The right move: RAMP Sports brings its manufacturing back to Utah.

• Author: Haraldsen, Tom
• Position: Lessons Learned

For Mike Kilchenstein, the decision to 'bring his ski manufacturing company back to the United States was an easy one to make. Pulling it off has been challenging, but never losing focus on the company's founding principles has made it easier.

Kilchenstein's company, RAMP Sports, moved its ski production from Taiwan to Park City during the summer of 2012. He knew the logistics and the inevitable production downtime of that move would affect his delivery schedules for the 2012-13 ski season that's now concluding, but felt the rewards in the long run would be worth it. After all, moving allowed the transformation of RAMP'S ski products into something brand new in the industry.

The result is a ski made like no other, utilizing a patent-pending process that uses earth-friendly, U.S.-made components. It's a process revolutionary in the ski industry according to Kilchenstein, the company's CEO who calls himself the "CESnow."

Revamping the Model

For its first two seasons, RAMP worked with a Taiwanese manufacturer called Playmaker. It was a smaller company that Kilchenstein liked because "they offered reasonable minimums (order quantities) for a company our size, plus they were willing to do a complete product line But Playmaker used the same ski product molds as other companies, and when Kilchenstein and his engineer, Christian Alary, had a different kind of ski in mind, Playmaker was resistant to change.

That's when they knew they'd have to create their own business model, in every sense of the word.

"We had new ideas, the technology to make skis without the traditional mold," he says. "We decided it made sense to do the manufacturing in Park City. After all, we're within 10 minutes of three world-class ski resorts."

RAMP uses a vacuum molding process, and the ingredients of the skis are also unique.

"Most skis are made of poplar wood, ours are bamboo," he says. "les much more rock solid and more secure. We use very expensive composites, all made here in the U.S. One of them is Kevlar, known for its strength and usage in bullet-proof vests. So we jokingly say our skis are bullet-proof."

With vacuum molding, Kilchenstein explains that the ski is more equally balanced for its entire length, and much more user friendly. He says the skis have a much better "sweet spot," that skiers feel "they can put pressure anywhere on the ski and feel they're in the right spot."

The combined ingredients are about triple the price of normal cores, but where RAMP...