edf40wrjww2CF_PaperMaster:Desc
Summary:
Sport Obermeyer’s origins traced back to 1947 when Klaus Obermeyer emigrated from Germany to the United States and started teaching at the Aspen Ski School. During the summer months he returned to Germany to find durable high-performance ski clothing and equipment for his students. This led him to designing his own clothing and equipment – in the 1950s he was credited with making the first goose-down vest. In the early 1980s popularized the “ski brake” and over the years Sport Obermeyer developed into a preeminent competitor in the U.S. skiwear market with sales estimated at $32.8 million in 1992. A lower price, high-volume-per-style competitor, Columbia Sportswear, had captured about 23% of the adult ski-jacket market in the same year. Obermeyer products were offered in five different “genders”: men’s, women’s, boy’s, girl’s, and preschoolers’, each being segmented according to price, type of skier, and how “fashion forward” the market was. Throughout the company’s history, Klaus Obermeyer had been actively involved in management. He believed a company should run “free of tension”. His personal philosophy was at the core: “We’re blending with forces of the market rather than opposing them. This leads to conflict of resolution. If you oppose force, you get conflict escalation. It is not money, it is not possessions, it is not market share. It is to be at peace with your surroundings.” In 1989, Klaus’s son Wally joined Sport Obermeyer and as in often the case, the company founder and his MBA son had different management approaches – Wally relied more heavily on formal data-gathering and analytical techniques, whereas Klaus took a more intuitive approach .
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