The Swiss connection – 1979 to 1985

In 1979 Laurent Boix-Vives purchased the company for about $2 million, sold Lange Far East one year later to Mitsui for $2.5 million and more than recouped his initial investment. Boix-Vives also asked Marc Lumet to stay on as the company’s U.S. President. He found a great group of salesmen shepherded by Hendy Colley. Lanvers joined that team in 1982 as marketing director. Since he owned the company personally, Boix-Vives decided to set up a trading company in Switzerland that would lessen the tax bite and maximize the operating profits.

In the mid-eighties, the US represented the main consumer market for Lange. The man in charge for the Swiss trading company, in Lausanne, was a local banker named Jean-Pierre Kratzer. The former Société Générale employee had no previous exposure to the ski industry and began to learn it as fast as he could. Except for Herbert Marxer, a former downhill racer and Olympian from Liechtenstein, who assumed the positions of product and racing services manager, there was no one else who knew and understood the market and its distribution. At that time, Kratzer was approached by two former Battelle associates, Guy Courvoisier and Simon Arieh that had developed a new boot-fitting process called Thermofit which quickly became the company’s main focus.

All this time, Lange's R&D was still located in Boulder and managed by Ed Chalmers who worked with Wayne Shuggart and Clark Everest. At first, the company was still basking in the commercial success of the XL-R and XL-S; these models that were generating sales upwards of 130,000 pairs a year in the US alone, and the R&D team was busy designing the new “Z” series, with a slightly enhanced, more universal last and a new, low-profile buckle.

The push for Thermofit wasn’t embraced by the US arm of the company; in the meantime, the Mollaro factory, jockeying for position, was no longer working seamlessly with the Boulder R&D team. Market pressures were also mounting for radical, new boot design, fueled by Salomon’s runaway success with its rear-entry boots and by the growing popularity of Tecnica's conventional designs.

While the low-profile buckle was still developed in conjunction with a new "Z" shell, the Thermofit “burnt” users and wasn’t retailer-friendly; for the second time in Lange’s history, a new liner padding technology almost bankrupted the company. During a boot-test conducted in Zermatt, in June of 1985, the Japanese contingent from Mitsui was overcome by pain and laid by the glacier side, as if they were reenacting the battle of Midway…

In 1984, Lanvers hired Pat Quigley to lead Lange’s sales team and to fill the position vacated by Colley. Very soon, Pat realized that something new and different was needed to rekindle everyone's excitement and motivation. As an outsider, Quigley could easily see the total dysfunction between the Swiss trading company, the Italian factory and Lange USA.

To create more excitement and maintain the media focus on Lange, a "25th anniversary" of the plastic ski boot was (arbitrarily) celebrated in 1985. To mark the occasion, a party was organized that March at the Las Vegas ski industry’s trade show. Unexpectedly, a crowd showed up, including most of the top racers of the late 1960s, like Jean-Claude Killy and Jimmie Huega. The party got way out of hand, snowballing out of a penthouse suite and avalanching down hotel corridors three stories below. Too much liquor was consumed, as a quarter of a century of Lange boot hoopla was replayed and embellished. In the middle of the crowd, unfazed by the commotion, stood Bob Lange, remained a guest of honor in his element.

TECHNICAL NOTES
The new re-designed XL-R shell, its precise anatomical fit and its orange color, quite unusual at its time, made it a runaway success. The best-seller product however, the Lange XL-S would see the light of day because of an error. The first shipments of XL-R to the USA contained some particularly soft shells that certain retailers and skiers noticed to the point that they would call Lange's customer service and ask for a "pair of these soft XL-R." Ed Chalmers investigated and found out that batches of the boot shell had been injected with the wrong plastic pellets, rendering the material substantially softer. A black and white photo of the XL-R gave management the idea to switch to a grey shell color and the XL-S, the best selling Lange model ever produced was born!

Reported by Rob Mucci