Stagione 1
We sat down for a phone call with Andrew Couperthwait, VP of Head Skis to talk about some of the current ongoings at Head/Tyrolia, some exciting stuff each company has on the way, and Coup tells us about some key factors that have contributed to maintaining the brand’s success. He tells us about some innovations happening on both the ski and binding side, and specifically explains the function of the Tyrolia Protector binding in a super digestible way.
We are joined in studio by Hunter Henderson for a dope conversation with the U.S. Freeski Team member, Red Bull athlete, and 2026 Winter Olympic hopeful among many other things. Hunter's originally an east coast guy, so we spent a lot of time talking to Hunter about growing up in NH, coming up as an east coast skier, and specific factors and experiences that set him up for a career as a professional skier. Hunter is only 20 years old and is absolutely crushing it right now. He's definitely someone you're gonna wanna keep your eye on over the next few years.
We are joined in studio by none other than Dan Egan. If you're not familiar with Dan, he's a pioneer of extreme skiing, starred in 13 Warren Miller films, and worked closely with Warren Miller Entertainment spanning from the late 80s to the early 2010s. This was a perfect time to talk to Dan because of a recent announcement that for the first time in 74 years, Warren Miller Entertainment will not be shooting a new film, and instead will be repurposing archival footage for their annual release. We get Dan's opinion on the current state of WME and some of the things that lead to where the company is at today. We also have some awesome back-and-forth about Dan's Boston routes, his epic career, and some of the wild experiences that have come along with it!
We are joined in studio by Ben Fresco, the Product Manager at Elan USA, to discuss the all-new Elan Playmaker series. The Playmaker 91 and Playmaker 101 are a series of freeride twin-tip skis that will be part of the 2023/2024 Elan Skis lineup, and we here at TSM couldn’t be more stoked. Fresco takes us through the production process from start to finish: From the vision to prototyping to the finished product.
We sat down in studio to discuss our top-tested skis for the upcoming 23/24 season. Testing is our life here at TSM. It’s how we get familiar with product, curate our inventory, and ultimately guide the end consumer in figuring out what makes the most sense for them. This past season, our staff notched around 30 total test days at over 25 resorts and got on next year’s product from just about every ski brand you can think of. It only felt appropriate to keep it internal for this conversation. George, Matt, and Joe from the TSM crew joined us for this one. They all took part in ton of testing this year and share different perspectives on what’s coming next season. Even though there isn’t too much changing in terms of new skis and new constructions, there’s still so much to talk about when it comes to ski testing.
We are joined in studio by Jason Roe and Valarie Kechian from Atomic to talk Atomic boots. Jason grew up in Canada and moved to Austria 20 years ago to start at Atomic and is now the Business Director of the Alpine Boots side of the brand. Valarie has been in the industry for about a decade and is now a Commercial Product Specialist at Atomic. We talked a little bit about the history of ski boots, what Atomic has going on at the ski boot development level, and of course, BOA (so hot right now).
We are joined in studio by Christian Avery, the North American Product manager at Blizzard-Tenica to discuss the all-new 23/24 Blizzard Rustler and Sheeva collection. The bulk of our conversation revolves around the new skis; Christian tells us about the development process from start to finish and the decision-making that goes into changing an established product. We also chopped it up about BOA ski boots if that's something you're into.
We are joined in studio by Tanner McCarty, the former team manager at Ride Snowboards. Tanner has been one of the most important behind-the-scenes guys in snowboarding for the better part of a decade, spending the majority of those years at Ride. We talk about how he went from working at Eastern Boarder when he might have been too young to work at Eastern Boarder, to playing a huge role at one of the biggest brands in snowboarding.
We headed up to the Marker/Dalbello/Volkl US headquarters to check out their DOPE new showroom space, get a sneak peek of their 2024 line-up, and record this pod. We sat down with Ivar Dahl, the National Sales Manager at MDV. We hear a bit about the Ivar origin story, some of the exciting stuff they have going on at MDV, and we discuss the current demands of the ski-buying market and what Volkl is doing to keep up with them. For all podcast updates check out @theskimonster on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
We sat down with Cyrus Schenck, founder of Renoun, a (mostly) ski brand based out of Burlington, VT. We chopped it up with Cyrus about his window-washing career, how that led to him launching Renoun, and what went into the revolutionary technology that goes into his skis. On top of all that the episode also features some interaction between the crew and an AI bot that might know more about skis than humans.