PROFILE: ON3P skis

Furthermore, many of the founding and current members of ON3P were guys that Scott came to know via newschoolers. As Scott tells it:

“Rowen Tych and Sam Caylor were both NS members who bought early tester pairs, were involved in their development, and came down to help build them in Tacoma. Rowen is now our Production Manager and Sam Caylor is our PNW Rep (after spending some time building with us in our first production cycle). David Steele and Josh Anderson were also NS members involved in developing ON3P, building the first prototypes in Tacoma, and testing them out the next season. Both are on our team right now. And Kip Kirol was actually one of our initial testers as well. He knew of us through David Steele, who was able to convince him to pick up a tester pair from our Tacoma build, and now he is our Materials Manager. So it has proven to be a fairly tight knit group these past few years.”

These days, Scott is still active on TGR, newschoolers, and skibuilders.com, and members of those forums still constitute a significant portion of ON3P’s customer base.

ON3P’s own website has also been an outlet for Scott’s honesty. I don’t know Scott’s religious background, but his writing on the site has, at times, the tone of a confessional. (Hang on, this’ll make sense in a minute.)

What is cool about Scott, and why it is basically impossible not to root for ON3P, is that, many of those who were on Scott’s skis the first two seasons will tell you that they kicked ass. But a number of skis shipped late to customers (for reasons that were mostly beyond his control), and Scott described all of the details of the hold up so that everyone knew exactly what was going on and why. And he was practically tripping over himself to apologize for the delay.

So despite the fact that in their first year out, ON3P made bomber skis that a lot of people loved, Scott was killing himself for not getting them out quick enough. He did good, but he is hellbent on doing better.

Many of his forum posts and many of my conversations with him have all underscored this fact. This makes him a good guy, of course, but let’s be clear: he’s a smart guy, too. He knows that to stay in the game in an already crowded arena, you’d better be both great and on time. If you’re going to succeed, you’ll rest when you’re dead. (Or maybe in another year or two? Fingers crossed, knock on wood….)

This season, ON3P’s deliveries were way ahead of last year’s, and Scott is excited to already be in an even better position to start next year’s production cycle. They are also about to move into a new space in Portland that is three times the size of their current factory. Things are coming together.

The hallmarks of ON3P skis are their 100% bamboo cores, which Scott and the crew prefer for their “responsive yet damp” ride, and the fact that bamboo is an environmentally friendly, quick growing grass.

Each ski also has a 3″ or 2″ carbon stringer laid on top of the core, 2.5mm steel edges, and a thick base material that is one of the reasons that a word you often hear associated with ON3P skis is, “bomber.”

Scott and company are definitely not building any flimsy noodles in Portland. The skis feel overbuilt, and hard core weight weenies might want to look elsewhere.

Finally, in a piece that details Scott’s and ON3P’s transparency, there is one obvious exception. You’ll notice that we haven’t posted any pictures of Scott. Long and short, the guy doesn’t like to be photographed. When I pressed him to see whether there was some sort of deeply held belief about cameras being stealers of souls or something, he said, “Nah, it’s just not really my thing. But I can try to scrounge up a photo if you really need me to.”

Nah.

As you’ll see in the 20 Questions interview, Scott has consistently gone above and beyond to be open and honest, and ON3P is a company that will level with you and do their best to build and set you up with a burly ski that they think you’ll dig.

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but no photo is going to convey either that track record or the level of passion behind Scott’s focused commitment.