Word: boix
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...news of the ski switch leaked out, Rossignol's stock immediately slumped from 1,521 francs (about $249) to 1,350 francs ($221) on the Paris Bourse. The team criticism and the stock plunge, which wiped out 11% of Rossignol's market value, stung company officials. Stormed President Laurent Boix-Vives: "We don't have to prove ourselves. Half the 66 medals awarded at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics and the last two world championships, including 13 golds, were won on our skis...
President Laurent Boix-Vives (pronounced Bwah-veeve), now 51, started two ski-lift companies in his home region of Savoie in 1951, after serving an apprenticeship in his father's fruit and vegetable business. In 1955 he learned from a friend, Emile Allais, a former world downhill and slalom champion, of a nearly bankrupt firm, Societe Rossignol, that produced wooden spools for the textile trade and wooden skis on the side. Boix-Vives borrowed $50,000, bought the firm and laid off everyone but 27 ski makers, creating a lean, one-product shop. Allais soon devised a metal...
...past decade, Rossignol's capacity has risen twentyfold, to 2 million skis a year of wood, metal, plastic and fiber-glass foam. Because cross-country skis are booming, Boix-Vives plans to double capacity in that department this year to 350,000 skis. But his strategy involves more than expansion of capacity. As volume grew in the mid-'60s, the company's increased productivity enabled Boix-Vives to adopt a policy of, as he puts it, "aggressive pricing"; Rossignol prices stayed completely stable from 1964 all the way to 1972. Today Rossignol produces eight principal lines...
Also crucial to Rossignol's success was Boix-Vives's decision to go into multinational manufacturing. Says he: "It was better to produce on location abroad so that we could become accepted. It also gave us a better knowledge of local markets." Indeed, it was the company's Vermont plant that developed a compact ski suitable for New England's thickly wooded hills; the ski has also become a hit in parts of France, Austria and Germany...
...Rossignol's 3,000 employees, 100 work full time in research and development, a proportion unique among ski makers. In their search for the "ultimate ski," the designers, together with West Germany's Bayer AG, are exploring the properties of polyurethane and compressed air. Boix-Vives is also planning a whole new product line. A dedicated schusser, he was inspired by an American study showing that 80% of his fellow skiers also play tennis. So he plans to spend $1.3 million to get Rossignol racquets into production. The racquets will be a molded mix of metal and plastic...