Authier

Authier’s first racing success was at the prestigious Arlberg-Kandahar downhill race in 1935. With the model “FIS-Super”, Swiss champion Willy Steuri won. During the war, they changed the logo to a patriotic and Swiss quality symbol: the crossbow with on top of it, Authier and on the bottom the armories of Bière. In 1948, Authier launched the “Vampire” (named after the first jet airplane of the Swiss army, made by De Havilland, GB). Alfred Ueberschlag, head of manufacturing, had the idea to insert loose stainless steel laminates of 1 mm thickness, 60 cm long and 2 cm wide at the front of the ski and of 40 cm x 2 cm at the rear, leaving open parts in the middle.

 

The Vampire was great in races and commercially. As the ski was already well placed during the Olympics of St. Moritz (1948), the officials of the Swiss team selected the “Vampire” for the World Championship of Aspen (1950). With it, Georges Schneider won Slalom gold, later silver in Banff, then again gold at the Harriman’s-cup in Sun Valley. Madeleine Berthod won a gold medal in the downhill and the combined at the Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo (1956). After the 5th medal, all of them were reproduced on the top of the “Vampire”.

 

“The golden Vampire book” with all results obtained with that ski. At about Swiss Francs 100 (which represented around 100 hours of a workmen’s salary), the skis sold for three times less than a Head “Standard”, even though it was a much better ski – except in deep snow.

 

In 1960, the “hayfork factory”, named so by the village people, burned down. The same year, Authier built a new factory equipped with the latest technology for metal, synthetic material and wooden skis, the biggest in Switzerland. Authier introduced in 1962 the anti-break guarantee and began also producing water skis for Britt as well as ski-bobs. Neither successful was their “Lilliput”, a full wooden, inexpensive short ski – it came 10 years too early!

 

In 1968, Authier was with 46,000 pairs sold (70% metal, 20% fiberglass, 10% wood), number one in Switzerland before selling the business the year after in1969 to Olin Corporation, a U.S. company in the armament field which wanted to diversify. After two bad seasons, Olin decided end of 1972 to sell to Rossignol & Haldemann. Former, the world market leader invested in what would be Europe’s most modern ski factory with a capacity of 65,000 pairs per shift. Racing skis were made by Rossignol, those for world speed records by Authier. With an “Authier-Compétition”, Pino Meyer, an Italian racer realized over 194 Km/h in 1975; two years later they broke the record with almost 196 km/h – with 2.5 meter long skis.

 

Rossignol, which had collaboration with Lange and Killy, reached an agreement to manufacture Lange skis at Authier factory. Nonetheless Rossignol & Haldemann announced the closing of the factory in 1988 and to transfer the production to France and Spain. Authier was bought by Pierre-Alain Blum of Ebel Holding Finance (owner of Ebel watches, movie production, medias and golf tournaments) with participation of MBD (Marc Biver Development – sport sponsoring). They diversified in mountain-biking, snowboard, sport clothing and invested heavily in sales, marketing and research. In view of the coming 80 years of Authier, a modern replica of the “Vampire” was launched – with on top its logo with 5 medals.

 

The Authier brand belongs presently to AEFFE, a leading Italian multi-brand fashion and luxury group (see www.Aeffe.com for a résumé with some pictures of Authier). They bought it in 2006 from the Mazzotto group, another Italian fashion company which had bought it in 2002 from Arabian.