Kim Miller
CEO, Scarpa-USA
February, 2008--
"I
think the best thing we can do is be very open minded, listen
more than talk at this point, listen to the skiers... and be
humble... we don't profess to know everything," explains
Kim Miller. The affable Scarpa-USA CEO, an industry veteran who
has literally been at ground zero during most of the major developments
in the evolution of modern tele gear, has been here before.
While at Black Diamond
in the 90s, Miller was on the front lines in working through
many new product issues, including, ironically enough, the bellows-flex
problems in Scarpa/BD's original and |
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revolutionary
Terminators, the first all-plastic telemark boots. For this reason,
it's hard to imagine anyone in a better position to deal with
the challenges Scarpa has had to face in bringing its first NTN
boots to market this season.
In introducing Scarpa's
new for Fall '08, triple injected Terminator X Pro (above) to us at the on snow demo portion
of the trade show, Miller emphasized that he sees the new softer
bellows/stiffer upper four buckle model, along with the revamped
3 buckle T-X (also triple injected), as being part of a "natural
progression" in the NTN system. And in Part One of our interview,
Kim Miller acknowledges that it is Scarpa's previous experience
which has allowed the company to react swiftly to the bellows-flex
issue in
the 07/08 Terminator X NTN boots. Scarpa reportedly experimented
with more than a dozen injections in developing these two new
NTN boots, and yet they were already showing (very!) skiable
prototypes at the demo last month, indicating to us that Scarpa
did indeed correctly identify the bellows flex problem early
on, following up with a strong commitment to evolving and optimizing
their T-X boots for the unique qualities found in Rottefella's
basic NTN binding design.
We'll have more
on all of this very soon, including a T-X Pro "First Look"
on-snow initial report, but for now, here's Part One of our chat
with Kim Miller.
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In Part Two,
Kim Miller says of the NTN, "It's important to think about it in
terms of what it means to the sport, not just about the business.
If it were just about business, it's much safer for us to say
'no, let's not take the risk, let's stick with the status quo,'
but we feel we owe it to the sport to try these new things, to
push the technology and the mentality forward."
Miller has a lot
more to say here of course, and yet in light of current events,
it is the above quote that really resonated with us. In a sport
that engenders so much loyalty and passion among its participants,
to do anything less would seem to be an almost unforgivable disservice.
Things may not always go exactly as we would like, but we sleep
better at night knowing that by reporting on the NTN thoroughly
and with total honesty, we have done our very best to help move
things forward, and to build a foundation upon which modern telemark
skiing can thrive and progress.
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Part Three:
In this final segment Miller
discusses a number of issues, including improvements to the T-X
boots intended to improve their usability for Alpine Touring.
Most interesting to us though was Kim Miller's insistence that
"we are all in this together." When he went so far
as to say that Scarpa wanted to share their hard won knowledge
and help their competitors "do the best they can" in
building boots for the NTN, quite frankly it sounded rather unbelievable.
While other boot manufacturers we have been talking to through
all of this have repeatedly made it clear that they have taken
no pleasure in see Scarpa's struggle with their first generation
T-Xs, the telemark and AT boot market has always been hotly competitive,
especially in recent years. We found out the next day at the
OR floor show that we were wrong to have doubted Miller on this
point.
After wrapping up
a morning interview at the Garmont booth, Paul Parker excused
himself, saying he had another meeting he had to get to. Big
Tim and I finished putting our camera gear away, and as we headed
out of the booth, we saw Parker and Garmont chief John Schweitzer
sitting down for a meeting with Miller and Scarpa USAs Chris
Clark. While the official word from Garmont is that they are
aiming to have NTN boots on dealer shelves for Fall '09, we believe
that they are pursuing a faster track and will almost certainly
have at least one NTN model for Fall, '08. Clearly, Garmont will
benefit from Scarpa experience this year, and just as clearly, as remarkable as it may seem,
Miller is being sincere when he says in our interview that he
believes these competitors must work together to do "what's
best for the sport" of telemark skiing.
We are convinced
more than ever of this: No one should doubt that these are very
special times in a very special sport..
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