Popular Post Jack M Posted August 15, 2018 Popular Post Report Share Posted August 15, 2018 I saw a friend and fellow USASA racer today and we were chatting about snowboarding as usual. He mentioned he heard that Kessler had gone out of business. I couldn't believe this, but thinking back to the thread discussing difficulty getting in touch with them, I wanted to find out first hand. I emailed Hansjuerg and got this response right back. Sharing with his permission: --- Hi Jack Thanks for your lines below and your work you are doing for alpine snowboarding. First of all i can assure you that there is no need to worry about the future of Kessler. As you maybe know i started building snowboard in 1987 in a small ski resort (its a town without cars at all) only reachable by cable car. So we are building boards more then 30 years. In the first couple years we did build about 100 to 300 boards a year. I did this beside my job as building supervisor in the summer and ski and snowboard instructor during the winter. I grow up in "hardcore" wintersport family and started to ski at 2 1/2 years. Dad, Mum, Brother, Sister, and me were working as ski instrutor in the local ski school. I was supervisor for Swiss ski school federation and Swiss snowboard federation for many many years. So you see, my entire life is wintersport, especially snowboard, what else could I do then follow up with snowboard and ski for the rest of my life? The reason of being "offline" the past 2-3 years is also connected with our decision to dedicate fully to build winter sport equipment. When we entered the world cup in about 2001 with our boards we were very fast very successful. After the first Olympic Medal in Salt Lake the numbers of customized boards went up rapidly. From about 2008 we could not handle the amount of demands in our small production in Braunwald. So we decided to start building serial boards and have them produced at Nidecker in Switzerland. Unfortunately Nidecker closed the Production in Switzerland after 3 years we had been there. We found another production in Austria, it was GST, they produced for many well known brands all together about 180,000 units a year. Unfortunately they closed also after we had been there for 3 years. So again we were without a production for our serial boards. All these years we kept producing all the custom boards in my home town Braunwald. Our serial Skis where built at Head. For several reasons we did want to quit there as well. So we deicided instead of going to Dubai or Tunisia like almost all our competitors do, to build up our own production in Switzerland. In late 2015 I started to build up a complete new production from a blank sheet very close to my home town. Late summer 2016 we started to build our first Swiss Made Serial Boards in the new production. In summer 2017 the ski production started under the same roof. Now we are just about finishing the serial boards for our 3th year (season 2018-2019). As you can imagine the past 3 years I was fully absorbed in building up the production, with all the bigger and smaller problems everyone would have in such a project. It was the toughest time in my whole life so far. I put all my energies in this project to develop all the production process which are needed. Now since the worst teething problems are solved I start to live again and hopefully will have more time for our customer. The custom made boards, developing and athletes boards are still built in the very first facility, during the past 3 years we kept this production running like always, there was no need to touch or change this well going place. In fact at the moment we do have 2 different factorys close together (about 20km) Believe me if I would quit now with what i have done the past 31years and especially the past 3 years I could not see into the mirror any more. I'm the type of guy who must build something real even though I love to do everything possible with modern production technology like CAD and CNC. I always try to go new ways in production process. Honestly I believe we do have the most efficient production for custom and serial boards and ski world wide. I go up in the morning to do at least one thing a day in a way that never has been done before. To cut a long story short: Kessler going out of business, is just BULL SHIT. Hope these guys out there will have a bit of understanding for our situation in the past 3 years. We are snowboarders and build snowboards for snowboarders in the middle of the Swiss Alps. Very best regards Take care Hansjuerg Kessler 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Kirk Posted August 16, 2018 Report Share Posted August 16, 2018 Thank you for posting this Jack. I have been working on placing an order with Kessler for some time now and it's been a slow process. Just recently I was given the order form and I submitted in early this week and look forward to hearing back about it. It's good to know there is a reason for the slow communication from Hansjuerg. It sounds like he has a very full (overflowing?) plate. I knew none of the above and it makes it easier to bide my time while waiting for the build process to start. Thanks again for sharing. dave 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bumpyride Posted August 16, 2018 Report Share Posted August 16, 2018 Glad to know that pride in workmanship is still going strong in the boutique snowboard shops. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barryj Posted August 16, 2018 Report Share Posted August 16, 2018 Thanks Jack, Glad to hear Hansjuerg hasn't thrown in the towel!! Happy, proud.... and fortunate owner of a Kessler 168 here! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjnakata Posted August 17, 2018 Report Share Posted August 17, 2018 Glad that the rumors are untrue. Kessler has contributed so much to the sport. The viability of manufacturers in alpine is apparently fragile and we (users) are sensitive to any sign of weakness. A lesson for small businesses (including mine - unrelated to alpine): simple lack of communication -for whatever reason- can lead to nervous potential customers and start rumors of demise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Kirk Posted August 17, 2018 Report Share Posted August 17, 2018 9 hours ago, rjnakata said: Glad that the rumors are untrue. Kessler has contributed so much to the sport. The viability of manufacturers in alpine is apparently fragile and we (users) are sensitive to any sign of weakness. A lesson for small businesses (including mine - unrelated to alpine): simple lack of communication -for whatever reason- can lead to nervous potential customers and start rumors of demise. I couldn't agree more. Communication is the most important thing especially when things aren't going as you'd like. People are generally pretty understanding when they have a clue of your challenges but if you don't share the basics with them they will assume you are ignoring them. It's always harder in the short run to get in front of a PR issue but it pays off in a big way in the long run. dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobdea Posted August 19, 2018 Report Share Posted August 19, 2018 On 8/17/2018 at 12:46 AM, rjnakata said: Glad that the rumors are untrue. Kessler has contributed so much to the sport. The viability of manufacturers in alpine is apparently fragile and we (users) are sensitive to any sign of weakness. A lesson for small businesses (including mine - unrelated to alpine): simple lack of communication -for whatever reason- can lead to nervous potential customers and start rumors of demise. Yeah, if we close our restaurant for a day people start saying we’re out of business...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeoffV Posted August 19, 2018 Report Share Posted August 19, 2018 This is great to hear all that history from Hansjürg and his devotion to the sport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daveo Posted August 19, 2018 Report Share Posted August 19, 2018 HK is a legend. Over 10 years ago I interviewed him over email for a school project my younger sibling was working on. Even though he was busy being a snowboard manufacturing legend he still helped us out and he stood to gain exactly nothing. Ever since then I knew I'd own a Kessler. Now I do. And I know I'll own more. But an Oxess is coming next Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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