We drove from Boulder to Park City Sunday and met Robert Lazzaroni, Rossignol Nordic Product Manager and Drew Gelinas, the new Rossignol Nordic Race Director for a tour of the new Rossi headquarters and dinner.  The new offices are impressive, located in Kimball Junction just outside of Park City.  The nordic trails start right across the street, and it looks like an exciting place to work.  The new building is spacious and completely tricked out for what they need to accomplish.  It is surprising how well-planned everything seems, with lots of features such as a photography studio and sales display area that allow Rossi to do things in-house, saving time and money in the process.

The meeting room has an absolutely stunning view of the mountains and every window in the building inspires one to think about playing outside.  It would definitely be a fun environment to work in.

After our tour, we walked over to dinner at the nearby brewpub and talked about the biz and what Drew and Robert had learned in their recent trip to Rossignol headquarters in France.  They have modified the system they use to evaluate skis, changing to a system of standard weights from their old system of loading a ski until certain camber shapes were created.  This is a good change for us as it is more familiar since it is the system we use to pick skis.  It will be nice to compare what we have figured out from our testing of the skis on snow to what the designers of the skis intended.  With the previous system, it was difficult to compare the two methods, but now we should be able to use the factory recommendations to provide one more point of reference in addition to our testing on snow.

Our work takes us to the warehouses of Rossignol in Atomic over the next two days where we will be picking skis for clients and filling out our pre-season orders.  We'll have to leave behind the beauty of Park City for the heat and grime of the Ogden warehouse district.  Which is probably where we belong anyway.