Brno - As Lukáš Bauer is crowned world skiing king, Czech ski producers are losing business. The last two years have been critical.
The absence of snow reduced demand for winter sports equipment. Only one in every ten Czech skiers has bought new gear. Which is not a surprise, since there was almost nowhere to ski outside the ski centres in the mountians.
"Our finances are in the red. Last year we were fifteen million in debt," Ján Hudák, head of the long-lived Czech ski maker Sporten, told Aktuálně.cz.
"There will not be any changes for the better this winter either. Mostly, only downhill skis are being sold, there is no demand for anything else. This delays payments from the retailers who are left with unsold goods in their warehouses," Mr Hudák added.
Strong competition from China
Besides a lack of snow, the sales of cross-country and downhill skis and snowboards are further complicated by the strong Czech crown. The viability of Czech companies depends on the sales made to foreign customers.
"We are exporting eighty per cent of our production," said Lukáš Schroder, a dealer from the LTB Snowboars Company. Sporten exports the same percentage of their products. Most of their products are heading to Alpine countries.
"There is a gloomy mood among the winter sports fans, and it's being reflected in our relationship with our trade partners," Schroder added.
The winter sports-gear producers also have to face new competition cheap equipment from China.
Half a million Czech skiers go to the Alps every year.
"The majority of customers are looking for low-priced products, only a minority of them is interested in quality," editor of Snow Magazine, Petr Socha, explains.
"At the time when most companies are going for low-quality Chinese products, quality hand-made products may be a good way to go," Adam Švejda from Outdoorinfo.cz outlines possible solutions for the Czech producers.
A chair, an ice hockey stick, or luck
In the past two years, there were one hundred and forty days of skiing in the Czech mountains. Because of the bad snow conditions, companies had to find other output solutions so that they would not go under.
"To keep production and employees, we had to move on to substitute programs," Mr Hudák said.
So, besides skis, ice-hockey sticks and garden furniture is starting to appear in storage facilities.
"We try to compensate for cut-offs by using doubly up with summer and winter production," the chairman of the Botas board of directors, Petr Lajžner, said.
Future lies in summer
Botas has sold less ski boots last year and it's trying to increase its summer production.
The Chop company in Třebíč has different worries. It extended its snowboard production to make kiteboards and freeskis, and the demand at this moment is higher than the company can meet.
"We are concentrating on the export. Only one per cent of our production is destined for the domestic market," the company's dealer Otto Caha said.
The company builds its position on the basis of quality and innovation. It did not lag behind with traditional products and concentrated on the skiing trends around the world.
"Kiteboarding and freeskiing are very much a fad abroad. The Czechs are quite conservative and it would be futile to look for world trends on the Czech hillsides," Švejda added.
