Kip Pitou: Successful slopes.

• Author: Staker, Brian
• Position: People - Brief Article

Kip Pitou has skiing in his blood. So it was natural that this New Hampshire native would eventually find hit career path slaloming to Utah. "I taught skiing in the early '60s, and went to work for a New York City sporting goods wholesaler," he explains. "It was during a period of huge growth for the industry; the company went to $150 million in sales, and I was promoted to VP/general manager. Then in the mid-'70s and early '80s when European ski manufacturers decided they didn't need middlemen, the distributorship was dissolved."

By 1980, Pitou, then working for the Austrian ski manufacturer Kestle, had relocated to Utah. He spent a decade here, in the process taking the firm from fifteenth to fourth place in the market. When Benetton bought Kestle and relocated its operation to Vermont. Pitou took a job with competitor K-2, running the pre-ski division. "Even though that company was based in Seattle, I talked them into letting me stay here," he recounts. "I was here another four years, then under K-2's holding company, I became president of the bicycle division for five years. I had to relocate to Rhode Island for that. But I really wanted to be in Utah. In 1999. I took over the Utah Ski and Snowboard Association, and I'm still here."

What did he learn as executive officer of almost every company he worked for? "With up to 300 employees, I learned a lot about management. I also learned a lot about engineering products. I spent a lot of time in the air. In the bicycle business, I had to travel a lot to visit factories in Taiwan. I've spent a lot of my life offshore. I have three million miles on Delta."

But with Ski Utah, the product is a bit different. "Ski Utah is really a marketing company. Our responsibility is to brand skiing in Utah. We are owned primarily by ski resorts, and a lot of our members are local hotels. We work with the legislature to promote and develop the ski business. The...