Meet Chris Peters | Ski and snowboard builder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Chris Peters and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Chris, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Working in the snow sports industry for several years and repairing skis and snowboards for year I had a great understanding for the anatomy of snow sports equipment. I had a good understanding of the different materials available being used and the pros and cons of those materials. Over time an old friend asked me “why don’t we make skis?” and my first answer was “too competitive and too expensive to start-up”. The competition in snow sports manufacturing is mostly dominated by 3 corporations that own a large number of brands and most of their products are made in China with inferior materials and low dollar labor. I am hoping to get more people interested in grass roots snow sports brands that are made with the passion and love for the sport and not just shareholders selling gimmicks. We sell our product direct to the customer cutting out the middle man of retail to get you the best price and build a better relationship with our customers. The real reason I started this business was for my love of the sport and the dream of doing something different.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
A common question I get is what makes your product different. Well to start we use the thickest edge and base material for more rock hits with less core shots and more rail slams with less edge break. We are a small company with 3 people, we are not a brand owned by a corporation being made by another company, we control all aspects of our product and can make any new shape we want and release it as soon as we are ready. Unlike brands that submit their new ideas to be made, then tested the next season and then sold the next season. We think a ski that was designed 3 years ago is not a new product especially when we can take a new shape, modify it a couple times and then start selling it in a matter of weeks. We use a full sidewall sandwich construction, full stringer wood cores and not finger jointed cores like some of our competitors. The woods we use include but are not limited to aspen, white ash, poplar, paulownia and more. Our biggest challenges have been starting up during a pandemic and struggling to first get our product out during the lockdown and ever since has been getting our materials that have been in short supply. We have even started pouring our own urethane sidewalls after Crown Plastics in OH (the worlds largest supplier of UHMW PE) went belly up and stopped taking orders. Now we are ordering as much as we can afford to so that production does not have to stop again because of material shortages and we are also looking into making more of these materials ourselves incase more suppliers start dropping out. We are at the point now that nothing will stop us and we will always find a way.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to dedicate this shoutout to Byron Johnson for helping to make CRSP what it now is and giving the company its name.

Website: crspskis.com

Instagram: crspskis

Twitter: crspskis

Facebook: crspskis

Youtube: crspskis

Image Credits
Photos taken by Grayson Geiger from Gevity Productions of Chris Peters