The Journey of Nordic Up

Over the years I have constantly been faced with the grand question “How can I make skiing affordable”. This is such a tricky question because over the years skiing has gotten more and more expensive and it's tricky to be able to make enough to support yourself. I realized this pretty early on in my skiing career, so I sat down and thought up the idea of Nordic Up. This is how a crazy idea of making a ski stand turned into a small business for me and, where I hope it goes

Background:

I have always been super interested in designing things. From a young age, my dad would bring me home TVs, computers, and other various large electronics from thrift stores or wherever he could find them. I would set up my mats on the floor and just take them apart. It fascinated me how these intricate machines were made. I think this is what started my love for building stuff. 

The Initial Design:

When I was still in high school I decided I needed to come up with a way to make some money to put towards training camps, races, and other skiing-associated costs. Naturally, I thought it would be best to build something. I thought and thought about what was missing in the world of cross-country skiing. With 4 kids in my family all being cross-country skiers it was always a struggle to keep our garage organized with all of our skis. With 2 or 3 pairs of skis each person and downhill stuff, it was a constant struggle to find whose skis were where. This is where the idea of a ski stand originated from. Finding a way to organize our skis so we knew where they were and whose they were. This also allowed us to store the skis in a way that would make them easier to wax and protect the bases. Before the ski stand the skis would be resting up on the edge of a bench or along a wall and would always fall over. With the new ski stand it was so much easier and less chaotic to wax skis. After a few iterations and designs, my dad and I settled on what we thought was the best design.

Testing:

Once I was happy with how the stand worked I thought we needed some testing. Some way to make sure that the stand would hold up to the test of time and be able to work well with a large number of skis going in and out of it. This is when I made a few stands for my club, Foothills Nordic. The stands were tested, used, and abused throughout the winter. They traveled around the country on planes, trucks, and trailers. They had multiple pairs of skis put in them and out of them every weekend and the feedback was awesome. The coaches loved the ski stand and were super happy with the design. 

The final design:

The original design was made up of all wood. This was because it was cheap and easy to use. It was also the only material I had at the time. But I wanted the final product to not just be made of wood. I wanted a material that would stand up. After some research and talking to some family friends I came across a plastic composite material that was super durable and would be perfect for the ski stands. I then came up with the final design for the ski stands. I upgraded the top and bottom sheets of the ski stand to plastic sheets, changed the wood brackets for metal brackets, and upgraded the wood sides to some pre-finished wood. I thought that the stand looked super slick and was happy with how it turned out. With a final design, both functional and aesthetic, I was ready to start selling to customers.

Orders:

This has always been a struggle for me because I never knew the best way to collect orders. I started by just posting about it in my foothills blog to see if anyone was interested. In my first year, I got about 10 stands and I was stoked! At the time this was about all I could handle making because I was just starting up and did not have a very good process for making the stands yet.

My First customer

Manufacturing:

With my 10 orders, I needed to find a way to make them efficiently. I have been so lucky over the years because one of my family friends helps me out with the cutting of the stands because she has a CNC machine that can cut them super fast. This is such a big help because it saves a ton of time. I bought all the plastic and wood I needed for the 10 stands and set off for salmonarm (where the CNC machine is). After cutting all the parts I could assemble them in my garage at home. I would fabricate the medal brackets, sand, clean up the pieces, and put them all together. Finally, drop them off at customers' homes. 

What Happening Now:

For the past couple of years I have been operating the same way as described above but this year I have decided to change it up. I have been investing a lot more time, money, and energy into creating a better platform for ordering the ski stands. Now I have made a website where people can order them directly on the website all year round and then I make the ski stand-up in the summer and drop them off/ ship them out at the start of the winter. This is my first year doing it this way so I hope it goes well. If you want to check out my website to order a ski stand or see what it looks like click the button below or go to www.nordicup.ca. I have a goal of selling 100 ski stands this year to support my ski season. So we will see how close I can get to that. 

The future:

I have always liked the idea of having a business. I hope to continue to grow this business and that the community still wants to buy ski stands. I hope to in the future, come out with some more exciting products. I have quite a few ideas but for this year I am going to just stick with the ski stands and see how it goes. But in the future who knows where this will go?

Thanks for taking the time to read about my journey in making Nordic up. I hope you enjoyed the story and if you ever want a ski stand please don't hesitate to reach out. I would love to talk to you about them!

Cheers,

Tom