An estimated 1,000 people attended the funeral services held in Annecy last Friday to honor Georges Salomon, the man who founded the company bearing his name. Affected for some time by Alzheimer’s disease, he passed away last Tuesday at the age of 85 years.
A visionary, he was always on the look-out for new technical innovations that would assert Salomon’s leadership in the ski sector and other domains. Humble and respectful of his collaborators, he transmitted this spirit to them.
The man started off in 1947, together his father, with a small workshop for the manufacture of wooden skis in Annecy, the French town that will host the first European Outdoor Forum this week and that is one of the three candidates for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Salomon introduced the first modern alpine ski bindings and the SNS system, which became a world standard for Nordic ski bindings. It developed the first machines for chain manufacturing of skis and later introduced cap ski construction. A leader in ski bindings by 1972, it later developed into one of the two major suppliers of alpine ski boots and a significant player in the alpine ski market.
To shield the the company from the unpredictable winter weather, Georges Salomon diversified it into the production of outdoor boots, a segment where the Salomon brand now occupies the third position worldwide. With the same goal in mind, Salomon acquired TaylorMade in 1984 and Mavic in 1994. It also launched a highly technical line of inline skates, but this project did not work out.
Georges Salomon and his son Bernard, who by that time had taken over the management of the company, sold their shares in 1997 to Adidas, which decided eight years later to keep only its golf business and to sell the rest to Amer Sports. The deal with Adidas was valued at €1.2 billion, or nearly twice the company’s annual turnover and 37 times its net earnings.
