its inception and currently manufactures more than 500,000 pairs of ski boots per year. In the USA only since 1993, Dalbello ski boots is currently ranked America’s #3 ski boot brand.
For more information, click here to visit the Dalbello website.
CLOSEDaleBoot - High Performance Boots, Made to Measure...
Since 1969 DaleBoot has focused exclusively on producing high performance, custom made ski boots. We believe that every skier deserves to be treated as a pro athlete and provide each with a fully custom, high performance ski boot solution.
For more information, click here to visit the Daleboot website.
CLOSERossignol has been building world class ski equipment for more than 100 years, winning more competitions and selling more skis than any other brand along the way.
Since the beginning, Rossi’s ski & boot builders have combined their knowledge and passion with athlete feedback to create each of the specialized divisions that make up the Rossignol brand.
At Rossignol, every category, from freeride to race is completely focused on delivering unique, cutting edge products that are sure to inspire the participants in each of those disciplines.
For more information, click here to visit the Rossignol website.
CLOSELange has hand-crafted boots around the feet of the world’s best athletes since 1963.
Ski boots are the most important piece of ski equipment a skier has. Great fitting, accurate boots give skiers great balance, control, energy and edge-grip. Sloppy, vague boots are fatiguing, offer less control, poor balance and no edge-grip.
Passionate skiers know how important good ski boots are to their skiing experience. So, for 2010/11, Lange delivers the greatest fit and performance upgrades that the ski boots have ever seen.
For more information, click here to visit the Lange website.
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