Word: boix
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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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...