100 years of Fischer
Eric Kendall visits the Fischer HQ in Austria as it celebrates its centenary
Words: Eric Kendall Photos: Penny Kendall
I’m with Jan Ekmark, Fischer’s head of marketing, in the Fischer HQ in Ried im Innkreis, Austria. It was here where, in the late 1940s, Josef Fischer Junior – always looking for ways to improve things – suggested to his father that instead of machining skis from solid planks of wood, they should first cut up the wood and then stick it back together. It put him on a collision course with his father who was not just stubborn but, by the time he died in 1959, had been responsible for making one million skis. Trying to convince him that there was a better way must have taken some guts, and an equally stubborn streak.
However, after a quarter of a century producing traditional wooden skis, laminating them was the essential next step into modern ski construction for the Fischer company. Until that point ski performance had been limited by the properties of the natural material used. The new technology – building the ski from multiple components – promised the ability to create products with repeatable, tunable flex patterns and performance. The (un)sticking point had always been the glue; a weakness particularly in the early days and one of the understandable reasons for Josef Senior’s reservations.
But the potential was huge. On the menu was not just wood, but metal alloys, plastics, fibreglass, and eventually exotic carbon fibre and kevlar. Skis would evolve into products with more in common with space-age aircraft than the wooden wagons Josef Senior built at the start of his career.
History & milestones
Celebrating its centenary this year, the company began in 1924 when Josef Fischer started making toboggans and wagons in a barn in Ried im Innkreis (where the Fischer headquarters remain), financed by loans from family and an associate, Georg Grosslbauer.
Fischer’s woodworking skills, learned as an apprentice wagon maker, were the foundation of the business, and his drive to invest and expand at every opportunity soon led to ski making. In 1928, 2000 pairs were produced, prompting a move into bigger premises nearby. By 1933, Fischer had nine employees producing 10,000 pairs of skis per year, using local ash wood. The company weathered the war years, producing white skis for the army and also canvas chairs for military hospitals, before the US military briefly took over production at the end of the war.
By the time Josef Junior joined in 1949, the company was producing 13,000 pairs of skis a year. With his father declaring it ‘nonsense’ to cut up wood only to glue it back together, Josef Junior pursued the idea at weekends in a nearby carpentry workshop, competing on his prototypes in regional races.
Josef Senior’s resistance gave way as the idea proved itself and soon he was busy designing a ski press to facilitate production of the new laminated skis. Through the 1950s production steadily switched from solid to laminated, while the company expanded its factory space onto neighbouring plots of land; even a factory fire in 1957 failed to stop the growth. It was during this period that two key players – Ernest Simharl and Rudolf Ferch – became involved with the company, both of whom formed a close working relationship with Josef Junior. Ferch was initially hired to design a new company letterhead, but before long he had come up with the three-triangle logo: striking and enduring but so simple and radical that it left Josef Senior visibly shaken. But he didn’t have long to ponder this sign of the company’s new direction, dying at the age of just 63, in 1959, leaving his son and daughter, Selma, in charge.
Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Fischer made its breakthrough as a racing brand. Egon Zimmermann won Olympic Downhill gold in 1964 on the ‘Alu-Steel’, defying competitors who said he was racing on ‘army’ skis (not a compliment). Further racing successes led to massive factory expansion and, by the start of the ’70s, Fischer could produce nearly one million pairs of skis per year, making it the biggest ski manufacturer in the world. And all of that was before the iconic C4, on which Franz Klammer won just about everything.
Next steps for Fischer
Fast forward to 2024 and we’ve leapfrogged a period of significant upheaval in the ski industry in general, and for Fischer in particular, with the death of Josef Fischer in 2020, at the age of 90, shortly followed by a huge fire in its production facility in Ukraine.
Head of the Alpine division, Jan Weiss, manages to take positives even from that – at the very least, the ability of the Fischer team to overcome such setbacks – before taking me through the new range of skis and boots. He talks about “positive nerdiness in detail,” though what really comes across is his fizzing enthusiasm. We whizz through the skis before moving to boots where, for 20 years, Fischer has innovated, starting with the Somatec ‘natural stance’, then Vacuum Fit, moulding the boot itself (not just the liner) to the foot.
But pushing technical innovation is not always a smooth ride. Jan mentions their first touring boot, which suffered from the team having “10 different ‘films’ in their heads”. They all had different ideas of what a touring boot should be and ended up with a Jack of all trades. In contrast, the Ranger boot is a very clear statement: “We want a freeride touring boot that performs downhill ‘vollgas’ but is not hurting!” And in the RC4 all-mountain range they’re using premium technologies like BOA and a Zipfit liner to achieve precision and comfort. It fits their stated aim: ‘No gimmicks, no fuss: to be the number one athlete choice.’
Thomas Drindl, head of the Nordic division, is facing a very specific challenge. Fischer is well established as the race leader, ever since they realised that they could beat this traditionally Scandinavian-led sector by transferring technologies used in Fischer’s downhill skis. The future test, as Tom sees it, is from outside the industry, in the form of climate change. Cross-country skiing is the canary in the coal mine for snowsports industries, with most of it taking place at much lower altitudes than alpine skiing, so it sees a reduction in skier days well before the alpine sector.
On the factory floor, Julia Schaffner shows us both alpine and cross-country production. Every time I use these skis, I’m stunned by their extreme lightness and that they don’t break apart under my weight and limited technique. If Fischer can achieve these miracles of engineering, success must follow, whatever the future throws at them.
